Name: Cloris Leachman on Letterman, October 22, 1980
Uploaded: 2021-01-27T23:13:08.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Cloris Leachman on Letterman, October 22, 1980' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-01-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Cloris Leachman on Letterman, October 22, 1980' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-01-27. Transcript available.

and uh we'll get ready to start the show in a second i want you just to see
a little bit of the goldsworthy home these folks are look at them run
they're standing around in the kitchen where the uh they have a turkey in the
oven chloris
everything under control uh just a minute now we're just making things okay
okay well chloris
is rearranging things and remodeling put a coat of paint on the house while you're
at it chloris
if you can she's been so busy today uh how do you do nice to see you these
folks are in the
loge seating area and the tickets here what eight to fifteen dollars what a
bargain huh okay come on
through here uh ladies and gentlemen uh how about a nice hand for the show of
course here's frank
owens in the symphony orchestra and we're officially beginning now the goldsworthy
home in fresco iowa
how are you nice to see you thank you very much okay that's enough hold it i'm
not gonna i'm not gonna
thank you okay okay i feel like phil donahue now welcome to the show how are
you folks today
are you having the time of your life okay now you know of course that every
ticket holder here gets
a shot at the mobile home out back huh uh don't you believe a word of it uh
welcome to the show we
have to pause here for a couple of commercials ms chloris leachman herself an iowan
is that correct
iowan okay she will be joining us in a couple of minutes we'll be right back
let me ask you this al you ever tried winky's cow paste i don't know if i ever
did or not
thank you thank you very much and welcome back to the show we're coming to you
this morning from the
living room of howard and jane goldsworthy they live in cresco iowa it's the
northeastern corner of
the state of iowa and uh we got a second i want you to at least uh take a look
at jane's parents
this is mr and mrs vandermeer nice to have you folks here this morning and
thank you for the rest
of the studio audience thank you folks for being here it's our living room
audience this morning and
we're having more fun than humans should be allowed to have here today uh my
first guest grew up in this
part of the country she left to become a movie and television star four emmys
one oscar later she's
back today please welcome ms chloris leachman hello chorus how are you nice to
see you here where exactly
did you grow up uh in uh right on route six right there on the road huh in a
little well yes right back
from the road on an acreage at 50 17 hubble avenue and it was east of des moines
about three miles and
just before altoona altoona yes talking to the moose's head i know altoona uh
being altoona iowa
i didn't realize there was an altoona there's an altoona pennsylvania you know
i don't even think
i was ever in altoona but i remember the field kids lived down a couple of
about a oh three quarters
of a mile was the uh topography anything like what we have here uh there was no
uh hill
that like that that i remember it was uh more rolling yeah this is quite
beautiful yeah this is
now this is a view out of uh one of the living room windows here this is just
wonderful i think
we'll do this show from these people's home every day we'll get to a motel on
the outskirts of town
how old were you when you when you left iowa can i ask you that i guess i can
well let's see i went to
northwestern when i was 15 15. a college kid at 15. as a cherub uh-huh then i
got a scholarship to
northwestern later to go to college so i guess when i was about 18 i left and
uh i went back every
once in a while uh would you sometimes miss being in iowa i talked to some
people yesterday and they
pretty committed to staying here well this house is a lot warmer than ours was
i remember i used to just
stand by the hot air register and say oh mama it's so cold she'd say get to
work so i didn't complain
too much or i'd go down and shovel coal in the in the furnace once in a while
but um it was cool and
we slept in an in an unheated attic upstairs three little girls i was the
oldest and we'd go up this
little tiny stairway to the attic and uh the window was always wide open and
the snow would come in
we'd have the peepee bucket there
go back i'm sorry what what did cloris said what what did cloris say last one
down you know bring
the bucket and i was always the last one down of course that bucket was up
there for days no it's
all right who who emptied the bucket who uh well once in a while my mother
would go up there and rescue
us but i didn't if i remembered i did yeah do we have does that ring a bell
with anyone here you're
all well situated we lived in a little brown shingle house my father was um um
part of the leachman lumber
company in des moines and there are a lot of little leachman still there all
growing up more generations
and um my mother wanted a house with a chimney up the front and so he drew a
little house on the on a
piece of brown uh wrapping paper and uh the house was built from that it wasn't
even there weren't even
any plans for it and it was a little brown shingle house that set back did you
ever do any professional
show business stuff when you were a kid in iowa it didn't seem like that though
it didn't seem like
showbiz or it just i think the fortunate thing for me was that everything
seemed appropriate to my age
and not forced or uh pushed in any way there'd be a dancing lesson once a week
in des moines and and
then a piano lesson once a week and uh oh the andy andy williams and his
brothers were little kids
andy was about a year younger than i was and uh so i had a crush on his next
older brother dick who was
a year older than i they're also from iowa and they would come out for a picnic
once in a while with
their aunt with whom i took piano lessons to see cornelia williams hurlbut who's
still teaching in
des moines cornelia williams hurlbut yes yes and um what else oh so i'd ride
the streetcar once in a
while well street cars i guess are long gone aren't they to get into town yeah
yeah but um i remember
it must have been during the depression or after after the depression when uh i
was very struck after
living in so isolated out in the country until i was seven years old and then
began to go to school
and do other things and take lessons that um there were so many it was just all
gray on the streetcar
everybody was a gray person hmm what is that not enough dead or dying or
vitamins or whatever i i
or maybe it was hard i don't know but i do remember making up a promise to
myself if i ever grew up and
got rich i would give money to anybody who would smile oh is that uh-huh and i
also
i'll be darned tea later i thought maybe you'd start a telethon for gray people
uh we have to but i think anyway my biggest decision in my life that determined
my whole
life was that i was determined never to be ground down into a gray person by
anybody or anything or
life well i think you've achieved that i think you are not a great person well
i'm no you're you're
bubbly effervescent ebullient and uh full of life and thank you yes we have to
pause for a commercial
and we're going to make her a great person have you ever have you ever tried
winkies cow paste no
would you like to try a can i suppose
on a pasture with a yeah your house yeah mama's gonna make a picnic for us out
in the back and show
my sister what her did what well i was seeing the the view here um from our
kitchen window
one of the love two lovely things i remember um one of them was the sun
streaming in the kitchen
that iowa sun and then uh sometimes my mother who had this great big cooker oh
she took it everywhere
we'd uh i have so many things to tell you no but uh anyway the view out the
back window was uh this
acreage where we lived and then uh a pasture and a stream and some cows which
weren't ours but we
had the advantage of that and sometimes my mother would make us a picnic lunch
and we had those three
pans that came in the cooker one would be filled with spaghetti and one had
some cake and something else
and we'd take it out and put it in the crook of the tree up in the in the
pasture but this one time you
take the spaghetti and put it in the tree well it was in these three pans with
the tops on them but i
remember my cousins live right next door to the another leachman family and uh
iowa is crawling with
leachman's crawling my sister wet her pants and the spaghetti fell out of the
tree and the chocolate
pudding i mean we all had to come home in disarray yeah um what was i going to
ask you uh what do you
like to do for fun you ever get drunk or anything now what do i or then yeah
now for fun gosh
i don't separate fun from work i know that much it it's all fun yeah if it isn't
then i think i'm
doing something wrong i mean if you don't fill out every thing you do and make
the most of it uh it
could be awfully boring or or disappointing or or worrisome i mean you think
what's it all for i think
it's i suppose just to connect with each other and you know like dogs do you
sort of sniff around you
oh you're doing okay and how you you're black you're white you're spotted you're
uh tall you're
short and what are we going to you know let's get this accomplished or solve
this or pep this one
up or you know so you just sort of go through life sniffing yeah i think that's
true i was engaged once
to this wonderful young man but he said moderation in all things and i thought
oh no that would be a
dull life too bad he was a good one but he said i he said all he ever
remembered of me was
combing my hair and blowing my nose so i guess sniffing through life would
probably be pretty
accurate well those aren't real fond memories but well i was allergic to
everything in iowa
i remember a lot of hay fever but i got over that how did speaking of allergic
how do you like the the motel
oh well the marvelous thing is as you walk in there's this long long hallway
once you start
toward the room there's this long long long hallway with with squares of of
wallpaper all the way along
different wallpaper and as we got to the rooms we realized that was left over
from the rooms and so
they're utilized in sort of panels but this is not a motel in cresco we must
point that out now this is
down the road way but i want you know i slept very well and sorely needed it i've
been traveling a lot it
was curious every time the elevator would go up or down my entire room would
vibrate viciously i i think my
room may have been at one time at any rate your daughter uh uh dinah is here
daughter dinah now
why did you drag dinah along did she was she eager to come back i'm coming here
by myself
well i let's let's introduce dinah down in my back how old is dinah come on out
did you decide
i know england 14 or 15.
heaven's sakes don't bust anything these are don't bust anything for heaven's sakes
i know how are you
you having any fun here yeah what do you want to do when you get older i think
dance yeah are you
taking some dance classes and stuff yeah yeah that's terrific uh i'm real happy
to meet you dinah and
i'm glad you came along with your mom now you guys are going to hang around
right you're going to be
here for the rest of the show well i hope so i want some of that good dinner i
smell cooking out there
i think we can i think we can accommodate you there uh floris leachman and her
daughter
i think we're going to be here for the rest of the show you have to be here for
the rest of the show
for the rest of the show