PureDWTS Season 7’s Cloris Leachman Passes Away at 94

So today we lost another former contestant – season 7’s boisterous, sassy senior, Cloris Leachman. Per ABC News:

Cloris Leachman, the versatile Oscar-winning actress whose career on stage, television and film spanned more than seven decades, has died at age 94.

“It’s been my privilege to work with Cloris Leachman, one of the most fearless actresses of our time,” her longtime manager, Juliet Green, said in a statement. “There was no one like Cloris. With a single look she had the ability to break your heart or make you laugh ’till the tears ran down your face. You never knew what Cloris was going to say or do and that unpredictable quality was part of her unparalleled magic.”

“She loved her children and her grandchildren ferociously. A lifelong vegetarian, she was a passionate advocate for animal rights,” Green added. “The family requests that any donations in her name be made to PETA or Last Chance for Animals.”

Green said Leachman died of natural causes in Encinitas, California.

To my knowledge, at 82 years old, she was the oldest contestant we ever had, and one of the funniest – I’ll never forget her hiking her leg up on the judges’ table during a critique to try and make eyes at Len 🙂 I wish I could find a video of her in the season 7 hip-hop group dance, which treated us to Cloris with gold chains and a grill, mean-muggin’ in the background with Corky as the rest of the cast danced, but these dances will have to do – god, I had forgotten how entertaining she was, even when she wasn’t really sure of her choreography:

Godspeed, Cloris. If there’s a season 30, I had better see her name in a commemorative star on the dance floor next to Florence & Valerie’s 🙂 Kinda sad that Corky’s only 2 former partners on the show have died…we’ve now lost #TeamFlorky and #TeamClorky 🙁