Cloris
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Overview
She received two Emmy Awards as the irrepressible Phyllis on The Mary Tyler Moor Show...she won an Oscar for her supporting role as a frustrated housewife in The Last Picture Show...she delighted audiences with her deliciously villainous turns as Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein and Nurse Diesel in High Anxiety...and she earned even more award nominations playing a hard-drinking grandmother in Spanglish.
Now, for the first time, the incomparable Cloris Leachman reflects on her amazing life and illustrious career...From her hometown in Des Moines, Iowa, (where she first saw Katharine Hepburn perform on stage, never imagining they would one day do Shakespeare together) to the bright lights of Broadway and the television studios of L.A., Cloris's journey has been filled with laughter and tears, marriage and motherhood, tragedy and triumph. Along the way, she shares wonderfully revealing anecdotes about Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep, Dianne Keaton, Sissy Spacek, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, the Kennedy family, and many more. Funny, frank, brilliant, and altogether human, this is the real Cloris Leachman as you've never seen her before.
Sparkling praise for Cloris!"Funny, gimlet-eyed and unpretentious-someone get this woman a talk show." -Kirkus Reviews
"She lives what she preaches." -Library Journal
Synopsis
She received two Emmy Awards as the irrepressible Phyllis on The Mary Tyler Moor Show...she won an Oscar for her supporting role as a frustrated housewife in The Last Picture Show...she delighted audiences with her deliciously villainous turns as Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein and Nurse Diesel in High Anxiety...and she earned even more award nominations playing a hard-drinking grandmother in Spanglish.
Now, for the first time, the incomparable Cloris Leachman reflects on her amazing life and illustrious career...From her hometown in Des Moines, Iowa, (where she first saw Katharine Hepburn perform on stage, never imagining they would one day do Shakespeare together) to the bright lights of Broadway and the television studios of L.A., Cloris's journey has been filled with laughter and tears, marriage and motherhood, tragedy and triumph. Along the way, she shares wonderfully revealing anecdotes about Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep, Dianne Keaton, Sissy Spacek, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, the Kennedy family, and many more. Funny, frank, brilliant, and altogether human, this is the real Cloris Leachman as you've never seen her before.
"Funny, gimlet-eyed and unpretentious-someone get this woman a talk show." -Kirkus Reviews
"She lives what she preaches." -Library Journal
Rosellen Brewer - Library Journal
Leachman has won an Oscar (The Last Picture Show) and nine Emmy Awards, placed third in the Miss America Pageant, and raised five children. Despite years as Phyllis on TV's The Mary Tyler Moore Show and memorable roles in films, she's probably now best known for her comedic turn on Dancing with the Stars, in her eighties, no less. The devil-may-care, unpredictable persona she exhibited there seems to embody the real Leachman. She shares her career and marriage highs and lows (her ex-husband is coauthor and the love of her life, though they are not together) and dishes on actors and lovers (e.g., Brando, Gene Hackman, Bobby Darin) in an entertaining though distracted way. She studied at the Actors Studio but came up with her own philosophy, "Acting is make-believe... Have fun" and "Don't be afraid you're going to make a fool of yourself." She lives what she preaches. Recommended for all public libraries and acting collections.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Cloris Leachman is incontestably indefatigable: She's acted in 57 movies, 11 Broadway shows, and 137 television shows; won an Oscar, eight daytime Emmys (the record for an actress), a full armload of other awards; she's played Shakespeare with Katharine Hepburn, performed with the Muppets, and cha-chaed, mamboed, and tangoed as an octogenarian on Dancing with the Stars. In Cloris: My Autobiography, she describes how far she has come and what got her there. A spunky national treasure speaks her piece.Library Journal
Leachman has won an Oscar (The Last Picture Show) and nine Emmy Awards, placed third in the Miss America Pageant, and raised five children. Despite years as Phyllis on TV's The Mary Tyler Moore Show and memorable roles in films, she's probably now best known for her comedic turn on Dancing with the Stars, in her eighties, no less. The devil-may-care, unpredictable persona she exhibited there seems to embody the real Leachman. She shares her career and marriage highs and lows (her ex-husband is coauthor and the love of her life, though they are not together) and dishes on actors and lovers (e.g., Brando, Gene Hackman, Bobby Darin) in an entertaining though distracted way. She studied at the Actors Studio but came up with her own philosophy, "Acting is make-believe... Have fun" and "Don't be afraid you're going to make a fool of yourself." She lives what she preaches. Recommended for all public libraries and acting collections.
—Rosellen Brewer