The Chris Moeller Archives

Suzanne Pleshette

Suzanne Pleshette died Saturday of respiratory failure in Los Angeles. Pleshette portrayed Emily Hartley, the wife of Dr. Robert Hartley, on the popular 1970s sitcom "The Bob Newhart Show" for six years, and brought to life-- to my mind-- a life partner so ideal in every way that I find myself looking for an Emily Hartley to fill the romantic void in my life. Every woman I date, whether she knows it or not, or likes it or not, is being compared with Emily Hartley, and to Suzanne Pleshette, whom I never met and so is therefore interchangeable to me with her character.

Pleshette's death comes, quite coincidentally for me as well, during a three month period of time (so far) in which I am completely absorbing myself in "The Bob Newhart Show" on DVD. Watching always one episode per day, and many for the first time, my nightly entertainment and relaxation always begins with that famous montage of Bob Newhart leaving his Chicago office building, to the musical strains of Lorenzo Music's jazz composition, and riding the elevator train home to his beautiful high-rise apartment along the Chicago River and the sexy, short-haired brunette waiting in the window.

What other actress could convey such a fully-realized sense of feminine perfection unless she possessed it all herself: sophistication, independence, audacity, sexiness, tenderness, humor, patience, energy, excitement, and spirit. So indelible was her performance that, even after Bob was "TV-married" for eight years to the luminous Mary Frann, audiences roared for the return of Pleshette to Newhart's connubial bed, when she appeared, to everyone's complete surprise, in the final episode and scene of the comedian's second long-running series, "Newhart." The staging of the final scene revealed that the entire second series had been a nightmare endured by Dr. Robert Hartley while digesting a late meal of Japanese food. Pleshette's New York Times obituary made reference to the scene and recalled the 1999 headline of the humor magazine The Onion: "Universe ends as God Wakes Up Next to Suzanne Pleshette." And who wouldn't want to, after all.

posted by CM @ 9:41 PM