Publicity photo of Pleshette from the television program The Contenders c. 1963
The Boston Globe described her appearance and demeanor as sardonic and her voice as sultry.[12] Five-foot, four-inch[13] Pleshette began her career at age 20 as a stage actress. She made her Broadway debut in Meyer Levin's 1957 play Compulsion, adapted from his novel inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case. The following year, she performed in the debut of The Cold Wind and the Warm by S. N. Behrman at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, directed by Harold Clurman and produced by Robert Whitehead.[14] In 1959, she was featured in the comedy Golden Fleecing,[15] starring Constance Ford and Tom Poston.[16] (Poston would eventually become her third husband.)[8] That same year, she was one of two finalists for the role of Louise/Gypsy in the original production of Gypsy. During the run of The Cold Wind and the Warm, she spent mornings taking striptease lessons from Jerome Robbins for the role in Gypsy.[17] In his autobiography, Arthur Laurents, the play's author stated, "It came down to between Suzanne Pleshette and Sandra Church. Suzanne was the better actress, but Sandra was the better singer. We went with Sandra." In February 1961, she succeeded Anne Bancroft as Anne Sullivan Macy opposite 14-year-old Patty Duke's Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker.[1]
On May 19, 1971,[25] TV producers saw her on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson[26][27][28][29] and noticed a certain chemistry between Suzanne and Johnny.[citation needed] She was cast as the wife of Newhart's character on the popular CBS sitcom The Bob Newhart Show (1972–1978) for all six seasons,[1] as part of CBS television's Saturday night lineup. During this time she was nominated twice for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. She reprised her role of Emily Hartley in the final episode of Newhart's subsequent comedy series, Newhart, in which viewers discovered that the entire later series had been her husband Bob's dream when he awakens next to her in the bedroom set from the earlier series.
Her second husband was oilman "Tommy" Thomas Joseph Gallagher III[44] (born January 28, 1934, in Galveston, Texas, to Thomas Joseph Gallagher Jr., and Toy Fay née Rice),[45] to whom she was married from March 16, 1968, to his death on January 21, 2000. He survived lung cancer, and later died of E. coli and was buried[46] in Hillside Memorial Park, Culver City, Los Angeles, California.[47][48] She suffered a miscarriage during her marriage to Gallagher, and they were childless. Asked about children in an October 2000 interview, Pleshette stated: "I certainly would have liked to have had Tommy’s children. But my nurturing instincts are fulfilled in other ways. I have a large extended family; I'm the mother on every set. So if this is my particular karma, that's fine."[49]
In 2001, Pleshette married fellow actor Tom Poston. Poston had been a recurring guest star on The Bob Newhart Show in the 1970s and a Newhart cast member. But long before they worked together on television, Poston and Pleshette had been involved romantically in 1959, when they acted together in the Broadway comedy Golden Fleecing.[8][15] During the subsequent 40 years, they married others but remained friends. After they were both widowed, the deaths of their spouses brought Poston and Pleshette together again, and they married in 2001. They remained married until his death from respiratory failure in Los Angeles on April 30, 2007.
Pleshette’s last public appearance was with the cast of “The Bob Newhart Show” at The Bob Newhart Show 35th Anniversary Reunion at PaleyLive LA, September 5, 2007, at the Paley Center for Media, in Beverly Hills.[50][51][52][53] She died January 19, 2008.[54][55][56]
On August 11, 2006, Pleshette's agent Joel Dean announced that she was being treated for lung cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Three days later, The Herald-Palladium reported that Dean said the cancer was the size of "a grain of sand" when it was found during a routine X-ray, that the cancer was "caught very much in time", that she was receiving chemotherapy as an outpatient and that Pleshette was "in good spirits".[68]
She was later hospitalized for a pulmonary infection and developed pneumonia which caused her to remain in the hospital for an extended period of time. She arrived at a Bob Newhart Show cast reunion in September 2007 in a wheelchair, which raised concern about her health, although she insisted that she was "cancer-free". (She was seated in a regular chair during the actual telecast.) During an interview in USA Today given at the time of the reunion, Pleshette stated that she had been released four days earlier from the hospital where, as part of her cancer treatment, part of one of her lungs had been removed.[69]
^ abcdefGates, Anita (January 21, 2008). "Suzanne Pleshette, 70, Newhart Actress, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved January 3, 2014. Suzanne Pleshette, the husky-voiced actress who redefined the television sitcom wife in the 1970s, playing the smart, sardonic Emily Hartley on The Bob Newhart Show, died Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 70. Ms. Pleshette died of respiratory failure, her lawyer, Robert Finkelstein, told The Associated Press. Ms. Pleshette had undergone chemotherapy in 2006 for lung cancer.
^"Fate & Fortunes"(PDF). Broadcasting: 70F. September 18, 1967. Retrieved April 19, 2023. Eugene Pleshette, executive VP of MSG-ABC Productions Inc., New York, named executive VP of Don Reid Productions Inc., that city.
^ ab"Disneyland Locale of Film". Los Angeles Evening Citizen News. May 7, 1962. p. 10. Retrieved April 19, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
^"Mary Murphy in 'Trouble'". Los Angeles Times. April 23, 1962. p. 13. Retrieved April 19, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
^Johnson, Erskine (May 14, 1962). "Movie Shoots at Disneyland". Valley Times. North Hollywood, California. p. 6. Retrieved April 19, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
