Cloris Leachman, who won an Oscar for her role in ‘The Last Picture Show,’ dies at 94

Cloris Leachman was not from Texas. She was born and grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, where her father was in the lumber business. But she so beautifully played the part of an unhappy wife in The Last Picture Show, based on the Larry McMurtry novel, that she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1972.

Leachman, who died Wednesday at her home in San Diego County, was 94. Her son confirmed her passing to The New York Times but did not give a cause.

She appeared in a trio of zany Mel Brooks films, but despite winning an Oscar, she came to be known mainly as a television star, winning multiple Emmy and Golden Globe awards. She played Mary Tyler Moore’s landlady and self-described best friend on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and on the spinoff series Phyllis.

She won two Emmys for her supporting role in The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She won a Golden Globe for playing the lead in Phyllis, and in 1973 — only a year after The Last Picture Show — she won the Emmy for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in the TV movie A Brand New Life.

In the early 2000s, she won a pair of Emmy awards as a supporting player in the TV series Malcolm in the Middle, which also starred Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad).

Leachman was endowed with a gift for comedy, and her Oscar-winning portrayal of Ruth Popper, the wife of a high school coach, is the one that resonates. Her sad, dismal marriage led to her affair with Sonny, the boyish character at the heart of The Last Picture Show, who, in the end, breaks her heart.

The Last Picture Show was filmed on the dusty streets of Archer City, McMurtry’s hometown, 140 miles northwest of Dallas.

In 2002, Leachman returned to Archer City, where townspeople saluted her with a gala dinner presented by the Artistic Committee of the Royal Theater and the Larry McMurtry Center for the Arts & Humanities.

Actors Jeff Bridges, front left, Cloris Leachman, front right, stand with Loyd Catlett and Larry McMurtry, rear right, author of “The Last Picture Show” at McMurtry’s home in Archer City Texas, Saturday, April 6, 2002.(Gary Goldberg / Gary Goldberg)

In 2009, the Nasher Sculpture Center screened The Last Picture Show and invited Peter Bogdanovich, the director and co-screenwriter, to discuss the film. Bogdanovich said he had told Ben Johnson and Leachman that they would both win Oscars, and both did.

And then he told a terrific story about the riveting final scene, in which an angry Ruth Popper, played by Leachman, hurls a cup of hot coffee against the wall. (Ruth feels betrayed by Sonny, who had abandoned his affair with the wife of his inattentive coach to pursue the manipulative Jacy.) Leachman asked several times if they could rehearse; each time, the director refused.

“We did it in one take,” he said, using Leachman’s anxiety to flesh out the raw emotion.

And as movie history proved, it worked to perfection.

Leachman’s own connection to Dallas happened in the early 1980s, when ABC carried a live broadcast, from Southern Methodist University, of the Preston Jones play, The Oldest Living Graduate. Leachman starred in the play, along with fellow Oscar winner Henry Fonda.