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Actress Marcia Wallace
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October 30, 2008
Michael Aushenker , Staff Writer
Before the Christmas carols kick in, the Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce will welcome a “Carol” of another stripe.
Marcia Wallace, who famously played wiggy receptionist Carol Kester Bondurant on “The Bob Newhart Show,” will be this year’s guest speaker at the Chamber’s annual General Membership Breakfast on November 14 at the Riviera Country Club.
Expect hilarity when the town’s Honorary Mayor Gavin MacLeod introduces the carrot-topped comedienne.
“Eight in the morning may not be my best hour,” Wallace told the Palisadian-Post, half-joking. But she’s looking forward to the event, which she will be attending thanks to MacLeod, her longtime friend and fellow actor.
“Gavin and his wife Patty are two of my favorite people in the world,” Wallace said Tuesday.
Wallace knows the honorary mayor from her “Bob Newhart Show” days, noting that “’Mary Tyler Moore’ [MacLeod’s show] was the first MTM-produced show and our show was the second.”
Stellar cast aside, “Bob Newhart” came with a solid behind-the-scenes imprimatur. The Emmy Award-winning situation comedy was created by David Davis and Lorenzo Music (who supplied the voice of the show’s never-shown Carlton the Doorman).
Davis also co-created “Mary Tyler Moore,” “Rhoda,” “Taxi,” “and then David retired very early,” she said. “He’s married to [‘Rhoda’ star] Julie Kavner, who of course voices Marge Simpson.”
While Wallace and Carol are inseparable in most TV watchers’ minds, anyone under 35 will be more familiar with Wallace’s recurring role on “The Simpsons,” voicing Bart’s teacher, Mrs. Krabappel, which earned her an Emmy in 1992.
Wallace, 66, enjoys working on what is currently television’s longest-running sitcom, entering its 20th season.
“The energy is that of a sitcom, not cartoon energy,” Wallace observed, differentiating “The Simpsons” from typical over-amped animated fare with “rabbits going off cliffs and not dying.”
“My favorite character is Lisa—the heart and soul of the show,” Wallace said. “My dream is to spar with Skinner’s mother.”
There was precedent on “The Bob Newhart Show” for Wallace’s late career.
“Lorenzo left sitcoms and did voiceover!” Wallace said. “He was Garfield!”
Wallace also played Maggie the Housekeeper on “South Park.” So just call her “the Queen of Voice-Over.”
“The older you get, the fewer the parts for women,” Wallace noted. “I’m lucky I’ve always earned a living acting.”
Despite the early hour, Wallace is looking forward to the Chamber breakfast. She can use a little laughter, as she recently lost two dear friends: “Match Game”’s Brett Somers, and Newhart’s TV wife, Suzanne Pleshette.
“She was a beautiful, outrageous, hilarious, talented woman,” Wallace said of Pleshette. “She loved to swear and she was one of the funniest people I have ever known.”
Born in Creston, Iowa, Wallace began acting in 1968 with the improvisational group, The Fourth Wall. “Bewitched” and “Love, American Style” were among her early TV credits.
“[CBS head] Bill Paley had seen me on ‘The Merv Griffin Show,’” Wallace recalled. “He kind of made Grant Tinker [the ‘Bob Newhart’ producer] hire me.”
When “Bob Newhart” ended its six-season run in 1978, Wallace appeared on a roster of game shows longer than Santa’s naughty/nice list, from “Match Game” to “Hollywood Squares.” In the ‘80s and ‘90s, she enjoyed recurring roles on “Full House,” “Charles In Charge,” “Alf” and “Seventh Heaven,” and garnered an Emmy nod guest-starring on “Murphy Brown.” She toured as Olive Madison in a gender-opposite “The Odd Couple,” and in “The Vagina Monologues.”
Twenty-two years ago, Wallace was diagnosed with breast cancer, three days after husband Dennis Hawley proposed to her. Wallace survived her cancer, detailed in her 2005 memoir, “Don’t Look Back, We’re Not Going That Way: How I Overcame a Rocky Childhood, a Nervous Breakdown, Breast Cancer, Widowhood, Fat, Fire & Menopausal Motherhood and Still Managed to Count My Lucky Chickens.”
Alas, her husband died of pancreatic cancer in 1992. Wallace is proud of their 20-year-old son, Mikey, a UCLA junior who, like Mom, loves acting.
Wallace lectures on the book circuit. This year alone, she traveled to Vancouver, Maryland, Wisconsin, Houston, Orlando, Palm Springs and Redding. Shelooks forward to appearing in “Nunsense” in Ann Arbor, and “The Sugarbean Sisters” in South Dakota after this season’s “Simpsons” (which records from March through November) wraps.
Tickets for the Chamber breakfast are $30. RSVP: (310) 459-7963.
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