Cloris Leachman Movies

Finding that he hasn't much time left to live, a man makes needed changes in his life with the help of an angel in this Disney feature. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

The big news of The Mary Tyler Moore Show's fourth season is the introduction of a new regular: Betty White as Sue Ann Nivens, the host of WJM-TV's "Happy Homemaker" household-hints show. Outwardly sweet and Pollyanna-ish, Sue Ann is actually the most predatory female in all of Minneapolis, targeting Lars Lindstrom, the (never-seen) husband of supercilious Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman) as her latest sexual conquest in the season's Emmy-winning opening episode, "The Lars Affair." It takes the eleventh-hour intervention of Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore), associate producer of WJM's "Six O'Clock News," to prevent Sue Ann from adding Lars to her male harem. Subsequent season-four episodes constitute some of The Mary Tyler Moore Show's best and most memorable efforts. These include another Emmy winner, "The Lou and Edie Story," in which Mary's boss, Lou Grant (Edward Asner), goes into a deep funk over the breakup of his marriage to wife Edie (Priscilla Morrill); "Lou's First Date," guest-starring veteran comic actress Florence Lake as the sweet octogenarian whom the newly single Lou escorts to an awards ceremony; "Father's Day," wherein pompous WJM anchorman Ted Baxter (Ted Knight) is reluctantly reunited with his long-absent dad, Robert (Liam Dunn); "The Dinner Party," the season's annual "Mary's terrible parties" episode, featuring a pre-Happy Days Henry Winkler as Mary's date, Steve Waldman; "I Gave at the Office," a tour de force for Gavin MacLeod as WJM newswriter Murray Slaughter, who frets and fumes when his daughter (Tammi Bula) takes a part-time job at the station; "Better Late...That's a Pun...Than Never," in which a red-faced Mary is suspended from her job after capriciously writing a humorous obituary for Minneapolis' oldest citizen -- who unexpectedly kicks the bucket; and the unforgettable, and imminently self-explanatory, "Ted Baxter Meets Walter Cronkite." In addition to the aforementioned Emmy awards for the episodes "The Lars Affair" and "The Lou and Edie Story," gold statuettes were doled out to series regulars Mary Tyler Moore and Cloris Leachman. The Mary Tyler Moore Show wrapped up its fourth season as America's ninth most popular network series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Married couple Jean (Cloris Leachman) and Jim Mitchell (Ross Martin) stop at a rundown roadside eatery. When time comes to leave, Jean is ready, but Jim isn't. In fact, Jim is nowhere to be found. Jean's anguished efforts to locate her husband are mysteriously blocked by the hulking restaurant proprietor (Ned Beatty). This variation on the old radio play "Cabin 13" was written by Richard Matheson. The made-for-TV Dying Room Only debuted September 18, 1973. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cloris Leachman and Martin Balsam star in this TV movie as an over-forty married couple, both of whom maintain busy outside careers. Content with their peaceful, childless existence, the couple is thrown for a loop when, after 18 years of marriage, Leachman becomes pregnant. Beyond the understandable concerns over the health of her baby, she is not keen on the prospect of giving up her job--nor is she particularly responsive to the misguided advice of her friends and family. A Brand New Life premiered on February 20, 1973. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Crime Club was the umbrella title given a series of monthly mystery novels in the 1930s and 1940s. Several films and radio programs ostensibly based on "Crime Club" stories were produced during that same period. The title was revived for a TV pilot film in 1972; this time the "Crime Club" referred to a high-tech crime solving organization which numbered among its members a private detective, a federal agent, a policeman and a judge. In the pilot, the private eye (Lloyd Bridges) and the judge (Victor Buono) pool their skills to solve the murder of a fellow club member. The film failed to lead to a weekly series, but another Crime Club pilot was commissioned in 1975. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Suddenly Single is an assembly-line ABC Movie of the Week, given extra value by its attractive star lineup. The ball gets rolling when pharmacist Hal Holbrook is served divorce papers rather than dinner by his wife. Having been out of circulation since his marriage, the handsome but befuddled Holbrook plunges into the '70s singles scene. Comedy alternates with drama until the letdown finale, which may have been acceptable in October of 1971 but is most unsatisfying when seen today. The all-TV cast includes Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman here seen at their least excessive in their pre-Mel Brooks days. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Produced by Hollywood iconoclast BBS Productions, film critic-turned-director Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 film pays homage to Hollywood's classical age as it chronicles generational rites of passage in Anarene, a fictional one-horse Texas town. In 1951, high school seniors Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges) play football, go to the movies at the Royal Theater, hang out at the pool hall owned by local elder statesman Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), and lust after rich tease Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd in her film debut). As the year passes, Sonny learns about the pitfalls and compromises of adulthood through an affair with his coach's wife Ruth (Cloris Leachman) and a thwarted elopement with Jacy after she dumps Duane. Following two tragic deaths, and with Duane gone to Korea and Jacy packed off to college in Dallas, Sonny is left behind in Anarene, wise enough to absorb the life lessons of Sam the Lion and Jacy's mother Lois (Ellen Burstyn). He is determined to honor Sam's legacy as the town's conscience, despite a telling sign of incipient communal disintegration: the closing of the Royal Theater after a final showing of Howard Hawks's Red River. Paying tribute to classical Hollywood directors like Hawks and John Ford, Bogdanovich used old-time cinematographer Robert Surtees and shot The Last Picture Show in crisp black-and-white, with a restrained style devoid of the kind of "new wave" techniques (jump cuts, zooms, and jittery hand-held camerawork) used by such contemporaries as Arthur Penn, Robert Altman, Mike Nichols, and Martin Scorsese. As in such Ford films as The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Bogdanovich relies on careful visual composition in deep focus to help communicate the regret over the passing of an era. Hailed as one of the best films by a young director since Citizen Kane (1941), The Last Picture Show premiered at the New York Film Festival and went on to become a hit. It was also nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay for Larry McMurtry's and Bogdanovich's adaptation of McMurtry's novel. John Ford stalwart Johnson won Supporting Actor and Leachman won Supporting Actress, beating out their cohorts Bridges and Burstyn. For an audience steeped in movie history and caught up in the chaotic 1971 present, The Last Picture Show presented a nostalgic look backward that was not so much an escape from the present as a coming to terms with what the present had lost. Its 1990 sequel Texasville, in which Bridges and Shepherd played later incarnations of their original characters, was not as successful. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Like the series' heroine, Mary Richards, The Mary Tyler Moore Show is a lot more confident and secure with itself as the program enters its second season. After a full year in Minneapolis, our Mary is handling her duties as associate producer of WJM-TV's nightly news broadcast with admirable efficiency. She has also formed enduring friendships with co-workers, grumbly producer Lou Grant (Edward Asner), affable news writer Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod), and dunderheaded anchorman Ted Baxter (Ted Knight). Off the job, Mary enjoys the companionship of next-door neighbor Rhoda Morganstern (Valerie Harper), though she's not crazy about mediating the arguments between Rhoda and supercilious landlady Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman). This season's best episodes include the classic opener, "The Birds...and...Um...Bees," in which Mary is recruited to explain the facts of life to Phyllis' spoiled daughter, Bess (Lisa Gerritsen); "Room 223," wherein Mary takes a night-school course in journalism and begins a romance with the lecturer (Michael Tolan); "A Girl's Best Mother Is Not Her Friends," marking a return visit by Nancy Walker as Rhoda's impossible mother, Ida; "Cover Boy," guest-starring Jack Cassidy as Ted Baxter's equally vapid brother, Hal (reportedly, this episode upset Ted Knight, who was worried that Cassidy was being brought in to replace him); "Ted Over Heels," in which Ted falls in love with the daughter (Arlene Golonka) of WJM's resident kiddie entertainer, Chuckles the Clown; "Feeb," illustrating the dangers of feeling sorry for someone, as Mary arranges to have a klutzy ex-waitress (Barbara Sharma) take a job at the TV station; "The Slaughter Affair," spotlighting Joyce Bulifant as Murray's wife, Marie, who is convinced that her husband is fooling around; "Where There's Smoke, There's Rhoda," in which Mary and Rhoda discover to their chagrin that best friends do not always make best roommates; and the season finale, "His Two Right Arms," originally designed as the pilot for a spin-off series starring Bill Daily as a stupid politician. (The pilot didn't sell, but Daily was hired on the strength of his performance as a regular on MTM Productions' The Bob Newhart Show.) Season two of The Mary Tyler Moore Show found the series ranking at number ten in the ratings. As icing on the cake, Edward Asner and Valerie Harper both took home their second Emmy awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor and Outstanding Supporting Actress, respectively. ~ 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

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