Free Republic

Ed Asner, legendary actor, activist and philanthropist, passed away peacefully Sunday morning, surrounded by family. He was 91. Asner, former president of the Screen Actors Guild, is best known for his role as Lou Grant on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spinoff Lou Grant, pulling off the extremely rare feet of playing the same character in both a comedy and a drama series.

Oscar winner and multiple Emmy winner Cloris Leachman, best remembered as the delightfully neurotic Phyllis Lindstrom on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and her own subsequent sitcom, died of natural causes on Tuesday in Encinitas, Calif. She was 94. “It’s been my privilege to work with Cloris Leachman, one of the most fearless actresses of our time,” her longtime manager Juliet Green said. “There was no one like Cloris. With a single look she had the ability to break your heart or make you laugh ’till the tears ran down your face. You never knew what Cloris was going to...

Valerie Harper, the Emmy-winning sitcom star whose role as the somewhat neurotic “Rhoda Morgenstern” made her one of television’s biggest and most beloved stars in the 1970s, died today. She was 80 and had been suffering from various cancers for a number of years. She had been in a coma for a while before succumbing today, her family told KABC-TV entertainment reporter George Pennacchio. The veteran TV and stage actress was best known for playing sidekick Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, then taking the character into her own popular spinoff, Rhoda. She also starred in the 1980s...

Georgia Engel, whose distinctive voice and pinpoint comic timing made her a memorable part of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” on which she played Georgette Franklin, girlfriend and eventually wife of the buffoonish TV newsman Ted Baxter, died on Friday in Princeton, N.J. She was 70. John Quilty, her friend and executor, said the cause was undetermined because Ms. Engel, who was a Christian Scientist, did not consult doctors. Ms. Engel was twice nominated for an Emmy Award for her work on “Mary Tyler Moore,” which she joined in 1972, during the show’s third season.