People News

Suzanne Pleshette, dead at 70

By M&C People Jan 20, 2008, 16:59 GMT

Actress Suzanne Pleshette, the brunette, husky-voiced film and theater star best known for her role as Bob Newhart's wife on television's long-running "The Bob Newhart Show," has died, said her attorney Robert Finkelstein. She was 70.

Pleshette had undergone chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006.She died of respiratory failure Saturday evening at her Los Angeles home, said Finkelstein, who is also a family friend.For six years, "The Bob Newhart Show, was a top ratings hit and featured the deadpanning Bob Newhart as a Chicago psychiatrist surrounded by his off-kilter neighbors and patients. Pleshette played Emily, his anchor.Pleshette turned up in the finale of the later Newhart series that followed after the original show ended in 1978, Newhart starred in a new, "Newhart" series married to actress Mary Frann who played his wife Joanna. Together they ran B&B in New England surrounded by local townies. When that show ended in 1990, Pleshette was brought back as his wife in one of the most cleverly written final episodes in American TV history. It had Newhart waking up in the bedroom of his "The Bob Newhart Show" home with Pleshette at his side. He went on to tell her of the crazy dream he'd just had of running an inn filled with eccentrics.Mary Frann later died in 1998 of an undiagnosed heart condition.Born Jan. 31, 1937, in New York City, Pleshette began her career as a stage actress after attending the city's High School of the Performing Arts and studying at its Neighborhood Playhouse. She was often picked for roles because of her beauty and her deep voice."When I was 4," she told an interviewer in 1994, "I was answering the phone, and (the callers) thought I was my father. So I often got quirky roles because I was never the conventional ingenue."She met her future husband, Tom Poston, when they appeared together in the 1959 Broadway comedy "The Golden Fleecing," and by 2000 both were widowed and they got back together, marrying the following year."He was such a wonderful man. He had fun every day of his life," Pleshette said after Poston died in April 2007.Meanwhile, she had launched her film career with Jerry Lewis in 1958 in "The Geisha Boy." She married fellow teen favorite Troy Donahue, her co-star in "Rome Adventure," in 1964 but the union lasted less than a year. She was married to Texas oilman Tim Gallagher from 1968 until his death in 2000.Pleshette appeared in films such as Hitchcock's "The Birds" and the Disney comedies "The Ugly Dachshund," "Blackbeard's Ghost" and "The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin."