In Alfred Eisenstaedt's personal notebook, one page is devoted to a mash note. "Oh Alfred," it reads, "I've been waiting for you for so long. I'm just happy you have had the time to practice on so many people before me. Love, Cloris Leachman."
Cloris and the noted photographer obviously hit it off together, just as Phyllis, her new CBS series, has hit it off with viewers. Recently, Eisenstaedt spent three days recording the moods of Cloris and Phyllis, her TV alter ego.
Cloris is half energy and half motion, which makes the shot at right a bit of a rarity: Cloris actually relaxing. [Left] she's at her Mandeville Canyon home with 12-year-old son Morgan [Englund]. ("When I say I have five children, people think of quintuplets. They're more like a small army.") Helping run this battalion is her husband, producer-director George Englund, with whom Cloris has a turbulent but working marriage. ("I think we fight just because it's fun. It's drama. It's life. It's caring about somebody.") As Phyllis, she is up and at 'em again, taping a scene with screen daughter Lisa Gerritsen.
Cloris, a performer for 41 years (since age 7), first appeared on television in 1946. She had a season as Mom on Lassie (1957), and had roles on stage, in movies, and in series (Route 66, Laramie, Trials of O'Brien.) She was never a star, but she had doubts. "If you ever get the idea that you won't make it," she says, "then you won't make it. I always felt I was magic. Now I know." At work, she grabs a fast dressing-room snack; at home, she's still in high gear, always making pots of herbal tea, playing one of her two pianos, or, it seems, on her way out the door. The Hollywood social scene, however, is not her scene. "My family," she says, "is about as many people as I can handle."
She is intense, but not uptight. On the set, she jokes with director Jay Sandrich as Henry Jones (her stepfather-in-law in the series) looks on. Cloris and Dick Schaal laugh during a script reading.
Cloris takes direction easily but will argue if she thinks she's right—and never agonizes over parts. She rolls with them, or over them. (She once told a director at lunchtime, "Just give me the scene and I'll learn it over Jell-O. Let's eat.")
In rehearsal, she practices a comedy bit while a crewman measures her for a camera position. Later, still fresh and fully charged, she repeats it for the final take. As a star, as the winner of one Oscar (for "The Last Picture Show") and four Emmys, she could slow down and take it easy. But she won't. (Winning her latest Emmy, she told the crowd, "I'm not ever going to get tired of this!")Talent and energy keep her moving. And a sense of humor, too—her motion mania is best summed up by Cloris herself. "The only things resting," she once said lightly, "are my laurels."
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