Famous Genealogies

Biography

Leachman was born in Des Moines, Iowa. She is the eldest of three daughters of Cloris (née Wallace) and Berkeley Claiborne "Buck" Leachman, who worked at the family-owned Leachman Lumber Company. Her sister, Claiborne Cary (1932–2010), was also an actress. Leachman's maternal grandmother was of Bohemian (Czech) descent.

Leachman majored in drama at Illinois State University and Northwestern University, where she was a member of Gamma Phi Beta and a classmate of future comic actor Paul Lynde. Leachman began appearing on television and in films shortly after competing in Miss America as Miss Chicago 1946. Before that she was very active at the Des Moines Playhouse, starring in many productions.

After winning a scholarship in the beauty pageant, Leachman studied acting in New York City at the Actors Studio with Elia Kazan. It was there that she met the first love of her life, Andrew Morgan. Leachman was a replacement for character Nellie Forbush during the original run of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific. A few years later, she appeared in the Broadway-bound production of William Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba, but left the show before it reached Broadway when Katharine Hepburn asked her to co-star in a production of William Shakespeare's As You Like It.

Leachman appeared in many live television broadcasts in the 1950s, including such programs as Suspense and Studio One. She was also one of the Raisonette Girls in the 1960s. She made her feature film debut as an extra in the 1947 film Carnegie Hall, but had her first real role in Robert Aldrich's film noir classic Kiss Me Deadly, released in 1955. Leachman was several months pregnant during the filming, and appears in one scene running down a darkened highway wearing only a trenchcoat. A year later she appeared opposite Paul Newman and Lee Marvin in The Rack (1956). She appeared with Newman again, in a brief role as a prostitute in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).

She continued to work mainly in television, with appearances in Rawhide and in The Twilight Zone episode It's a Good Life. During this period, Leachman notably appeared on the popular anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents in an engaging episode entitled "Premonition" opposite John Forsythe. Later in the decade, Leachman appeared as Ruth Martin, Timmy's adoptive mom, in the last half of season four (1957) of Lassie. Jon Provost ("Timmy Martin") said, "Cloris did not feel particularly challenged by the role. Basically, when she realized that all she'd be doing was baking cookies, she wanted out." She was replaced by June Lockhart in 1958. In 1959, she appeared in an episode of One Step Beyond titled "The Dark Room", where she portrayed an American photographer living in Paris. In 1960 she played Marilyn Parker, the roommate of Janice Rule's character, Elena Nardos, in the Checkmate episode The Mask of Vengeance.

Source :  http://www.wikipedia.org/