U.S. actress Suzanne Pleshette dies at 70

Suzanne Pleshette, the famous and husky-voiced actress best known for her role as Bob Newhart's sardonic wife on television's long-running "The Bob Newhart Show," died Saturday at her home in Los Angeles at age 70, media reports said Monday.

Pleshette, who underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006, died of respiratory failure, said her attorney Robert Finkelstein, who is also a family friend. Born Jan. 31, 1937, in New York City, Pleshette began her career as a stage actress and was often picked for roles because of her beauty and her throaty voice. Since her movie debut in the 1958 Jerry Lewis comedy "The Geisha Boy," Pleshette appeared in numerous films and is best remembered for playing as a Chicago psychiatrist surrounded by eccentric patients in "The Bob Newhart Show," which ran from 1972 to 1978. Her role as Emily earned her two Emmy nominations. Four years after the show ended in 1978, Pleshette went on to the equally successful "Newhart" series in which she was the proprietor of a New England inn populated by more eccentrics. She married Troy Donahue, her co-star in "Rome Adventure," in 1964 but the union lasted less than a year. In 1968 she wed Texas oilman Tim Gallagher, a marriage lasted until his death in 2000. In 2001 she wed Tom Poston, her long-ago Broadway co-star, who died last year. VietNamNet/Xinhuanet