You'd best be prepared for a chat with Cloris Leachman. The lady likes her questions snappy, and she answers in kind. "You don't talk very quickly, do you?" she asks after a moment's pause in the conversation. "I was taught to pick up the spaces in conversations. One must never let the conversational ball drop!" Ever the pro, it turns out Leachman, who opens next Tuesday for a week's run at the Rrazz Room, thought the interview was for radio, and wanted to make sure the audio stayed interesting. "Oh! Well, now I can relax," she exhales.
Relaxing is good, given that Leachman is slated for six films this year and a new television series on Fox. "It's nothing but fun and amazement," she says. "You start to do one thing, and it telescopes out and becomes something you hadn't imaged. And fun as hell!"
The Des Moines native has rarely taken a break in the six decades since a beauty pageant scholarship got her to New York and the famed Actor's Studio. She was an early Nellie Forbush replacement in the original South Pacific, and played Shakespeare opposite Katharine Hepburn. New York was also the center of live television at the time, and Leachman made her network debut in 1948 on The Ford Theatre Hour . The medium suited her, and she's won eight primetime Emmys, plus one for daytime – more than any other actress to date.
Her major success was, of course, as Phyllis Lindstrom, Mary Tyler Moore's annoying landlady on the long-running comedy. "Isn't it odd?" she asks about the renaissance both she and former co-star Betty White, who was recently voted onto the SNL island via Facebook, are currently enjoying. "We're sort of the last two standing, so they put us together a lot. In fact, I'm in a film with her coming out any minute." Actually set for release in September, the comedy You Again also stars Sigourney Weaver, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kristin Chenoweth. "They rewrote the ending so I could be in it."
White and Leachman were perfect foils for each other, with White's bitchy, man-hungry Sue Ann Nivens constantly skewering tight-assed, meddling Phyllis. Leachman roars with laughter at the description. "Tightass! That's wonderful!" she cackles. "The character of Sue Ann was hysterical. The heart-shaped, vibrating bed, the mirrors and all that. I like to take credit for her being on the show, you know. I was leaving to do my show, and I suggested Betty be the new blonde to replace the first blonde. Me."
Phyllis ran for two seasons, during which Leachman regularly popped into Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda, the second MTM spin-off. She also maintained an active and simultaneous film career, highlighted by an Oscar for Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show and three hilarious projects with Mel Brooks.
The creator of Young Frankenstein 's (cue the horses!) Frau Blucher – whose accent was based on Brooks' mother – was last in San Francisco as Grand Marshal of 2009's Pride celebration. "I was very prideful about it. It made me very proud to be prideful," she deadpans until a low chuckle rises in her voice. "It was a long time ago. A lot has happened in-between. I just remember being very up high with people and having a wonderful time."
Leachman firmly debunks the 80-is-the-new-50 philosophy. "Lemme tell you, 84 is no picnic," she says. "Nope. I'd rather be young again any day. I mean, I'm having a wonderful time, but I just had a knee replacement and I'm hobbling around. I thought maybe I could get back on Dancing with the Stars. That was such fun!" According to Leachman, it was also a bit of a hard sell, and a lot of work. "I had no idea what was involved because I'd only seen about eight minutes of it. I never know when anything's on television these days," she grumps about today's erratic small-screen schedule.
"They finally agreed to a meeting, and we had a fun time. I don't know why, but I just kept swearing. I'm not a swearer. It just seems to have come up lately, and sometimes swear words just punctuate things exactly the right way. The f-word seems to come to me a lot. In fact, I just finished another film, called The Fields, and I think the f-word was on every other page. They may have cut a few out." True to her claim, she never actually utters the word.
Cloris Leachman is at the Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko June 1-6, 9-11. Tickets ($40-$45): (866) 468-3399 or www.therrazzroom.com