Beloved Cloris Leachman, 94, has left the planet. The first thing she did that struck a chord was playing the panicky barefoot woman running away from Albert Dekker in Robert Aldrich‘s Kiss Me Deadly (’55). 14 years later she played a prostitute in Butch Cassidy and teh Sundance Kid (’69), but I didn’t connect the dots. Her career didn’t really take off until the early ’70s, when she was getting into her mid 40s. First came her performance as Timothy Bottoms‘ older lover in Peter Bogdanovich‘s The Last Picture Show (’71). Then came Frau Blucher in Mel Brooks‘ Young Frankenstein (’74) and her legend was forged forever.
