Beloved Actress Edie McClurg (CARRIE, THE HOGAN FAMILY, FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF) Suffering From Dementia

Oh shit my balls, that makes me so sad, she has been wonderful for decades. Hope the family wins

She was great in Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie. Love this clip.

One of my favorite guest stars ever!

Ain’t that a 🍑?

That's really sad. She was a smart woman with a super-quick mind.

Looking at her credits, she worked constantly and steadily until 2017, when she just stopped.

[quote] according to family and friends who say they're trying to protect her from a guy who's allegedly taking advantage of her.

I'm so hot and bothered that I don't know my elbow from my ear!

Suffer something awful each time you go, but much worse when you're near!

For her sake, I hope the memories of Small Wonder went first.

Wikipedia says she’s 67. Very sad.

Wiki lies!

But WKRP is a show to be proud of.

She was the mom in the most 90s movie ever made- Airborne

She really is one of Hollywood’s most prolific actresses.

Weird that people who played teenagers in Carrie are now reaching the age of dementia.

If only the younger generation of gays had of discovered her like they did Famous Character Actress Margo Martindale.

Clips from her work, including THE GOLDEN GIRLS.

You're......

Oh, no. I loved her appearances on the early Letterman show as Mrs. Marv Mendenhall who lived in a series of suburbs all over the country.

Ferris Bueller

Aw that’s terrible to read. I hope her family is doing right by her.

This makes me so sad. I'll always remember her from all of these movies of course, but she has a special place in my heart from the Cinderella episode of Faerie Tale Theatre that I used to love as a kid. She played one of the stepsisters and she had a line that would always crack me up. Something like: "Would you like something to drink? Perhaps some HAM?" It was so stupid, but it just killed me. I'd rewind that part of the VHS over and over again and just howl.

She is always ON and going full force, almost in the way of a character actor from the thirties.

She’s the butt of the joke at r4, but the entire scene rests on her giddy enthusiasm.

This makes me so sad. I love Edie.

Remember her as Hermit Hattie on The Pee Wee Herman Show TV movie?

"well hello Miss Wyvon"

Reply 39 on this 2016 thread said they'd heard rumors that she had dementia.

I, too fell sad. She was a guest star in EVERYTHING. It seemed like every sitcom in the 80s and 90s had her on.

I especially loved her as Nurse Ratchett in the Golden Girls. Her closing line, "As long as there's sickness and misery in the world, I'll be okay," was just smashing.

How unfortunate. She's always been such a delightful person. Great Password player.

My mother is going through the same....dreadful disease!

R26, I am sorry--it's terrible.

I remember reading a guys blog a few years ago where he wrote about his experience attending one of the conventions and she was there signing. He said she was totally ignoring the fans in line and kept talking people sitting next to her. Maybe she was having problems then.

Dementia is a cruel disease, and I hope it goes as peacefully as possible for her.

According to public records, she actually 73 (born in 1945).

Does anyone know what R3 is from?

And good on R23 for the sleuthing!

I hope she has trusted family and friends looking out for her!

Isn’t R3 from ROSEANNE?

R31, thank you! It is. I'm trying to find the video.

Dementia scares me to death. It’s recently come out that dementia is linked to untreated high blood pressure and that anything over 120 (systolic) is too high. Control that blood pressure, ladies!

I love her as Chastity Pariah in Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

Prayers for Edie and her family. It's a hard road with an unhappy ending.

Now who's going to play our beloved Ginny from billing in the Datalounge movie?

R36 Nailed it

I guess singing "Life is such a sweet insanity" would be in bad taste right about now.

I feel like Edie McClurg has been 72 for 30 fucking years.

Horrific news. She’s a gem.

dont we all?

Her 1945 date of birth seems more realistic than 1951. She is featured in a 1964 University of Missouri Kansas City college yearbook on Ancestry.com. She was not 13 and a student in college.

Oh, and fromer Mel's Diner Waitress Celia Weston also claims 1951 as her birth year, but it more likely 1947.

Charo is another one who claims 1951 as her year of birth but may be as many as 10 years older.

I was afraid to see the beginning of the thread listed and was sad she had apparently died. When I saw the entire thread heading, in some ways, it was almost worse news.

It's like a long goodbye, R43.

She made a bunch of appearances on The Merv Griffin Show in the eighties as various characters. She would come out as the character and be interviewed by Merv, then come out later as herself. I LIVED for those appearances, and have never found them. Mandy Landers, Ann and Abigail's other sister. Mrs. Marv. Whirlymae Jones, who was the wife of a patrol officer and lived in a trailer park. Daisy Stevens, teenager and I guess more of a punk persona. I love her!

I am Pussycat 1. YOU are Pussycat 2.

That episode is sad now that she has dementia; Estelle died the same way.

In Carrie I never got how she was considered a cool kid and yet Carrie was picked on. In real life Edie would have had a harder time getting a date to the prom than Sissy.

R48 No honey, cause as many of us learnt, wit and fun is a great deflection from school kid abuse

[quote]Oh shit my balls, that makes me so sad, she has been wonderful for decades. Hope the family wins

Well who knows who’s actually in the right here?

It could be that the family are right and this man is taking advantage of her.

Or....

It could be that they want to loot her assets and he’s protecting Edie, and they’re trying to get him out of her life.

I’ve seen both scenarios. Just because Side A makes a certain claim doesn’t mean it’s true.

Anyway. Very sad news about a very entertaining actress.

No r49. The fat girls still had trouble finding dates for the prom no matter how witty they were.

I thought of that as well, r50.

Wow, they dissed two people I've seen in concert.

Here is the bingo scene from Roseanne.

Now we know why she didn't replace Roseanne.

R55, THANK YOU!

[R48] I believe that I read somewhere that she was either asked to play it as if (or decided herself that) the character's family of money and that the other girls reluctantly put up with her because of it. I could see that happening IRL: I knew rich kids of both sexes who were tolerated in public but mocked in private because they had beautiful homes or cars and would host the other kids. She seemed in the film the most frightened of losing her prom access (since she knew her "popularity" was hanging by a hair), and I believe there was a line or two about what something she was wearing cost.

Also, remember that Carrie's mother was a lunatic and had alienated the adult half of town. That Edie's character was still getting on okay with her schoolmates might have indicated that a lot of the toxicity towards Carrie came - indirectly - from the parents and that the school overall was less the den of vipers that it appeared to be.

Loved her in Elvira Mistress of the Dark

R58 here. Apologies for the word salad. New keyboard. Also, drunk.

Love her dump cakes!

Yeah, R50 my mind went there too.

R51 - Cute Boy Report. That other ‘girl’ sounded like Jambi the Genie from PWPH, no?

You mean John Paragon? He was also in [italic]Eating Raoul[/italic] in a separate scene from hers.

It was always such a treat to see her pop up in movies over the years.

In my mind she was always expert at portraying a proto-frau. Sad news, thanks for the laughs.

R58, good observation even if your drunk!

Met her in 2007 at the Chiller autograph convention and she was cool. She told me all about how "Carrie" was her first movie. I have "Carrie" & "Elvira Mistress of the Dark" signed.

I was just wondering where she had been. I guess she's probably wondering that as well.

That is really young to have dementia.

Loved her brief scene with Steve Martin in Planes Trains and Automobiles. Edie starts at 2:24.

Monica Vitti had the same situation but the guy she was living with quickly married her after her diagnosis and she hasn't been seen since.

Edie ain't the only one losing her memories. Here's DL fave JOHN SAXON, who still looks great, but note how his wife answer all the questions about the new 'facility' John's moved into...

DAMN, R72, it's obvious he has no idea what or who she's talking about. Sad.

I've always heard the wasn't the nicest person. Encountered her once at The Complex theater in West Hollywood. The dad from Hogan Family was doing a play there, and she came to see it. She was pretty terse. Not friendly.

A sort of forgotten chapter was that she was a frequent guest on Howard Stern. She would go be a guest and sit in on the news. She was actually pretty hip and funny. She once got into a verbal altercation with Jessica Hahn on the air. That was great stuff.

There was also a very strange incident. She came on the Stern show one morning sounding kind of slurry and off. She excused herself to go to the ladies room. About 20 minutes later, she hadn't returned. Robin went in to check on her. She found her in one of the stalls laying on the floor. Like, her head resting on the bathroom floor right by the toilet. She was awake, and babbling.

She collected herself and went back on-air still sounding messed up. She said it had something to do with not having eaten, but something was very weird that day. I wish the tapes of those were around.

She should have been in more stufff. In her younger days she would have been perfect as the cheerful frau bomber in BlacKkKlansman. There has been stories that Gg were mean to guest stars. I wondered how they treated Edie.

I think Getty did not have dementia but something rare.

God Bless this wonderful actress.

She was everywhere in the '80s.

Bless her heart, thoughts and prayers, etc.

John Saxon was HAF. Terrible to see him like this.

HAF?

Dementia must surely be environmental, especially for the last few generations and the current crop of elderly people. What with all the crap in the air and the chemicals in our foods. Especially now with the douchebag GOP rolling back environmental protection laws, it's only going to get much worse.

Growing up, all my elderly relatives died from the normal health related issues, such as heart disease from smoking and just plain old age. Both sets of grandparents died in their 90s, their minds still working, same with my great aunts and uncles. There wasn't one person in my family who had dementia or Alzheimers.

The Herbert Ross Troll (who yielded about 20 threads here with Hollywood inside tidbits a couple of years ago) despised her. Said she was not a nice lady and treated regular folks like dirt.

Her and - another DL fave - Teri Garr we’re on his shit list because of the way they treated crew and support staffers.

Alzheimer's is not new by any stretch. My grandmother (born 1908) had early onset Alzheimer's that wasn't diagnosed because it wasn't well known at the time. Same for Rita Hayworth.

My grandmother on the other side of the family was sure her own father had it but no one was ever diagnosed with anything but general dementia back then.

The Herbert Ross Troll was a fount of information but he was super, super cranky and I always took his complaints with a grain of salt.

I had a theater teacher who filmed something in Wichita with McClurg in the 1980s and said she was very nice.

Many years ago, A dear friend and I got drunk one evening and decided that we should write her a fan latter. We wrote two, telling her that even though we were drunk, we loved her and sent her photos of each of us, hoping that she'd return the favor.

Several weeks later, we both got autographed photos and a letter from her. She told us that she loved all her fans, even the drunk ones.

I still have the photo and letter packed away somewhere.

The Herbert Ross Troll, as good as all of his info was, was a self-admitted alkie who drank on the job so I imagined it was more his behavior at fault when he complained of certain celebs being rude to him.

Also, people can have bad days without being terrible people.

R39 is a cunt.

Then she’s fucked

I was curious what Paragon was up to.....

Leapin' lizards!

I read recently that over the counter sleeping pills can lead to dementia.

How sad.

I bet Jason Bateman still has nightmares about this:

First noticed her as a regular on David Letterman's morning show waaaay back when. He would sometimes interview fake characters and she played a midwestern housewife called *I think* , Mrs. Marv Mendenhall.

So very funny.

I'm doing well. Thank you all for caring.

Mrs. Patty Poole with her hot casserole dishes!!

According to this newspaper article from early in her career, she graduated from high school in 1962.

I can understand actors that sex appeal plays a part in their career trying to shave years off their ages, but for character actors like Edie, it doesn't make sense.

[quote] My grandmother on the other side of the family was sure her own father had it but no one was ever diagnosed with anything but general dementia back then.

When I was a nursing student back in Ye Olde 20th Century, the new thing was to use the term “organic brain syndrome”, or OBS. That was the diagnosis that replaced “senile dementia” which is what all forms of dementia were called. No one recognized early onset dementia, which can happen to people in their 30s & 40s, as “dementia.” They were diagnosed as psychotic.

I remember a woman in the state psych hospital where I did my clinical psych internship who had what was then called Huntington’s chorea. She was the only person I saw back then who was diagnosed with an organic degenerative brain disorder as opposed to being labeled with a DSM dx. She was very highly educated and had been some kind of administrator. She dressed well, fixed her hair herself and could’ve passed for a staff member when she was behaving “normally.” But when she was not behaving well, she was a holy terror who had physically attacked both staff and patients. She was dangerous, and she knew she could legally refuse medication, which she did. She could not be admitted to a nursing home with “senile” people because of her violent behavior, so she was in a state psych facility.

Loved her in [italic]Eating Raoul.[/italic]

I love the clip from r2.

Yeah, didn't they just used to call it 'senile'?

I remember her in Eating they didn’t kill Edie because she was poor I can’t remember what fetish they lied about To get them to leave. It was either they had an animal or bathroom fetish.

If they knew Edie’s real age she might have been as a high school student in Carrie sissy looked her part but Edie looked middle-aged.

I think there is no test for Alzheimer’s you can do on a live person. I remember I was in the while a medical person looking at xrays my mother had done she goes oh she was dementia.

R103, forget your mom or anyone else. You need to get in and talk to your doctor ASAP.

"I remember I was in the while a medical person looking at xrays my mother had done she goes oh she was dementia. "

"You're Pussycat, too?"

"No. I'm Pussycat 1. You're Pussycat 2."

R98, interesting post.

I don’t know what I did wrong besides not proof reading my post so I’ll try again. A above poster said something about they used to say senile instead of dementia which triggered a memory of when I was told my now deceased mother had dementia. Me and my sister was in a room with a medical technician that was looking at some test my mother took and she told us she had dementia. I admit I’m not a good writer plus I’m dyslexic which makes it worse.

Here she was when she was an actual high school student, way back in 1961.

I have never read a nice thing about her from fans, she sounded extremely cold.

BUT no one deserves dementia.

LOVED HER on Small Wonder and as Ms. Poole.

God bless.

How can you say that, r110, when in this very thread there are nice things written about her from fans?

[quote]According to this newspaper article from early in her career, she graduated from high school in 1962.

Wasn't she a bit long in the tooth to be playing a high school student in 1976?

[quote]That is really young to have dementia.

Not necessarily -- especially if it was Lewy Body Dementia. My cousin started suffering from it when she was in her late 60s. She's now 75 and already in hospice care. Supposedly Robin Williams was diagnosed with LBD as well (also late 60s) and that may have led him to kill himself.

^ Has there been a mainstream discussion about Robin Williams’ decision being understandable and even acceptable?

I think about that for myself. Dementia and longevity run deep on one side of my family, and one of my greatest fears is being trapped in a state of confusion or borderline vegetation for any period of time.

I’m sorry this is happening to Edie McClurg. She was a load of fun with a twinge of tightly wound derangement in everything she did.

Her brief part in Planes Trains and Automobiles always makes me laugh.

I want to say that although it does seem that some people have said she was difficult, if true, for me it doesn't take away from her years of talent as a character actress. I'm very sad that she is evidently facing a chronic problem and hope she gets the support she needs.

I never saw her in anything where she wasn't one of the best parts, and that includes "Carrie".

One of the most subtle moments in the film comes when Carrie is looking out over the high school after the bucket of blood has dropped. We see that for the most part (Chris' horrid friends excepted) that the students and teachers are revolted, shocked and upset. In Carrie's mind they are all laughing at her (per her mother's malediction) and she sees Edie's character laughing so hard that she actually falls over (a brilliant moment). But if Carrie is imagining all of this (and there is no reason to suppose that Edie's rather mild character found the prank amusing) then in some way even she - the lowest rung of the social pole - considers Edie's character to be a klutz and a buffoon.

Yeah. I think the only one laughing was the stupid girl with the baseball cap. PJ Scoles ? The former Mrs Dennis Quaid ?

I looked up PaJ just out of curiosity. She played a teacher in the latest Halloween.

Edie'e death scene in Carrie had her drowning in a punch bowl, but the scene was considered too humorous so it was cut from the film.

Oh, so that's what was going on with the punch bowl in that scene. I remember there being something about a punch bowl. The whole scene happens so fast that it's hard to keep track.

And yes, I remember perking up when I heard P.J.'s voice as the teacher in the new Halloween. I thought that was a cute touch.

I'd like to think her sense of humor still presents itself here and there. I feel the same for Joanne Woodward. I hope she can at least move around.

r112, not at all.

Joanne Woodward also has dementia?

Yeah, unfortunately r123 for the better part of this decade or so.

I didn't know that r124. Dementia is hideous. A friend's mother currently has it, and she's been moved into assisted living because she can no longer live independently or care for herself.

Wonderful actress and such bad news. Here's a clip.

Regarding age discrepancies and self-reporting and McClurg’s real age. Soon, in 2020 or by 2021 the 1950 census will be available, for example. I think we’ll see a few actors and actresses who turn out to be older than what they have reported. Many wiki entries cite US Census data to verify the year of birth as the records become available either because they are now searchable online or as they are released, for example, as the 1950 census will become available in the near future. Of course, new sources and info could come from old records digitized, marriage records, for example.

It is hideous. Like reverting to being a stubborn uncooperative baby which only adds to the detrimental outcome.

I'm grateful cognitive impairment is not evident in my close family at all, even in my elderly grandparents. It is so sad watching a loved one decline.

Sorry to bump this but I just read that she played herself in an episode of “Family Guy” last year. How bad could she be then? She also has a new project for 2022 according to IMDB.

"We're into B & D, but not S & M. We met at the A & P."

Anyway, I interacted with Edie a bit on several occasions years ago and she was perfectly pleasant and professional, but not terribly outgoing. The Edie McClurg "character" was only there when she was on, and when she wasn't, she kept to herself but wasn't unpleasant at all.

And her Mandy Landers, sister to Ann Landers, was hilarious.

[quote] Prayers for Edie and her family.

Thoughts and prayers!

Profilic character actors/actresses like Edie are truly the unsung heroes of Hollywood.

Loved Edie in everything I ever saw her in. Truly great comedy character actress.

[Quote] Sorry to bump this but I just read that she played herself in an episode of “Family Guy” last year. How bad could she be then? She also has a new project for 2022 according to IMDB.

Didn't DL fave Valerie Harper have a late career credit on one of those animated shows? I think it may be related to maintaining health insurance.

No HUSBAND?....DL knows what that mean....