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      Sonny Fox, Whose ‘Wonderama’ Mixed Fun and Learning, Dies at 95

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose we’ve lostSonny Fox, Whose ‘Wonderama’ Mixed Fun and Learning, Dies at 95He was not a comic or a clown, just a smart and genial TV host who for almost a decade spoke to children, not at them. He died of Covid pneumonia.Sonny Fox in an undated photo. “Wonderama,” the popular New York children’s TV show he hosted from 1959 to 1967, was a dazzling mixture of cartoons, games and many other elements.Credit…BettmannJan. 30, 2021, 5:18 p.m. ETSonny Fox, who as the host of the children’s television show “Wonderama” presided over a four-hour combination of fun and learning on Sunday mornings from 1959 to 1967, died on Jan. 24 in Encino, Calif. He was 95.The cause was Covid pneumonia, his son Dana said.Mr. Fox was a veteran of television when he was hired for “Wonderama” by the New York station WNEW-TV (now WNYW). He had hosted a live local educational program in St. Louis and “Let’s Take a Trip,” on CBS, on which he took two youngsters on a field trip each week.In 1956, CBS named Mr. Fox the M.C. of “The $64,000 Challenge,” but he was fired a few months after accidentally giving a contestant an answer. He was not embroiled in the scandal that emerged two years later when it was discovered that several quiz shows, including “Challenge,” had been rigged by their producers.No such problems existed at “Wonderama,” where Mr. Fox’s mission was to tack away from the silly show it had become under previous hosts. But he was too serious at first, focusing on subjects like space exploration. Ratings began to fall.“I became so ponderously educational that the kids who had been watching turtle races” — under the previous hosts — “had no idea what I was doing,” he said in a Television Academy interview in 2008.The show, which was taped before an audience of about 50 youngsters, soon found its footing. It became a dazzling mixture of cartoons, spelling bees, games like “Simon Says,” joke-telling (by the children), contests, dramatizations of Shakespeare plays and magic. In 1964, the show held a mock Republican convention. Mr. Fox also interviewed newsmakers like Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and opened the floor to questions from the children.“Do you think all the money that we’ve been spending on this nation’s space program should be spent on this or on poverty bills and such?” an earnest boy with glasses asked Senator Kennedy in 1965.“We can make the space effort,” Mr. Kennedy said, adding that both could be done: “If there’s ever an unknown, man will search the unknown.”Mr. Fox was not a comic performer like Chuck McCann, Sandy Becker or Soupy Sales — stars of their own daytime children’s shows on WNEW at the time — and did not wear funny costumes. He was a smart and genial host who wore a suit and tie.He viewed the children in the studio not as passive observers of “Wonderama” but as integral to it, whether they were trying to stump him with a riddle or delivering news segments.Mr. Fox with two members of the “Wonderama” audience in 1961. He viewed the children in the studio not as passive observers of the show but as integral to it, Credit…Wagner International PhotosHe said Mr. Becker and Mr. Sales resented his popularity because he was not a performer.“I did nothing, apparently!” he told the online Observer in 2017. “That’s the contrast: For them, the kids were the audience; for me, the kids were the show.”The popularity of “Wonderama” meant children waited years for tickets to tapings at its studio on East 67th Street in Manhattan. Mr. Fox’s mother, Gertrude (Goldberg) Fox, sent him notes each Monday insisting that tickets be set aside for certain children.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Cicely Tyson Kept It Together So We Didn’t Fall Apart

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAn AppraisalCicely Tyson Kept It Together So We Didn’t Fall ApartA wonder of poise and punch, the actress dared to declare herself a moral progenitor, taking on roles that reflected the dignity of Black women.In “Sounder,” from 1972, Cicely Tyson is often transfixing in her stillness.Credit…20th Century Fox, via Getty ImagesJan. 29, 2021Updated 4:44 p.m. ETHow odd to celebrate someone for not being who we’ve been programmed to expect. But American entertainment worked hard on the mold that Cicely Tyson refused to fit. So, really, what we’ve been saluting all these decades was historic defiance. She died on Thursday, at 96, just after the release of “Just as I Am,” a juicy, honest, passionately Cicely memoir. (“Well, child, I’ll tell you: my mouth fell open like a broken pocketbook.”) And on the opening pages resides the truth about why, as a performer, she was the way she was.“My art had to both mirror the times and propel them forward,” she writes. “I was determined to do all I could to alter the narrative about Black people — to change the way Black women in particular were perceived, by reflecting our dignity.” Tyson made this vow in 1972, a few years after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., at the dawn of the so-called Blaxploitation filmmaking boom that didn’t fulfill her. No hookers, no servants, no big bad mamas. Which meant that, for a woman dependent on an industry that trained its patrons to overlook a beauty as singular and angular and walnut-brown as hers, she’d essentially declared a hunger strike.Alas, she would not be playing the most daring, out-there characters. And let’s face it: the great parts were always headed to someone whiter anyway. The more audacious move was to declare herself a moral progenitor, to walk with her head high so that Denzel Washington might become a man on fire and Viola Davis could learn how to get away with murder.Tyson had a remarkable physical presence, someone sculpted as much as born. Her body was dancer lithe. She seemed delicate. But only “seemed.” She was delicate the way a ribbon of steel holds up its part of a bridge. The deceptive nature of her fineness was right there in the name. Cicely Tyson. Poise and punch.Her mouth comprised an overbite, protruding front teeth and two full lips. The words she spoke brought with them a little extra breath, which, in turn, gave her an everlasting lightness that made us lean toward her so we wouldn’t miss whatever truth she was about to tell. She didn’t write the scripts, yet she never seemed to waste a word. How? And the way she spoke: with the erudite diction fragrant of both old showbiz and old Harlem. No Black woman had ever performed this reliably with this much elegance and surety. Of course, the mold being what it was, nobody had ever asked a Black woman to do any such thing. (Diahann Carroll appeared to be her sister in dignity.)In a scene from “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” the title character, played by Tyson, fights segregation by drinking from a fountain reserved for white people.Credit…CBS, via Getty ImagesTyson was a peculiar kind of famous. I was never told of her importance. I just knew. Everybody knew. This woman was somebody. She looked sainted, venerated — at 29, 36, 49 and 60. Even in anguish. It’s possible that happens once you’ve played a 110-year-old formerly enslaved woman in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and after you’ve played Kunta Kinte’s mother. Or maybe those roles happen because you radiate venerability.She could act with her entire head yet scarcely move it at all. That’s her in most of “Sounder,” transfixing in her stillness. “Sounder” itself is a quiet, Depression-era movie, from 1972, built around Louisiana sharecroppers named Nathan and Rebecca Morgan, their three children and the family dog, Sounder. It’s foolishly lit. The night scenes are brightened by lanterns, which wouldn’t be my first choice for a movie with this much brown skin. Tyson spends a few scenes under a big straw hat that hides half her face.For lots of actors this would be death, because they’re too vain to stand for it or lack what it takes to overcome that kind of obscurity. For that sort of actor it’s all in the eyes. Over four decades of watching this woman work, I discovered that her technique rarely relied on her eyes, although they could glitter and dance. Tyson was another sort of actor: a life force. She emanated and exuded: hurt, warmth, joy, suspicion, fear, hauteur, love — an ocean of love.“Sounder” is a quiet movie set in Louisiana; from left, Paul Winfield, Yvonne Jarrell, Cicely Tyson, Kevin Hooks and Taj Mahal. Credit…20th Century Fox, via Everett CollectionCICELY TYSON WAS known to all people. But in Black homes, Tyson epitomized “household name.” A fixture even more than a star, either way an illuminant. A natural resource, a wonder, a font, a dream, a beacon. What other actor worked with such clear purpose, vocation and seriousness on the one hand and with a devastating smile on the other? Tyson knew what she represented. An honorary Oscar, three Emmys, a pile of Emmy nominations and a Tony all came her way. Just as fittingly for a woman who willed herself to matter, so did eight N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards.One of those was for playing Marva Collins in “The Marva Collins Story,” a pat yet ultimately astonishing Hallmark Hall of Fame production that CBS aired in 1981. Collins taught at a Chicago public school that the movie turns into a zoo everywhere but inside her classroom. It’s quintessential Tyson. The school system’s bureaucracy and low expectations inspire Collins to open a private school in the upstairs unit of her house. When a white teacher all but calls her uppity, Marva treats her to a death stare and says, “I dress the way I do, Miss Denny, because I happen to believe my children deserve a positive image.” Tyson is loose and charming and sharp; married to a carpenter played by Morgan Freeman; romantic, funny, unflappable and — thank the lord — well lit, the teacher of parents’ dreams, the actor this country needed in more slam-dunk roles just like this.Tyson plays a Chicago public school teacher married to Morgan Freeman’s character in “The Marva Collins Story,” from 1981.Credit…CBS, via Getty ImagesConsider the parts she could have played if the movies were fairer. Consider what we’d be saying now if her standards were lower. How’s that for fairness?I often got the sense that Tyson was hanging on to a little something, perhaps for herself, which, in turn, compelled us to hang on more tightly to her. In “Sounder,” after a judge sentences Nathan to a year of hard labor, the film cuts to Rebecca, seated in the rear of the court surrounded by her children and two friends. Rather than wail, she just looks on in solemn comprehension, a hand supporting her head. Of course, she’s devastated; the marriage is strong. But in that moment, what you see Tyson performing is resolve, strategy. She knows that she now has to do the farming — the sharecropping — on her own. The moment hits you harder for all that Tyson doesn’t do. Poise, punch.She rarely broke down. She never cracked up. She held it together, lest the rest of us fall apart. “Marva Collins” was as close as Tyson ever got to her wits’ end. And even then: she was losing it for her people. There were other exceptions. The scene in “Sounder,” say, in which Nathan, freshly sprung from that labor camp, hobbles up to the road as she runs a 100-yard dash toward him, tears flying from her face, her arms flung open. This is no way to run a dash. Instead, she invented a run powered not by muscles at all but entirely by heart. That sprint goes in the national registry of great American movie shots. And how about when ancient Miss Jane takes that drink at the “white only” fountain? You can show that to a Martian and he’d wipe the water from his mouth.Tyson knew her place. It was in our movie palaces and living rooms, but also at Black families’ kitchen and dining room tables, an emblem of her race, a vessel through whom an entire grotesque entertainment history ceased to pass because she dammed it off; so that — in her loveliness, grace, rectitude and resolve — she could dare to forge an alternative. She walked with her head high, her chest out, her shoulders back as if she were carrying quite a load that never seemed to trouble her because she knew she was carrying us.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Cicely Tyson, an Actress Who Shattered Stereotypes, Dies at 96

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCicely Tyson, an Actress Who Shattered Stereotypes, Dies at 96In a remarkable career of many decades, she refused to take parts that demeaned Black people and won a Tony, Emmys and an honorary Oscar.Cicely Tyson in London in 1973. She was critical of films and television programs that cast Black characters as criminal, servile or immoral.Credit…Dennis Oulds/Central Press, via Getty ImagesJan. 28, 2021, 7:30 p.m. ETCicely Tyson, the stage, screen and television actress whose vivid portrayals of strong African-American women shattered racial stereotypes in the dramatic arts of the 1970s, propelling her to stardom and fame as an exemplar for civil rights, died Thursday. She was 96. Her death was announced by her longtime manager, Larry Thompson.In a remarkable career of seven decades, Ms. Tyson broke ground for serious Black actors by refusing to take parts that demeaned Black people. She urged Black colleagues to do the same, and often went without work. She was critical of films and television programs that cast Black characters as criminal, servile or immoral, and insisted that African-Americans, even if poor or downtrodden, should be portrayed with dignity.Her chiseled face and willowy frame, striking even in her 90s, became familiar to millions in more than 100 film, television and stage roles, including some that had traditionally been given only to white actors. She won three Emmys and many awards from civil rights and women’s groups, and at 88 became the oldest person to win a Tony, for her 2013 Broadway role in a revival of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful.”At 93, she won an honorary Oscar, and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2018 and into the Television Hall of Fame in 2020. She also won a career achievement Peabody Award in 2020.Despite the gathering force of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, there were few substantial roles for talented, relatively unknown Black actresses like Ms. Tyson. She appeared in Broadway plays, television episodes and minor movie roles before playing Portia, a supporting but notable part in the 1968 film version of Carson McCullers’s “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.”Ms. Tyson and Yvonne Jarrell in  “Sounder” (1972).  Credit…20th Century FoxBut in 1972, in a film called “Sounder,” she found what she was looking for: a leading role with dignity. It was as Rebecca, the wife of a Louisiana sharecropper (Paul Winfield) who is imprisoned in 1933 for stealing food for his children. She rises to the challenge — cleaning houses, tilling fields, sweltering under the sun in a worn dress and braided cornrows — a Black woman whose excruciating beauty lies in toil and poverty.“The story in ‘Sounder’ is a part of our history, a testimony to the strength of humankind,” Ms. Tyson told The New York Times after receiving rave reviews and an Oscar nomination for best actress. “Our whole Black heritage is that of struggle, pride and dignity. The black woman has never been shown on the screen this way before.”In 1974, Ms. Tyson stunned a national television audience with her Emmy Award-winning portrayal of a former slave in the CBS special “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” adapted from the novel by Ernest J. Gaines. Born into slavery before the Civil War, Miss Pittman survives for more than a century to see the civil rights movement of the 1960s. At 110, she tells her story, the searing experience of a Black woman in the South. Then, in her only gesture of protest, she sips from a whites-only drinking fountain.Preparing for her metamorphosis, Ms. Tyson visited nursing homes to study the manifestations of old age: the frail shoulders and shaking hands, the unfocused sparkling eyes and slurred speech, the struggle for names and important thoughts just beyond reach.“Cicely Tyson transforms that role into the kind of event for which awards are made,” John J. O’Connor wrote in The Times, citing her passage from young innocence through cycles of age and maturity to shriveled, knowing antiquity. “She absorbs herself completely into Miss Jane, in the process creating a marvelous blend of sly humor, shrewd perceptions and innate dignity.”Maya Angelou and Ms. Tyson in the 1977 mini-series “Roots”Credit…Warner BrothersMs. Tyson later found other suitable television roles: as Kunta Kinte’s mother in a mini-series based on Alex Haley’s “Roots” in 1977; as Coretta Scott King in the 1978 NBC mini-series “King,” about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final years; as Harriet Tubman, whose Underground Railroad spirited slaves to freedom, in “A Woman Called Moses” (1978); and as a Chicago teacher devoted to poor children in “The Marva Collins Story” (1981). In 1994, she won a supporting actress Emmy for her portrayal of Castalia in the mini-series “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.”For many Americans, Ms. Tyson was an idol of the Black Is Beautiful movement, regal in an African turban and caftan, her face gracing the covers of Ebony, Essence and Jet magazines. She was a vegetarian, a teetotaler, a runner, a meditator and, from 1981 to 1989, the wife of the jazz trumpeter and composer Miles Davis. Since the ’60s she had inspired Black American women to embrace their own standards of beauty — including helping to popularize the Afro.“She’s our Meryl Streep,” Vanessa Williams told Essence in 2013. “She was the person you wanted to be like in terms of an actress, in terms of the roles she got and how serious she took her craft. She still is.”Ms. Tyson eventually appeared in 29 films; at least 68 television series, mini-series and single episodes; and 15 productions on and off Broadway, including “Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright” (1962) and “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” (1969).In “The Corn Is Green” (1983), an Emlyn Williams play set in Wales, Ms. Tyson received mixed reviews as Miss Moffat, an English schoolteacher in a coal-mining town who awakens the minds of impoverished youngsters. Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn played the part in earlier film and television adaptations.Since the 1960s, Ms. Tyson had inspired Black American women to embrace their own standards of beauty.Credit…Ben Sklar for The New York TimesAfter a three-decade absence from Broadway, Ms. Tyson returned in 2013 in a production of “The Trip to Bountiful,” playing Carrie Watts, an old woman, also conceived as a white character, who yearns to see her hometown before dying. Her performance won the Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards.“It’s been 30 years since I stood onstage; I really didn’t think it would happen again in my lifetime, and I was pretty comfortable with that” Ms. Tyson said at the Tonys ceremony. “Except that I had this burning desire to do just one more. ‘One more great role,’ I said. I didn’t want to be greedy. I just wanted one more.” And she appeared with James Earl Jones for nearly four months in 2015-16 in a Broadway revival of “The Gin Game,” D.L. Coburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1976 play about two elderly residents of a retirement home drawn together over a card table.Mr. Jones, then 84, and Ms. Tyson, 90, were onstage for virtually all of its two-hour running time, as Charles Isherwood noted in a review for The Times. “These two superlative performers establish beyond doubt, if we needed any reminding, that great talent is ageless and ever-rewarding,” he said.James Earl Jones and Ms. Tyson in the Broadway revival of “The Gin Game.” Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn January 2021, when she was 96, her memoir, “Just as I Am,” appeared, and in a pre-publication interview with The New York Times Magazine, she was asked if she had any advice for the young.“It’s simple,” she said. “I try always to be true to myself. I learned from my mom: ‘Don’t lie ever, no matter how bad it is. Don’t lie to me ever, OK? You will be happier that you told the truth.’ That has stayed with me, and it will stay with me for as long as I’m lucky enough to be here.”Cicely Tyson was born in East Harlem on Dec. 19, 1924, the youngest of three children of William and Theodosia (also known as Frederica) Tyson, immigrants from the Caribbean island of Nevis. Her father was a carpenter and painter, and her mother was a domestic worker. Her parents separated when she was 10, and the children were raised by a strict Christian mother who did not permit movies or dates.After graduating from Charles Evans Hughes High School, Cicely became a model, appearing in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and elsewhere. In the 1940s, she studied at the Actors Studio. Her first role was on NBC’s “Frontiers of Faith” in 1951. Her disapproving mother kicked her out.After small film and television parts in the 1950s, she joined James Earl Jones and Louis Gossett Jr. in the original New York cast of Jean Genet’s “The Blacks” in 1961. It was the longest-running Off Broadway drama of the decade, running for 1,408 performances. Ms. Tyson played Stephanie Virtue, a prostitute, for two years, and won a Vernon Rice Award in 1962, igniting her career.She helped found the Dance Theater of Harlem after the 1968 assassination of Dr. King. In 1994, an East Harlem building where she lived as a child was named for her; it and three others were rehabilitated for 58 poor families. In 1995, a magnet school she supported in East Orange, N.J., was renamed the Cicely Tyson School of Performing and Fine Arts.Her later television roles included that of Ophelia Harkness in a half dozen episodes of the long-running ABC legal drama “How to Get Away With Murder,” for which she was nominated repeatedly for Emmys and other awards for outstanding guest or supporting actress (2015-19), and in the role of Doris Jones in three episodes of “House of Cards” (2016).Ms. Tyson accepting her honorary Oscar in 2018. “This is the culmination of all those years of have and have-not,” she said.Credit…Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesIn 2016, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.She was always reticent about her age, charity work and other personal details, like being a good-will ambassador for Unicef in 1985-86 and her 1981 marriage to Miles Davis, which ended in divorce in 1989. But she was adamant about dramatic roles. “We Black actresses have played so many prostitutes and drug addicts and housemaids, always negative,” she told Parade magazine in 1972. “I won’t play that kind of characterless role any more, even if I have to go back to starving.”And in November 2018, a month before she turned 94, Ms. Tyson received an honorary Oscar, a Governors Award of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In an emotional acceptance speech in Los Angeles, Ms. Tyson, whose highest accolade from the film industry had been her Oscar nomination in 1972, paid tribute to her mother, who had opposed her plan for a career as an entertainer.“Mom, I know you didn’t want me to do this,” she said, “but I did, and here it is. I don’t know that I would cherish a better gift than this,” she told the audience. “This is the culmination of all those years of have and have-not.”Azi Paybarah contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Stream These 10 Great Performances by Cloris Leachman

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStream These 10 Great Performances by Cloris LeachmanThe Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress was still pushing comedic boundaries in her 90s. Here’s a guide to some of her most fearless and memorable performances.Cloris Leachman (right, with Mary Tyler Moore) was only just hitting her stride when she appeared in the groundbreaking “Mary Tyler Moore Show,” a role that earned her two Emmys.Credit…Bettmann, via Getty ImagesJan. 28, 2021, 11:55 a.m. ETOnstage, on television and, finally, at the movies, there was no missing the irrepressible Cloris Leachman, who died on Wednesday at 94. She was an all-purpose entertainer who became best known for her no-holds-barred comedy. But that same openness left room for moments of disarming sensitivity and heart.She was also the rare performer to reach the prime of her career at middle age, with her role as Phyllis Lindstrom in the groundbreaking “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and in her Oscar-winning turn in “The Last Picture Show.” Still decades later, she proved durable enough to cut a rug on “Dancing With the Stars” at age 82 and continued acting into her 90s.Although some of Leachman’s notable roles are currently not available to stream in the United States, like her striking appearance in the 1955 noir classic “Kiss Me Deadly,” most of her major work is easy to sample. While she is perhaps best remembered for her collaborations with James L. Brooks, Mel Brooks and Peter Bogdanovich, Leachman also thrived in voice work for animated films, including two for Studio Ghibli, and seemed willing to push herself to greater comic extremes as she got older. These seven films and three TV series showcase her versatility and moxie.‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ (1970-1975)In James L. Brooks and Allan Burns’s groundbreaking sitcom about Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore), a single, independent woman working behind-the-scenes at a Minneapolis TV news program, Leachman’s Phyllis is an agent of chaos, constantly swooping in and upending Mary’s day. Phyllis and her unseen dermatologist husband are landlords to Mary and her best friend, Rhoda (Valerie Harper), and she has a tendency to poke around in their business, upsetting Rhoda especially with her flighty arrogance. Leachman’s appearances are heavily weighted toward the show’s first two seasons, but her performance was enough to score her a couple of Emmys and the spinoff hit “Phyllis,” which ended the same week the flagship show did.Stream it on Hulu. Buy it on Amazon, Apple TV and Vudu.‘The Last Picture Show’ (1971)Leachman (pictured with Timothy Bottoms) won an Oscar for her role in the Peter Bogdanovich film “The Last Picture Show.” Credit…Columbia PicturesLeachman won an Oscar for best supporting actress for her shattering performance in “The Last Picture Show,” embodying the sadness and quiet desperation that pervades Peter Bogdanovich’s elegy for a dying North Texas town. As Ruth Popper, the bored wife of an oafish football coach, Leachman plays a Southern flower that’s dying on the vine until she takes up with Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), a high school senior of limited sexual experience. Ruth seems to know her role in Sonny’s coming-of-age story, but she is nonetheless unprepared for the inevitable conclusion, which Leachman registers as the latest in a lifelong series of disappointments.Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.‘Daisy Miller’ (1974)After following “The Last Picture Show” with “What’s Up, Doc?” and “Paper Moon,” Peter Bogdanovich’s hot streak ended with this troubled adaptation of the Henry James novella “Daisy Miller.” But the film’s reputation has improved over time, buoyed by its serio-comic treatment of a brazen American flirt (Cybill Shepherd) in Europe and her trampling of social mores. Leachman’s role as the young woman’s mother carries some of the timidity of her character in “The Last Picture Show,” but here it’s covered by a nervous chattiness that is scarcely less vulgar and conspicuous in their upper-crust surroundings.Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.‘Young Frankenstein’ (1974)The running gag most associated with Leachman in Mel Brooks’s Universal monster-movie spoof requires little acting on her part, but it speaks to her presence as a severe German housekeeper that all the horses whinny in terror whenever someone utters the name Frau Blücher. Blücher’s roots in the Frankenstein estate in Transylvania are explained in hilariously dramatic fashion later, but in the meantime, her dedication to the mad vision of Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) and his monstrous creation (Peter Boyle) is unrivaled. She also stands ready to offer Herr Doctor a brandy before he retires for the night. Or some warm milk. Or Ovaltine.Stream it on Starz.‘Crazy Mama’ (1975)Leachman in a rare lead role, in the early Jonathan Demme film “Crazy Mama.”Credit…via Getty ImagesA young Jonathan Demme (“Silence of the Lambs”) hadn’t quite matriculated from the Roger Corman school of filmmaking when he agreed to direct this low-budget Corman production on short notice. But he and a brassy Leachman, in a rare lead role, play the material for all it is worth. Although it was a follow-up to the “Bonnie & Clyde” knockoff “Big Bad Mama,” “Crazy Mama” emphasizes comedy over violent mayhem as three generations of Stokes women, led by Melba Stokes (Leachman), embark on a rolling crime spree from California to their ancestral home in Arkansas. Nothing about the film (or Leachman’s performance) is underplayed, but it has an affectionately rollicking spirit, underscored by a terrific ’50s rock soundtrack.Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.‘Castle in the Sky’ (1986)Throughout the back half of her career, Leachman was a sought-after voice talent in animated films, with vocal turns in films like “My Little Pony: The Movie,” “The Iron Giant” and “Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.” But Leachman also contributed substantive work on English dubs of Hayao Miyazaki’s 2009 fantasy, “Ponyo,” and of his breakthrough film, “Castle in the Sky,” a bewitching steampunk adventure about the search for a floating castle. As Dola, the bossy leader of a band of air pirates, Leachman initially suggests a menacing adversary. But as more is revealed about Dola’s motives, the character’s hidden nobility turns our heroes (and the viewer) around.Stream it on HBO Max.‘Spanglish’ (2004)In the rom-com “Spanglish,” Leachman slung one-liners as the boozy but earnest mother of Téa Leoni.Credit…Melissa Moseley/Sony PicturesOver 30 years after they worked together on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” Leachman and the writer-director James L. Brooks re-teamed for this romantic comedy about the relationship between a wealthy, laid-back chef (Adam Sandler) and a single mother from Mexico who gets a job as the family’s nanny and housekeeper (Paz Vega). Leachman plays the boozy mother of Sandler’s high-strung wife (Téa Leoni), which mostly gives her the opportunity to sling tart one-liners in the middle of a domestic meltdown. But she sobers up long enough toward the end of the film to give her daughter an urgent piece of advice, and Leachman’s motherly earnestness in this moment is as touching as it is unexpected.Stream it on Crackle. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.‘Malcolm in the Middle’ (2000-2006)There are shades of Frau Blücher to Leachman’s recurring and Emmy-winning role as Ida Welker, a comprehensively evil grandmother of vaguely Eastern European descent who occasionally drops in to visit the Wilkersons, irritating and embarrassing them with her nastiness and bigotry. Leachman turned up periodically in episodes from the second season through the series finale in the seventh, and she brought with her an air of toxic, manipulative narcissism that rival Livia Soprano’s. In one episode, she sues her own daughter and son-in-law after slipping on a leaf in their driveway; in another, she reveals all the Christmas presents she has decided to withdraw from the family for minor offenses. Her cartoon villainy suits the tone of this slap-happy sitcom.Stream it on Hulu.‘Beerfest’ (2006)Late in life, Leachman (pictured with Mo’nique) continued to push boundaries, as she did in her role as an enthusiastic former prostitute in “Beerfest.”Credit…Richard Foreman Jr./Warner Brothers PicturesThroughout her career, Leachman was willing to do absolutely anything for a laugh, so she was right at home in this raunchy comedy from the comedy troupe Broken Lizard (“Super Troopers”) about a secret Oktoberfest competition where teams vie for beer-game supremacy. Dressed up like Heidi gone to seed, Leachman plays Great Gam Gam Wolfhouse, who isn’t ashamed to talk about her past as a prostitute or use a piece of summer sausage to demonstrate some tricks of the trade. It’s a minor part that’s intended for shock, but Leachman’s lack of shame is totally disarming, a sharp contrast to the frat-guy boorishness that surrounds her.Stream it on Hulu. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.‘Raising Hope’ (2010-2014)As the dementia-addled “Maw Maw” in this offbeat working-class comedy, Leachman mostly drifts in and out of the background, chain-smoking cigarettes, eating pickles from the jar and sometimes mistaking her great-grandson Jimmy (Lucas Neff) for her dead husband. Only occasionally is Maw Maw lucid enough to notice that her granddaughter Virginia (Martha Plimpton) and Virginia’s screwed-up family are living in her dilapidated house rent-free, raising the daughter Jimmy got from a one-night stand with a serial killer. The role calls on Leachman as a primary source of its sitcom surrealism, relying on her willingness to play embarrassing flourishes to the hilt.Stream it on Hulu. 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