Cloris. Cloris Leachman
there rarely, because it meant taking the bus, and when she got there, she couldn’t buy anything, because what money we did have would go back into the business. Anyway, one day she found herself there, walking through the millinery section, and she noticed a little pillbox hat with a veil on a stand, a pretty little thing.
The saleswoman said, “How are you today, Mrs. Leachman?”
“Oh, fine. Thank you.”
“Isn’t that a darling little hat?”
“Oh yes. It caught my eye.”
“Would you like to try it on?” Noting the hesitation in Mama’s face, the saleswoman added, “Oh, come on. Let’s just try it.”
So Mama sat down on a little stool before three mirrors, one in front and one on each side, but her head didn’t come up high enough for her to get a good look. In those days you didn’t handle the hats; the salesladies did. So, the saleswoman picked up the hat ever so carefully and brought it over to Mama. Then she handed Mama the little hand mirror so Mama could see the hat from all angles.
She asked Mama, “What do you think? It’s certainly a pretty little hat, isn’t it?”
Mama said, “Well, yes, it is a very pretty little hat, but my face is so round.”
The saleswoman said, “I didn’t notice that so much, Mrs. Leachman, but you don’t have any neck.”
Everybody loved Mama. She provided laughter and good food, and she was never judgmental and always inventive. When I was little and Mama’s sister Lucia would visit, she and Mama would give me a bath and put my pajamas on and make a lip-smacking homemade noodle soup. Mama made her own noodles and hung them to dry on the towel rack. Then, when she needed them for dinner, she’d cut them up.
Another of Mama’s stories goes like this: Each year a major contractor invited all the lumber dealers from different parts of the state to go hunting in Arkansas. Daddy went every year. It was the high point of his life. He’d bring home pheasant and duck and quail. Mama would have a series of dinner parties and serve these special dishes. It was a big event, she even had little wooden ducks hung on strings over the center of the table.
Even though I was a little girl in the middle of the country, I knew there were very big things ahead for me. In a way, I came from privilege, and by that I don’t mean money so much. We were privileged because we spoke well. We didn’t say “ain’t.” At school the teacher would ask me to read in front of the class. It wasn’t big-time show business, but the little cues around me told me I could do things well. My behavior didn’t come out of discipline, it came out of enjoyment. Everyone took an interest in me, and I enjoyed the idea of excellence.
Daddy was the trunk of our family tree. We were warm and safe because of him. We never went hungry because of Daddy’s care. I don’t like to keep mentioning the same point, but even now when I think about him, he’s always at a distance. I guess the most accurate word to describe him is remote. Mama was so different. She was as close to Mary, Claiborne, and me as a mother could possibly be, always embroidering our lives.
Mama
Mama never blocked my growth with criticism. I believe I was able to succeed because of her unwavering positive behavior toward me, the surprise and delight she felt when I accomplished something. She didn’t think I was the darlingest little girl who had ever lived. She just enjoyed me, she had faith in me, and she was curious about me.
Cloris Leachman, my mother, was petite, a little over five feet one, dark-haired, and pretty. Her smile had a special light, and when she shined it my way, it promised exciting things. I don’t know whether it was because I was the firstborn or because there was some special genetic pairing, but from my birth, there was a unique bond between Mama and me.
She always strove to spark my creativity. When she’d present me with a new idea, we’d sit down inside or go outside, whichever the idea called for, and it would seem to me we were not only in the morning of the day but in the morning of the world.
“We’re going to do some sketching,” Mama said one morning. I’d never done sketching. I didn’t know what the word meant, but I knew it promised something fun. Mama put together a package of paper and crayons, and we walked down our shale driveway to the two-lane highway. We turned left, and in a little while we came to an old, dead pine tree near a red barn. I’m amazed at how clearly I see that red barn right now. We put a blanket down, and Mama set out our sketching materials.
She looked around for a moment, then said, “How do you think a little bird would see that barn if it were flying over it?”
I didn’t grasp what she meant, so I said, “Mama, I don’t have any idea in the world what a little bird would see.”
“All right,” she replied. She smiled, picked up a crayon, and drew a rectangle with a line going down the middle. She showed it to me. It was a simple drawing but it brought alive the view of the barn from above. I got the idea, I took the crayons and began to sketch, and I began to experience what it would be like to be a bird flying over that barn.
One day, when I was nine years old, Mama brought home a copy of Aesop’s Fables in one-act plays. It was the sort of thing she did, another example of her gentle way of introducing my sisters and me to the performing arts.
Daddy had a playhouse built for us by workmen from the Leachman Lumber Company. It was basically four square pieces of lumber held together with big hooks. We took our first crack at the fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper” in that playhouse. Mama made costumes for Mary and Claiborne. I already had a green tutu, which Mama had made for a dance recital I’d been in, so, of course, I played the grasshopper. A few days later, we took our little endeavor to a women’s club and performed it there. It wasn’t really a performance; we just got up and did it.
I didn’t get the acting bug from performing as the grasshopper, nor did I then, at nine years old, have any inkling that acting was what I wanted to do when I grew up. Mainly, “The Ant and the Grasshopper” was fun to play around with.
I was first touched by the idea of being an actress when I was fourteen and in the ninth grade at Woodrow Wilson Junior High. We were given an assignment to pick out which career we would want to have. I knew for certain I would have children, that’s what women did. I didn’t question that fact about being a woman, and that affected the way I’d chosen a career. I couldn’t be a concert pianist, because the children wouldn’t let me alone long enough to do the necessary practicing. I was either going to be an architect or marry an architect, or be a social worker. And I did see myself possibly being a radio actress. With that career, I could work as much or as little as I chose and, therefore, be able to have all the time I wanted with the children.
By then I had a bit of radio experience. It appealed to me. It was fun to do. It was fun to go down to the radio station and see the people there. It was something you could earn money at, so radio actress seemed the most accessible and natural choice to me. I found a picture of an old microphone, and I put that on the cover of my report and said I’d be a radio actress.
Mama would listen to the opera every Saturday afternoon as she ironed. I listened, too, because I wanted to hear what she was hearing. Daddy listened to the variety show The Breakfast Club. That was how he woke us up every morning: he’d come in and turn the radio on, and The Breakfast Club march would play us out of our beds.
I remember only a couple of the names of the radio shows we listened to, soap opera dramas, like Myrt and Marge, and comedy shows, like Amos ’n’ Andy. This was long before television came into American homes. Life was very different then. Radio was the only home entertainment, so that gave the profession glamor, too.
Movies were also a big part of my life in my younger years. I’d go as often as I could and be carried away by what I saw on the silver screen. The 1934 film Babes in Toyland, with Laurel and Hardy, was an exceptional theatrical experience. That film and The Bank Dick, a 1940 comedy with W. C. Fields brought a laughter out of me I hadn’t known up to that point. The sounds coming up and over my larynx were higher