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In MEMORY of SUZANNE PLESHETTE on her BIRTHDAY - (January 31, 1937 - January 19, 2008)Career years: 1958 - 2004Born Suzanne Pleshette, American actress. Pleshette was known for her roles in theatre, film, television. She received nominations for three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards. For her role as Emily Hartley on the CBS sitcom The Bob Newhart Show (1972–1978) she received two Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series nominations.Pleshette started her career in the theatre before gaining attention for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's horror-thriller The Birds (1963). Her other notable film roles include Rome Adventure (1962), Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), and Hot Stuff (1979). For her portrayal of Leona Helmsley in Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean (1990) she received nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Movie. She later voiced roles in The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride (1998) and Spirited Away (2001).Early life and education -Pleshette was born in the New York City neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights, to Geraldine (née Kaplan) and Eugene Pleshette. Her parents were Jewish, the children of emigrants from Russia and Austria-Hungary. Her mother was a dancer and artist who performed under the stage name Geraldine Rivers. Her father was a stage manager of the Paramount Theater in Manhattan and of the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn, and later, a network executive. She graduated from Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts and attended Syracuse University for one semester, then transferred to Finch College. She later graduated from the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in Manhattan and was under the tutelage of acting teacher Sanford Meisner.Personal life:Marriages -Pleshette's 1964 marriage to her Rome Adventure and A Distant Trumpet co-star Troy Donahue ended in divorce after six months.Her second husband was oilman Tom Gallagher, to whom she was married from 1968 until his death from lung cancer on January 21, 2000. She suffered a miscarriage during her marriage to Gallagher, and they were childless. Asked about children in an October 2000 interview, Pleshette stated: "I certainly would have liked to have had Tommy’s children. But my nurturing instincts are fulfilled in other ways. I have a large extended family; I'm the mother on every set. So if this is my particular karma, that's fine."In 2001, Pleshette married fellow actor Tom Poston. Poston had been a recurring guest star on The Bob Newhart Show in the 1970s and a Newhart cast member. But long before they worked together on television, Poston and Pleshette had been involved romantically in 1959, when they acted together in the Broadway comedy Golden Fleecing. During the subsequent 40 years, they married others but remained friends. After they were both widowed, the deaths of their spouses brought Poston and Pleshette together again, and they married in 2001. They remained married until his death from respiratory failure in Los Angeles on April 30, 2007. She died the following year.Suzanne Pleshette was the cousin of the actor John Pleshette.Interests -From 1969 to 1980, Pleshette designed sheets for J.P. Stevens & Co. She also wrote screenplays under a pen name.Illness and death -On August 11, 2006, Pleshette's agent Joel Dean announced that she was being treated for lung cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Three days later, The Herald-Palladium reported that Dean said the cancer was the size of "a grain of sand" when it was found during a routine X-ray, that the cancer was "caught very much in time," that she was receiving chemotherapy as an outpatient and that Pleshette was "in good spirits."She was later hospitalized for a pulmonary infection and developed pneumonia which caused her to remain in the hospital for an extended period of time. She arrived at a Bob Newhart Show cast reunion in September 2007 in a wheelchair, which raised concern about her health, although she insisted that she was "cancer-free." (She was seated in a regular chair during the actual telecast.) During an interview in USA Today given at the time of the reunion, Pleshette stated that she had been released four days earlier from the hospital where, as part of her cancer treatment, part of one of her lungs had been removed.Pleshette died 12 days shy of her 71st birthday, in her Los Angeles home. She is buried close to her third husband, Tom Poston (who died the previous year), in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Television on January 31, 2008, the walk's 2,355th star, which was placed (at her request) in front of Frederick's of Hollywood. Bob Newhart, Arte Johnson, and Marcia Wallace spoke at the star's unveiling which had been planned before Pleshette's death. Tina Sinatra accepted the star on Pleshette's behalf.