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Her Career Was Like A Dream

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By BOB THOMAS, The Associated Press

Published: January 21, 2008

LOS ANGELES - Suzanne Pleshette, best known for her role as Bob Newhart's wife on television's long-running "The Bob Newhart Show," has died, just days before a ceremony honoring her with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Pleshette, who underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006, died of respiratory failure Saturday evening at her Los Angeles home, said attorney and family friend Robert Finkelstein.

The beautiful, husky-voiced TV, film and theater star was set to attend the Jan. 31 ceremony, her 71st birthday.

"She was a pro's pro," Bob Newhart said. "Although we knew she was quite sick, she was one of those people that you thought would go on forever."

"The Bob Newhart Show," a hit throughout its six-year run, starred comedian Newhart as a Chicago psychiatrist surrounded by eccentric patients. Pleshette, as his sardonic wife, provided the voice of reason.

Four years after the show ended in 1978, Newhart went on to the equally successful "Newhart" series in which he was the proprietor of a New England inn populated by more eccentrics.

When that show ended in 1990, Pleshette reprised her role - from the first show - in one of the most clever final episodes in TV history.

It had Newhart waking up in the bedroom of his "The Bob Newhart Show" home with Pleshette at his side. He told her of the crazy dream he'd just had of running an inn filled with odd characters.

"If I'm in Timbuktu, I'll fly home to do that," Pleshette said of her reaction when Newhart told her how he was thinking of ending the show.

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 met Tom Poston in the 1959 Broadway comedy "The Golden Fleecing," but didn't marry him until more than 40 years later.

"He was such a wonderful man. He had fun every day of his life," Pleshette said after Poston died in April 2007.

Another Broadway role was replacing Anne Bancroft in "The Miracle Worker," the 1959 drama about Helen Keller.

She launched her film career in 1958 with Jerry Lewis in "The Geisha Boy." She appeared in numerous television shows, including "Have Gun, Will Travel," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Playhouse 90" and "Naked City."

She married 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 matured in such films as Hitchcock's "The Birds" and the Disney comedies "The Ugly Dachshund," "Blackbeard's Ghost" and "The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin." She also had a busy career in TV movies; in 1990 she starred in "Leona Helmsley, the Queen of Mean."

More recently, she appeared in several episodes of the TV sitcoms "Will & Grace" and "8 Simple Rules ... For Dating My Teenage Daughter."

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