Sad news: Cloris Leachman has died at the age of 94 of natural causes on Tuesday in Encinitas, Calif. I had the honor of interviewing her several times. The last time was for The Hartford Courant in 1998 in her dressing room at The Bushnell qwhewn she was touring in “Show Boat”

By FRANK RIZZO

Cloris Leachman doesn't do anything in an ordinary way. Even brushing her teeth. 
    ``I have solved the problem of people living together where one doesn't put the top on the toothpaste,'' she says backstage in her dressing room at The Bushnell, where she is starring in ``Show Boat.'' 
    ``Here's how one normally does it. Watch.'' 
    She demonstrates, putting paste on the brush, placing the tube down with the top off to the side and brushing her teeth. 
    ``Wrong,'' she says. ``Here's my way.'' 
    She takes the toothpaste, smears it on her index finger and then applies it to her teeth, leaving both hands free to put the top back on the toothpaste. 
    ``Ta-daa!'' 
    At 71 and looking smashing (one of the few women who can get away with wearing feathers), the left-handed ``and right-brained'' actress seems to delight in being delightful -- and outrageous. 
    An interview with Leachman is a little bit stream of consciousness, a little bit party game and a lot of luck. 
    ``It all comes under the heading of acting,'' she says of her up-front, down-home personality as her two Shih Tzus curl beneath her make-up table. ``People think you're crazy anyway, and I'm just barely under the radar to get away with murder.'' 
    Crazy, maybe, but also brilliantly talented, with a long career filled with unforgettable performances on stage, screen and television: 
    * As Phyllis Lindstrom, the absolutely fabulous neighbor to Mary Richards in ``The Mary Tyler Moore Show'' (and later in her own spin-off series). 
    * Or as Frau Blucher in Mel Brooks' ``Young Frankenstein.'' (``He was my boyfriend!'') 
    * Or as lonely Ruth Popper in ``The Last Picture Show,'' for which she received an Oscar; or as a desperate migrant worker in ``The Migrants''; or as an eccentric old woman in ``A Girl Named Sooner''; or as Grandma Moses in the acclaimed stage play. Of all of Leachman'screations, her most memorable one might be herself.

Bringing Home The Bacon 
    
Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Leachman went to Northwestern University on an Edgar Bergen acting scholarship. As a lark, she entered and won a Miss Chicago beauty contest. 
    When it came time for the interview portion of the competition, there were three finalists. ``One lisped, one was tongue-tied and I got it,'' she says with a ticklish laugh. ``I told the judges I wasn't even from Chicago. I told them I was from Iowa, but then I told them my grandmother always said: `You go in there and bring home the bacon,' whereupon they crowned me.'' 
    She ended up being a runner-up in the 1946 Miss America pageant, which earned her money to study acting in New York, where she appeared in countless stage, film and television roles. 
    She played ``the unsinkable'' Molly Brown twice in two television dramas about the Titanic diasater, one in the early '50s and again in 1979. 
    She played Celia to Katharine Hepburn's Rosalind in ``As You Like It.'' 
    ``Want me to do my part?'' she asks, jumping out of her chair to perform. 
    `` `Prithy, cuz!' That's all I remember,'' she says. (She does recall her costumes were divine, although Hepburn's improved -- as hers were downgraded -- as the run continued.) 
    As much fun as Leachman is to be around, she can be just as serious and analytical when asked about the characters she plays, especially one such as the strong- willed, straight-laced Parthy in ``Show Boat.'' 
    ``I like to call it fiber,'' she says of Parthy's character. ``Fiber is what you're made of inside. It's not a moral thing or religious. It's a fiber that comes from your background and your awareness of something larger than yourself. It isn't God. It's just a strength. The idea of fiber of rope that gets twisted and becomes stronger when there's more than one strand and it's not going to break easily.'' 
    Leachman says Parthy is the hardest role she's ever played, in part because she couldn't quite make it her own for some time after succeeding Elaine Stritch in the production in Toronto three years ago. 
    ``It's hard when you have a part when it's already thought out and you're just a functionary,'' she says. ``I had to really dig deeply, get on my hands and knees looking for the part. It was so pruned and nipped that bare branches were all that was left. I couldn't get any juice [for the character] and that's when I went back to the book and I found some juicy stuff.'' 
    She says director Hal Prince eventually saw her interpretation and approved her performance with enthusiasm. It's a role, she says, in which she is still making new discoveries. 
    Leachman will have a busy year, docking in city after city. 
    
    All In A Day's Work 
    
And as for connections with her old television colleagues? When asked about the planned sitcom for Mary Tyler Moore and Valerie Harper, reuniting as Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern, Leachman took an uncharacteristic long pause before answering. 
    ``It depends on who's doing it. It really does,'' she says. ``Mary is not the Mary we all knew. She's another woman. And we all are. Except Valerie.'' 
    Suddenly, the voice from the stage manager comes across the public address system: ``Five minutes to places.'' 
    Leachman looks at herself in the mirror and sees a woman with brushed teeth, but about a century away from the character she is just minutes away from performing. 
    ``Whooooooooooo!'' she hoots, madly undressing and getting ready to be extraordinary onstage, to find the fiber and to bring home the bacon.