• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

The lovely Suzanne Pleshette has passed

This is sad to hear and just makes me wish that time could be turned back. She was a class act and will be missed. Rest In Peace Sweet Suzanne!
 
When I heard of her cancer a few months ago, I feared she would not be with us much longer. A perfect foil on "The Bob Newhart Show." And, of course, the now legendary "dream" ending to "Newhart" with her and Bob in bed on that oh-so-familiar set -- that is a series finale that will never be topped. I read that when she was first told about the possibility of ending the show that way, she said even if she was in Timbuktu, she would fly back to do that scene.

And, besides all that, she was one damn sexy broad back in the day. (And given her personality and self-deprecating humor, I think she would wear the moniker of "broad" as a compliment, not a sexist insult.) ;D
 
Smittian said:
:'( 1937-2008

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2008-01-20-pleshette-obit_N.htm?csp=34


Rest in peace. Good night, Emily
Click to expand...

Oh, Boy. This is definatly a sad week for classic television.First Alvin Melvin and now Suzanne Pleshette.

I hope TV-LANDS young programmers can get off thier JUST SHOOT ME,COSBY(you know what I mean) kick and and realize there was television before 1985 and do a 48 hour marathon on an up comming weekend to honer these two.
 
easttxtv said:
Holy crap.... I finally found one of Suzanne's shining moments:::

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-x3sfm4DKw

There you go, Stanislav!

Suzanne, you will definitely be missed....

* In remembrance *
1937 - 2008
Click to expand...


I did not follow NEWHART. Is that the alledged last scene of NEWHART where the whole show was a dream.
I remember hearing about a show that ende like that but was nt sure what one.Also, was that her only appearence in NEWHART?
 
Let's not forget her role in Hitchcock's "The Birds".
 
I have also heard allegations that that was the last, final show of "Newhart."
That could be internet rumors, though. I guess. ::)

That's the last scene of the last show there on the youtube.

Thanks for posting it easttxtv. :D

RIP Suzanne Pleshette.
 
kenwood101 said:
I did not follow NEWHART. Is that the alledged last scene of NEWHART where the whole show was a dream.
I remember hearing about a show that ende like that but was nt sure what one.Also, was that her only appearence in NEWHART?
Click to expand...
St. Elsewhere had an ending kind of like that. The whole show was revealed to be the active imagination of Dr. Westfall's autistic son, Tommy.
 
That last scene of "Newhart" is surely a television classic! And, so was Suzanne Pleshette. I remember seeing her for the first time on "the Bob Newhart Show" when I was a kid and thinking how beautiful she was. Later in life, I came to appreciate the depth of her acting prowess and just how much class she had.

So, it's very sad to hear of her passing - which came far too soon. God bless Ms. Pleshette and her family and friends. :(
 
Yes - it was the last scene in the last episode of Newhart, and yes - it was the only episode Suzanne Pleshette was ever in. It was brilliant, and I think Suzanne only had a line or two. The premise being that the entire existence of self-help book author and Vermont Bed-and-Breakfast proprietor Dick Loudon was the strange dream of Chicago psychologist Dr. Bob Hartley. - revealed when Bob wakes up in his Chicago bedroom next to his "real" wife.

One of the best parts was the live audience reaction - they caught on within the first few seconds and their reaction was great. At least I HOPE it was a real live audience reaction. If not, it was one of the best done fakes in TV history.

By contrast, the St. Elsewhere ending really made fans of the show angry...possibly because it was considered a serious drama that took on serious contemporary issues. It strained credulity to believe that a young autistic boy, emotionally separated from the world by his condition could have fantasized all of the adult vocabulary and adult situations presented in the multiple seasons the show was on. Many viewers considered it a F___ You gesture from the writers and producers at MTM.
 
This bit of additional news from the blog of Mark Evanier...

"I didn't see it mentioned in any of the obits for Suzanne Pleshette but there was one more note of sadness about her passing. A week from Thursday, on what would have been her 71st birthday, she was to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. No word yet on whether the unveiling ceremony will be postponed but apparently she'd been ill for some time, undergoing chemotherapy treatments, and her friends were really pulling for her to make it to that day."

http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2008_01_21.html#014684
 
Lkeller said:
One of the best parts was the live audience reaction - they caught on within the first few seconds and their reaction was great. At least I HOPE it was a real live audience reaction. If not, it was one of the best done fakes in TV history.
Click to expand...

Oh, it was real -- that last scene was planned with all the intricacy of a military sneak attack. They had circulated false ending rumors and scripts for weeks prior. Suzanne, in disguise, was brought into the building through a service entrance. The recreated "Bob & Emily's bedroom" set was kept under wraps, and in complete darkness until just before shooting of the scene began. When the lights went up on the set, there was an almost immediate reaction of recognition from the audience, but still slightly tempered, as if they were thinking, "oh, no...no...they wouldn't?" Then, of course, when Suzanne rolled over in bed and the audience saw her, they went absolutely nuts. ;D
 
As mentioned, there was much speculation on how they would end "Newhart". WLW Cincinnati personality Gary Burbank had suggested in the days leading up to the finale, "Wouldn't it be funny if Bob woke up next to Emily in the 'Bob Newhart bedroom' and announce it was all a dream."
 
Newhart's final episode is still my all time favorite series finale. A year or so later when they did a 19th anniversary reunion of The Bob Newhart Show (Yes, they intentionally did it that way. ;D) it took place the day after the dream and Bob talked about it. At the end of the show Bob is about to walk on the elevator, and the three maintenance men working on it are Larry, Darryl, and Darryl. ;D

Suzanne Pleshette Will definitely be missed.
 
I STILL LOVE YOU SUZANNE.....
 
I remember all the Disney movies she was in:

The Ugly Dachsund,Blackbeard's Ghost,The Shaggy D.A.

Tell good 'ol Walt up there we said "Hi "Suze...we will miss you!

:'(
 
Don't forget that the final episode of "Newhart" came just a few years after the writers of "Dallas" had written off an entire season of the show as a dream. Fans absolutely hated the contrivance of that idea (cooked up after Patrick Duffy left the show for a season, with his character being killed off, then decided to return). You can't tell me that this whole debacle wasn't at least one of the seeds that planted the idea in the minds of the "Newhart" folks. It was a way of poking fun at "Dallas" and showing that, while the dream concept was ridiculous in the context of a serious show, it fit perfectly into the comic and surreal "Newhart" universe, with some of the characters and situations being off-kilter enough that one could easily imagine it being a very vivid and bizarre dream in Bob's mind. ;)
 
Lkeller said:
By contrast, the St. Elsewhere ending really made fans of the show angry...possibly because it was considered a serious drama that took on serious contemporary issues. It strained credulity to believe that a young autistic boy, emotionally separated from the world by his condition could have fantasized all of the adult vocabulary and adult situations presented in the multiple seasons the show was on. Many viewers considered it a F___ You gesture from the writers and producers at MTM.
Click to expand...
I watched St. Elsewhere quite regularly, and that ending didn't bother me a bit. I knew the whole show was fiction. So what? I was wondering if the episode (in the last season) which ended with Dr. Westfall mooning Dr. Gideon (and that scene being freeze-framed on camera while some closing credits ran) was ever aired on other networks which later carried the show in reruns, like Bravo and TV Land. For many of us, it appeared that the next to last season was going to be the last one, what with the wrecking ball being taken to the building and all. And it seemed like it was going to take forever for Dr. Auschlander to finally die! And I was going to mention the "dream season" of "Dallas," but Stanislav beat me to it! We can't multiquote on this board (that I'm aware of), so I will copy and paste his comments and reply to them below him here:

Don't forget that the final episode of "Newhart" came just a few years after the writers of "Dallas" had written off an entire season of the show as a dream. Fans absolutely hated the contrivance of that idea (cooked up after Patrick Duffy left the show for a season, with his character being killed off, then decided to return). You can't tell me that this whole debacle wasn't at least one of the seeds that planted the idea in the minds of the "Newhart" folks. It was a way of poking fun at "Dallas" and showing that, while the dream concept was ridiculous in the context of a serious show, it fit perfectly into the comic and surreal "Newhart" universe, with some of the characters and situations being off-kilter enough that one could easily imagine it being a very vivid and bizarre dream in Bob's mind.

You got it exactly right with regard to "Dallas" and Patrick Duffy. When Patrick decided to leave the show, he should have never returned. Or if he intended to return, he should have left an opening for Bobby Ewing to return to Southfork. The producers of "Dallas" had already strained credibility by having Donna Reed play Miss Ellie for a season, then bringing back Barbara Bel Geddes to play Miss Ellie. It seems to me that "Dallas" is an even better example for the "jump the shark" website than "Happy Days"! For fans to be so upset that an entire season was a "dream," or that an entire series was someone's imagination is just silly. I heard comments from people saying things like "I wasted an entire season watching "Dallas." Well, you did anyway, whether it was a "dream" or not! And the entire series of "St. Elsewhere" was someone's imagination: the writers'! I just want to grab people and say, "it's fiction, people! Get over it!"

What strains credibility for me is when writers suggest that an entire SEASON was a "dream" or that an entire SERIES was someone's active imagination. That was an awfully long time for a "dream," unless Rip Van Winkle was a character on your show!
 
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel-online...

AmericanLife TV - available on satellite and digital cable - remembers the late Suzanne Pleshette with an eight-episode marathon of "The Bob Newhart Show" starting at 8 p.m. Monday (Jan 28th).
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom