Why did the career of the actress Cloris Leachman not go on to greater things?

[TMC]

Question: Why did the career of the actress Cloris Leachman not go on to greater things?

Define “greater things?”

Let’s see:

Why didn’t she become an A-list film actor? - Leachman really didn’t start to get television roles until her late 20s and early to mid-30s. That was a little too late for her to be seen as an up and coming star, so she feel into the groove of being a character actor.

Why didn’t she become a bigger television star? - Lassie. She played the lead female role in the series in the first season but was quickly replaced by June Lockhart due to contract disputes. While Leachman wasn’t blacklisted, she mainly did episodic television rather than a series until Mary Tyler Moore in the 1970s. By that time she was approaching her fifties and moving into “older mother/grandmother” roles.

Why didn’t she become a bigger television star #2? - Phyllis. While it was a good show and Leachman was funny in it, the show was essentially “cursed”. The death of Barbara Colby before the series resulted in her character needing to be replaced after the third episode. Then CBS felt the need to move the show around. And in the retooled second season two main characters, portrayed by elderly actors, died in real shortly after their wedding on the show which was a major event. The series ratings fell and Leachman found herself again out of work when it was cancelled,

Why didn’t she become a bigger television star #3 - Facts of Life. Leachman took the role of the den mother when actor Charlotte Rae decided to leave that NBC sitcom. While Leachman did her best, it REALLY wasn’t the role for her as she had to tone her sex appeal and she wasn’t able to be believable as the house mistress of a girl’s school dorm. Since Leachman was approaching her 60s, things looked like they were going to cool off for her following series ending.

Leachman’s “looks” - While I always found her to be attractive, Leachman was hard to classify. She wasn’t “leading lady” beautiful, she wasn’t quite “femme fatale”, and while she had a good figure, she was also working in era where an older sexually appealing woman was a joke and not someone who was supposed to be taken seriously. Basically her most prolific period was when she was in her late 40s through mid-60s and that was perhaps “too late”.

She won an Oscar, eight Emmys and she had her own series, and long term supporting roles in four others.

She didn’t do too bad for herself.