Cloris Leachman
With the new storyline ready, Cloris Leachman was quickly hired to play Ruth Martin. As the season's filming progressed, Leachman tired of playing a farm woman. She wouldn't sign a contract, and refused to do PR for the show's sponsor, Campbell's Soup, telling the company, "I make my own soup. I don't eat your's." Audiences found Leachman and co-star Jon Shepodd as Paul Martin "too stiff". The two worked adult glances and touches such as holding hands, hugs, pecks on the lips into their on-screen performances in order to give their characters more depth. Toward the end of the season, George Chandler was hired to play a grandfatherly character and to bring some warmth to the show, but Leachman was soon feuding with him; their disagreements appeared in the gossip columns. With ratings plummeting and public resentment aroused, show owner Jack Wrather summarily fired Leachman and Shepodd in February 1958 when filming for the 1957–1958 season was completed.
Read more about this topic: Ruth Martin (Lassie), Production Details, Casting
Famous quotes by cloris leachman:
“Now men and women are separate and unequal. We should be hand in hand; in fact, we should have our arms around each other.”
—Cloris Leachman (b. 1930)