Cloris Leachman Movies

Regarded by many critics as the ultimate film noir, and by many more as the finest movie adaptation of a book by Mickey Spillane, Kiss Me Deadly stars Ralph Meeker as Spillane's anti-social private eye Mike Hammer. While driving down a lonely road late one evening, Hammer picks up a beautiful blonde hitchhiker (Cloris Leachman), dressed in nothing but a raincoat. At first, Hammer assumes that the incoherent girl is an escaped lunatic; his mind is changed for him when he and the girl are abducted by two thugs. The men torture the girl to death as the semiconscious Hammer watches helplessly. He himself escapes extermination when the murderers' car topples off a cliff and he is thrown clear. Seeking vengeance, Hammer tries to discover the secret behind the girl's murder. Among those who cross his path in the film's tense, tingling 105 minutes are a slimy gangster (Paul Stewart), a turncoat scientist (Albert Dekker), and the dead woman's sexy roommate (Gaby Rodgers). All clues lead to a mysterious box -- the "Great Whatsit," as Hammer's secretary Velda (Maxine Cooper) describes it. Both the box and Velda are stolen by the villains, at which point Hammer discovers that the "Whatsit" contains radioactive material of awesome powers. The apocalyptic climax is doubly devastating because we're never quite certain if Hammer survives (he doesn't narrate the story, as was the case in most Mike Hammer films and TV shows). Director Robert Aldrich and scriptwriter Jack Moffit transcend Kiss Me Deadly's basic genre trappings to produce a one-of-a-kind melodrama for the nuclear age. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Doc (Milburn Stone) comes upon a remote prairie cabin occupied by a hostile, reclusive woman named Florie (Cloris Leachman) and a bedridden man (Philip Bourneauf) whom Doc presumes is Florie's husband. It soon develops that the invalid is holding a gun on Florie, intending to kill her--or is he trying to prevent her from killing him? Matt (James Arness) doesn't figure out the truth of the situation until one of the two strangers ends up dead. This starkly dramatic episode is based on the Gunsmoke radio broadcast of February 5, 1956. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In one of the series' eeriest episodes, American photographer Rita Wallace (Cloris Leachman) sets up shop in Paris, hoping to capture the "soul of France" in her pictures. Advertising for a model, Rita ends up using a strange, reclusive little man (Marcel Dalio) with a haunted look in his eyes. Not long afterward, A few nights later, Rita is attacked and nearly strangled to death by a mysterious intruder--and only after she carefully scrutinizes her recent photographs does she even begin to grasp the significance of this inexplicable assault. If "The Dark Room" seems to have a Hitchcock flavor, it may be because the episode was written by "Hitch"'s frequent collaborator Francis Cockrell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Following the example of his sworn enemy Elliot Ness (Robert Stack), Frank Nitti sets up his own team of "Untouchables" to root out informers within his criminal organization. The man brought in to head this unit is Walter Traeger (James Gregory), former "counteresponiage" agent for Al Capone. With ruthless efficiency, Traeger fulfills his assignment--only to set himself up for a fall by trying to take over the Nitti mob himself. Don't miss the climactic scene in which the treacherous Traeger sacrifices his own sister Billie (Cloris Leachman) to save his hide. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Handsome actor Paul Ross (Charles S. Carlson) breaks up a romance between his housekeeper, Caroline Hardy (Cloris Leachman), and another man, simply because he doesn't want Caroline to leave his employ. What Paul doesn't know is that Caroline is madly in love with him -- and that she has a distinct taste for revenge. Later on, Paul is horribly scarred in an explosion, whereupon Caroline calmly informs him that he is too disfigured ever to appeal to women again...except, of course, Caroline. A perverse twist caps this final episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents' seventh season. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Martin Balsam essays the title role in this episode as nightclub owner Benjy Leemer. Caught in the middle of a turf war between slot-machine "czar" Joe Bohman (Tom Drake) and gambler Porker Davis (Gavin MacLeod), Leemer ends up with his business burned to the ground and his songstress wife Julie (Cloris Leachman) out of a job. Amidst several symbolic scenes with a pair of "tame" rats, Benjy quietly plots vengeance against both Bohman and Davis--while Julie appears to cross over to the enemy by becoming Bohman's main squeeze. Fans of The Mary Tyler Moore Show will be impressed by the noncomic performances of that series' "Murray" and "Phyllis"...even though Gavin MacLeod and Cloris Leachman never appear together in the same scene.. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Officers Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) and Jim Reed (Kent McCord) are kept on the move with a number of emergency police calls. In one of the evening's tenser moments, the two cops come to the rescue of a pair of youngsters who have swallowed a potentially fatal dose of pep pills. And throughout their shift, Pete and Jim pursue an elusive burglar who specializes in stealing color TVs. Former F Troop leading lady Melody Patterson and future Oscar winner Cloris Leachman head the episode's guest cast. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the conclusion of a two-part story (originally telecast as a single two-hour episode), Ironside steps up his efforts to locate the kidnapped daughter of his former sweetheart Barbara Richards (Barbara Rush). Complicating the Chief's investigation is Barbara's husband Vic (Philip Carey), who can't get over the fact that his wife was in love with Ironside during a period of amnesia. Meanwhile, an ill-tempered rural lawman (Slim Pickens) also does his best to thwart Ironside's efforts to rescue the kidnap victim, lest all the credit for cracking the case go to an "out-of-towner". Featured in the supporting cast are such impressive talents as Dane Clark and Cloris Leachman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this first half of the two-part sequel to the Season One episode "Barbara Who?" (originally telecast as a single two-hour "special"), Ironside (Raymond Burr) is reunited with Barbara Richards (Barbara Rush), a former amnesiac with whom he had once been in love. Barbara implores the Chief to help her recover her teenage daughter Leslie (Melody Scott Thomas), who has been kidnapped. The fact that Barbara has a bitterly jealous husband (Philip Carey) is only one of the obstacles facing Ironside in his efforts to save Leslie's life. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Paul Newman served as co-producer of this allegorical drama and stars as Rheinhardt, a opportunistic drifter who ends up in New Orleans and hits up his old friend Farley (Laurence Harvey), a con man-turned-phony preacher, for a job. Farley is able to get Rheinhardt hired on as an announcer at a local radio station, WUSA, but the station is a right-wing propaganda mill that devotes its air time to venomous tirades against political and social progress. Rheinhardt is happy to be making decent money, and he makes the friendly acquaintance of a local working girl, Geraldine (Joanne Woodward), so he refuses to look his gift horse in the mouth. However, when he finds out that WUSA is actually involved in shadowy political actions, he is at a loss for what to do, especially after a naïve and troubled social worker (Anthony Perkins) is tricked into starting a race riot. Robert Stone wrote the screenplay, adapted from his novel A Hall of Mirrors. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

"How will you make it on your own?" These lyrics from the original version of the Mary Tyler Moore Show's theme song, "Love Is All Around" were the first words heard by the viewers as 30-year-old Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) left her hometown and drove into Minneapolis in the opening episode of the series' inaugural season. Hoping to find new professional vistas -- and, incidentally, to get over a failed romance -- Mary moves into an attic apartment in the building managed by pretentious flibbertigibbet Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman). Almost immediately, the sweet, insecure Mary finds herself embroiled in a war of words with her New York-born neighbor Rhoda Morganstern (Valerie Harper), who had wanted the attic room for herself. Despite this bad beginning, Mary and Rhoda would soon be the closest of friends. Answering a want ad posted by local TV station WJM-TV, Mary has an unforgettable interview with Lou Grant (Ed Asner), irascible, hard-drinking producer of the station's nightly news broadcast. "You know what?" Lou effuses to Mary. "You've got spunk." Pause. "I HATE spunk!" Even so, and despite her complete lack of experience in the TV world, Lou offers Mary the job of the newscast's associate producer. This allows her to become acquainted with the rest of the staff, including good-natured news writer Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod), weatherman Gordy Howard (John Amos), and especially anchorman Ted Baxter (Ted Knight), whose monumental ego is matched only by his miniscule brain.

Most of The Mary Tyler Moore Show's first-season episodes deal with Mary's efforts to acclimate herself to her new surroundings, her new job, and her new friends, and also her ongoing search for "Mr. Right" in the dating field. Incidentally, when the series was in development, Mary was supposed to have been a divorcée, but this notion was squelched when CBS executives, acknowledging the popularity of Mary Tyler Moore's previous series The Dick Van Dyke Show, worried that audiences would conclude that "Rob and Laura Petrie" had broken up! In another bit of trivia, it should be noted that the original pilot of The Mary Tyler Moore Show had been filmed in the traditional one-camera "movie" style, minus a live studio audience. That the decision to shoot the series with three cameras in front of a crowd was a wise one can be determined by a peek from the existing clip of the first pilot's "Mary meets Lou" sequence: the characters are there, the lines are there, but the warmth, the heart, and the immediacy are not.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended its first season as the 22nd most popular series in America. It also took home its first Emmy awards, for Outstanding Supporting Actor (Ed Asner); Outstanding Supporting Actress (Valerie Harper); Outstanding Directorial Achievement (Jay Sandrich, for the episode "Toulouse-Latrec Is One of My Favorite Artists"); and Outstanding Writing Achievement (James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, for "Support Your Local Mother," in which Nancy Walker makes her first appearance as Rhoda Morganstern's obstreperous mom, Ida). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gene Wilder and Bob Newhart star as husbands who have some explaining to do in this made-for-television comedy. Wilder stars as Harry Evers and Newhart as Marvin Ellison, two friends who decide to keep up their Thursday night escapades after their weekly poker game breaks up. When their wives find out though (Ellen Burstyn and Cloris Leachman, respectively) they want to know just what their husbands have been doing. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide