Actress Suzanne Pleshette has died

Actress Suzanne Pleshette, who underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006, died of respiratory failure Saturday evening at her Los Angeles home at the age of 70.
Pleshette, the pretty husky-voiced film and theater star was perhaps best known for her role as Bob Newhart’s wife on television’s long-running “The Bob Newhart Show,”.

Pleshette born Jan. 31, 1937, in New York City, 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 husky voice.

Among her other Broadway include “The Miracle Worker,” the 1959 drama about Helen Keller, in New York and on the road.

Her film career began with Jerry Lewis in 1958 in “The Geisha Boy.” She went on to appear in numerous television shows, including “Have Gun, Will Travel,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Playhouse 90″ and “Naked City.”

By the early 1960s, Pleshette attracted a teenage following with her youthful roles in such films as “Rome Adventure,” “Fate Is the Hunter,” “Youngblood Hawke” and “A Distant Trumpet.”

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’s roles 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.” Over the years, she also had a busy career in TV movies, including playing the title role in 1990′s “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.”

She met her last husband, Tom Poston, when they appeared together in the 1959 Broadway comedy “The Golden Fleecing,”. Although the two had a brief fling at the time, they went on to marry others. 40 years later in 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.

Poston, the tall, pasty-faced and deadpan comic who found fame and fortune playing a clueless everyman on such hit television shows as “Newhart” and “Mork and Mindy,” was 85 when he died.

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