Deadman's Curves

"I do not own a motor-car but I recommend them to all my friends and advise them to buy a car - so that they will come around and take me out in it. Somehow or other, riding over a rough road in a motor-wagon jolts certain parts of my torso that need to be jolted, but seldom ever do get jolted…"
- Mark Twain 1906

Actress Eileen Brennan died of bladder cancer on July 28, 2013. She was 80, and a lot of current moviegoers don’t know her from Eileen Heckart or Walter Brennan, but in the 1970s and early 1980s, she was a familiar face on the screen and television, "the epitome of the ‘gruff but lovable’ type," in the words of Mark Olsen in his Los Angeles Times obituary for Brennan, "often bringing comedic sparkle to workaday frustrations while playing figures worn weary by their lives but still able to laugh off the worst."

Eileen Brennan, Cybill Shepherd, Madeline Kahn in "At Long Last Love" (1975)

Brennan first trotted out her husky-voiced, eye-rolling persona as a regular on the first season of "Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In" in 1968. She became a frequent wise-cracking presence in films directed by Peter Bogdanovich: "The Last Picture Show," "Daisy Miller," "At Long Last Love," and "Texasville." Other major movie roles included "The Sting" and the Neil Simon-scripted comedies "Murder by Death" and "The Cheap Detective."

Eileen Brennan as Capt. Doreen Lewis in "Private Benjamin"

Her most popular film role came in 1980’s "Private Benjamin" as the commanding officer of a spoiled, privileged Jewish American Princess, played by Goldie Hawn, Brennan’s old "Laugh-In" costar. As a distaff version of TV’s slow-burning Sgt. Carter from "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." Brennan garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She reprised the role in the 1981 CBS series of the same title, with Lorna Patterson (the blonde stewardess in the comedy hit "Airplane!") in the Goldie Hawn role, and won an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

On an October evening in 1982, Brennan and Goldie Hawn were leaving a restaurant in Venice, California, when Brennan was struck by a passing car, which crushed her legs and fractured an eye socket. In her absence, the "Private Benjamin" series was canceled within the year, while, in her recovery, Brennan became addicted to pain medication. After costarring with Ed Asner in the shortlived 1984 sitcom "Off the Rack," the actress checked herself into the Betty Ford Center for treatment.

Automobile accidents - in any occupation or avocation - are the nature of the beast. You get behind the steering wheel or you step off a sidewalk, you take a risk. Years before the first Ford Model T rolled off the assembly line in the fall of 1908, car accidents were already a necessary evil.

John William Lambert's 1891 three-wheeled gasoline-powered automobile

The country’s first fender-bender occurred in Ohio City, Ohio, in 1891, when the first single-cylinder gasoline automobile, carrying inventor-automotive pioneer and manufacturer John William Lambert and James Swoveland, hit a tree root, sending the vehicle careening into a horse’s hitching post. Injuries were minor.

Brothers Charles and Frank Duryea

In May of 1896, New York City motorist Henry Wells, at the wheel of a Duryea motor-wagon (the first commercial automobile offered for sale), hit a female bicyclist, who suffered a broken leg. Wells spent  the night in jail, and America’s first traffic accident was recorded.

Real estage agent Henry Hale Bliss (above) became the first road fatality in the U.S. in September of 1899, the day after he was struck by an electric-powered taxicab as he was getting off a New York City streetcar, resulting in a crushed skull and chest.

Tom Mix wore the biggest cowboy hat in Hollywood.

To be sure, Hollywood has had its share of high-profile, tabloid-teasing traffic deaths. On October 12, 1940, Tom Mix, the legendary cowboy star of numerous silent films, was driving his 1937 Cord Model 812 Phaeton on a stretch of a state route between Tucson and Phoenix when he swerved to avoid a construction barrier at a washed-out bridge. As his convertible rolled into the gulley, a large aluminum suitcase from behind struck him, shattering his skull and breaking his neck. His body ended up pinned beneath the overturned vehicle.

James Dean cruises by in his Porsche 550 Spyder.

The most infamous show business death-behind-the-wheel happened on September 30, 1955. James Dean, the brooding cultural icon of Atomic Age teen angst, was driving his beloved Porsche 550 Spyder to a sports car rally in Salinas, California - with a Porsche factory mechanic as a passenger - when it collided head-on with a speeding 1950 Ford Tudor coupe at a state route junction near Paso Robles. Supposedly, Dean had uttered, "He’s got to see us," before impact. With a broken neck and countless internal and external injuries, Dean was pronounced DOA at a Paso Robles hospital.

Sophia Loren sizes up the competition - Jayne Mansfield

The second most storied traffic fatality in celebrity lore has to be the sad fate of platinum blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield, a Playboy magazine centerfold and major sex symbol of the 1950s and 1960s. In the wee hours of the a.m. on June 29, 1967, Mansfield, her current boyfriend, and her driver, along with three of her five children, were in a 1966 Buick Electra on a trip from Biloxi, Mississippi, to New Orleans when the car skidded into the rear of a braking tractor-trailer and slid underneath it. The top of the car was sheared off, and the three adults in the front seat were killed instantly, but the three kids, dozing in the rear, survived with minor injuries. Contrary to the urban myth, Jayne Mansfield was not decapitated. What might have been mistaken for a disembodied, blonde-haired head tangled in the smashed windshield was a wig she was wearing.

Playmate of the year Claudia Jennings in "Gator Bait" (1976)

A dozen years later, another Playboy Playmate, Claudia Jennings (real name Mary "Mimi" Chesterton), the B-movie starlet of  such ‘70s drive-in favorites as "Unholy Rollers," "Gator Bait," and "Truck Stop Women," died in an automobile accident on October 2, 1979, when her silver VW convertible crossed the dividing line on the two-lane Pacific Coast Highway and plowed into a pickup truck. She was 29.

Valerie Quennessen in "Conan the Barbarian" (1982)

Valerie Quennessen, a French actress best known to American audiences as the voluptuous Princess Yasimina in 1982’s "Conan the Barbarian" and as part of a frisky threesome (with Peter Gallagher and Daryl Hannah) in the 1982 romantic drama "Summer Lovers," was killed in a March 19, 1989, car accident on a French motorway between Paris and Caen. She was 31.

Ian Bannen in "Waking Ned Devine" (1998)

Ian Bannen, a Scottish-born actor whose international career included a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the wily "Ratbags" Crow in director Robert Aldrich’s 1965 testosterone-fest "The Flight of the Phoenix," as well as acclaimed performances as the leprous Elder Robert the Bruce in "Braveheart" and an elderly Irish villager in "Waking Ned Devine," died at the age of 71 on November 3, 1999, from massive injuries he suffered as a passenger in a car accident near Loch Ness.

Sean Connery is amused, Desmond Llewelyn is nonplussed.

A little more than a month later, 85-year-old Desmond Llewelyn, an English actor best known for portraying gadget-master Q in seventeen James Bond films, perished in a car accident when his Renault Megane collided head-on with a Fiat Bravo in East Sussex on December 19, 1999, less than two weeks after the premiere of his last 007 movie, "The World Is Not Enough."

Ernie Kovacs (above), pioneering television comedian and sometime movie actor, was killed in an automobile accident in Los Angeles in the early morning hours of January 13, 1962. After a light rain, the slightly inebriated Kovacs lost control of the Chevrolet Corvair station wagon he was driving - possibly while trying to light a cigar - and smashed into a concrete triangle at an intersection. The impact spun the car around, which ended up wrapped around a power pole. Kovacs was thrown halfway out of the passenger side, dying from chest and head injuries.

Sam Kinison in "Back to School" (1986)

On April 10, 1992, Sam Kinison, the iconoclastic standup comedian and occasional actor himself ("Back to School"), died from numerous traumatic injuries after his 1989 Pontiac Trans Am was struck head-on west of Needles, California, by a pickup truck driven by a drunk 17-year-old. Kinison was 38.

An iconic image from F.W. Murnau's "Nosferatu" (1922)

As for the people behind the camera, director F.W. Murnau was one of the most influential German filmmakers in the silent era, a leader in the expressionist movement in European cinema during the 1920s whose most enduring work was the early vampire picture, 1922’s "Nosferatu," based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Murnau emigrated to Hollywood in 1926, and in March of 1931, he was in a hired Rolls Royce heading up the coast from Los Angeles to Monterey, when the driver, a 14-year-old Philippine servant, crashed the car into an electric pole. The 42-year-old Murnau hit his head and died in a Santa Barbara hospital shortly afterward.

Alan J. Pakula directs Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt
in what would be his final film, "The Devil's Own" (1997).

On November 19, 1998, 70-year-old Alan J. Pakula, the director of many noteworthy films, including "Klute," "All the President’s Men," and "Sophie’s Choice," died in a freak accident on Long Island Expressway in New York when a driver ahead of him struck a seven-foot-long metal pipe, which went through Pakula’s windshield, hitting him in the head and killing him instantly.

Such accounts of tragic endings are fascinating in a macabre fashion, but in the moviehouse, we’re intrigued by - and often inspired by - the accidents from which the victims walk away, figuratively if not literally. Like Eileen Brennan’s story. But we’re not counting innumerable celebrity alcohol-related boulevard-bumper-crumplers and tree-meet-and-greets.

Montgomery Clift in "Red River" (1948)

Montgomery Clift played a variety of soulfully handsome but emotionally troubled lead characters in 1950s Hollywood, from his film debut as John Wayne’s adopted son in the 1948 western "Red River" through acclaimed performances in such films as "The Search," "The Heiress," "A Place in the Sun," "I Confess," and "From Here to Eternity." On May 12, 1956, during the production of "Raintree County," Clift left a dinner party at the Beverly Hills home of his costar and friend, Elizabeth Taylor, and her then-husband, Michael Wilding, and promptly smashed his car into a telephone pole. Clift’s friend, actor Kevin McCarthy, saw the accident and alerted Taylor, who hurried to the injured actor’s side and pulled a dislodged tooth from his tongue to prevent him from choking on it. Clift had a broken nose and jaw, fractured sinus, and numerous facial lacerations.

After plastic surgery and two months of recovery, Clift finished filming "Raintree County," which did well at the box office if only because audiences were morbidly curious to see the before-and-after difference in his facial appearance.

The chronic pain from the accident drove Clift to increasingly depend on pills and alcohol for relief. He never really recovered, physically or mentally, as his health and good looks deteriorated in what noted acting teacher and founder of the Actors Studio Robert Lewis deemed the "longest suicide in Hollywood history."

In 1958, Clift turned down what would become Dean Martin’s role as boozy gunhand "Dude" in "Rio Bravo," which would have reunited him with "Red River" costars John Wayne and Walter Brennan. His post-accident career was highlighted by three outstanding performances, including two films for fabled director John Huston.

Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Eli Wallach, Montgomery Clift in "The Misfits" (1961)

Scripted by renowned playwright Arthur Miller, 1961’s "The Misfits" was an allegorical tale of modern-day cowboys (Clark Gable, Clift, Eli Wallach), accompanied by a troubled divorcee (Marilyn Monroe), who rope in wild mustangs to sell to dog food manufacturers, ultimately seeing themselves in the misfit animals.

"The Misfits" bears a historical footnote as the final film for both Clark Gable ad Marilyn Monroe. Gable, who thought he had given the performance of his life, didn’t live to see the completed movie, succumbing to coronary thrombosis after a severe heart attack. Gable’s widow believed what did Clark in was the "horrible tension" of "the eternal waiting, waiting, waiting" for the frequently tardy or just plain no-show Monroe (married to the film’s writer, Arthur Miller, at the time), whose on-set collapse stalled shooting for two weeks as she recuperated in a hospital. Exhaustingly documented and notorious for emotional and substance abuse problems of her own, Marilyn Monroe described Montgomery Clift as "the only person I know who is even worse shape than I am."

Montgomery Clift in "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961)

Clift’s final of four Oscar nominations was for a twelve-minute performance in 1961’s "Judgment at Nuremberg" as a mentally challenged victim of Nazi sterilization. He struggled with his lines until director Stanley Kramer told him, "Whatever  the word may be, it doesn’t really matter…ad-lib something. It will be all right because it will convey the confusion in your character’s mind." Kramer later recalled, "He wasn’t always close to the script, but whatever he said fitted in perfectly, and he came through with as good a performance as I had hoped."

By the time director John Huston cast Montgomery Clift in the title role of the 1962 biopic "Freud" (a long-cherished project for the filmmaker), the actor was backsliding helplessly with a variety of mentally and physically debilitating conditions, including a partially paralyzed face and persistent memory loss which markedly affected his delivery of lengthy scientific dialogue as scripted. Huston resorted to planting cue cards around the set, however, Clift had developed a cataract problem that hampered his ability to read them. He thought he was going blind. John McCarty, author of The Complete Films of John Huston, noted that there are scenes in "Freud" when "one can clearly see the cataracts clouding over Clift’s eyes." The studio ended up suing Clift over his frequent absences which caused the picture to go over-budget.

By the mid-1960s, Clift was considered unemployable, and Elizabeth Taylor, in order to ensure Clift be cast as her costar in the upcoming "Reflections in a Golden Eye" (to be directed by John Huston), offered her salary as his insurance. Montgomery Clift’s last movie was 1966’s "The Defector," a lackluster European-produced Cold War spy thriller the actor agreed to star in to produce he was capable of handling the role in "Reflections in a Golden Eye." He died before "Reflections in a Golden Eye" started filming, and his role went to Marlon Brando. Clift was 45.

As much as his post-accident drug addiction and drinking were responsible for Clift’s catalog of health dilemmas and, ultimately, his death, he was also suffering from the lingering effects of pre-existing dysentery and chronic colitis, while an underactive thyroid was later revealed.

Wayne Maunder, James Stacy in "Lancer"

Born Maurice William Elias on December 23, 1936, James Stacy (he adopted his stage name from his idol, James Dean, and from a cousin named Stacy) was a television actor best known for his role as a half-Mexican former gunslinger named Johnny Madrid Lancer in the 1968-1970 "Bonanza"-wannabe series "Lancer," costarring Andrew Duggan and Wayne Maunder. Earlier, Stacy had a recurring role as Fred, a friend of the Nelson family on "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" (he recalled, "I had lines like, ‘Hey, Rick, want a hamburger?’"). On the big screen, People magazine later called him "a kind of B-level Rock Hudson in movies opposite actresses such as Raquel Welch," pictures with titles like "A Swingin’ Summer," "Winter A-Go-Go," and "Flareup."

On September 18, 1973, Stacy was racing his motorcycle through the Hollywood Hills just past midnight. He had picked up his girlfriend, a waitress, and as they rounded a turn, a drunk driver swerved into them, knocking them off the bike. His girlfriend bled to death from a severed leg, while Stacy would lose his left arm and left leg. Medical bills exhausted his savings, but his ex-wives, Connie Stevens and Kim Darby, and his friends rallied, and a 1974 celebrity gala, attended by Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand, raised $118,000 for his expenses. "Because of you, I’ll smile again," he told the crowd. "I’m going to do good things with the money!" In 1976, he won a landmark $1.9 million lawsuit against the bar that had served the drunk driver.

James Stacy in "Posse" (1975)

James Stacy’s comeback film was the 1975 western "Posse" as a newspaper editor, a role producer-director-star Kirk Douglas had written specifically for him. Stacy was nominated for an Emmy for his portrayal of a double-amputee Vietnam veteran in the 1977 TV movie "Just a Little Inconvenience." One of his last television roles was in five episodes of the series "Wiseguy" in 1990, while his last screen role was as a cyborg in 1991’s "F/X2."

James Stacy, Barbara Hershey in
"Just a Little Inconvenience" (1977)

After the accident, Stacy, who had previously been known as something of a drinker and a brawler, drank more heavily. A friend said, "He had a dependency on alcohol and anger." Heather, his daughter with his second wife, Kim Darby, noted, "My dad has a big heart. It’s just with the alcohol, it gets so distorted." By the late 1980s, he was usually too inebriated to work. He got around in an electric wheelchair and squandered his money on drinking holidays, becoming known as a moody drunk.

In November of 1995, James Stacy pleaded no contest to a charge of molesting an 11-year-old girl, stemming from an incident that happened in March. In June, he had been arrested for prowling at the home of two teenage sisters and drunkenly entering  their house. Stacy entered a rehab facility but was thrown out for trying to take control of the classes. He failed to appear for a December sentencing and was arrested in a Honolulu hospital. After fleeing California, he attempted suicide by downing a pint of whiskey and then jumping off a 1200-foot cliff. He landed on a ledge 45 feet below. He remembered lying there, waiting to be rescued and thinking, "I even screwed this up."

After recovering, he waived extradition and returned to California, where, on March 5, 1996, he received a six-year prison sentence. He served his full sentence at the California Institution for Men at Chino. In a 1996 interview for People magazine, Stacy, in his cell, insisted he didn’t molest the 11-year-old girl. He admitted to touching her, but said, "She wanted to learn acupressure. I touched her for five seconds." He told People, "It makes me look like a goddamn pedophile. I can’t believe I’m stuck in this damn mess." He also said, "Every once in a while I hit reality and I just scream, ‘God, no!’"

Stacy maintained his basic problem is his drinking. He vowed that he was "ready to take a look at myself for the first time" and make changes. Required to register as a sex offender, he was last reportedly residing in Ventura, California.

A recent photo of James Stacy shows that he can smile again...again.

Critic Leonard Maltin once referred to Bud Cort as an "idiosyncratic, youthful" actor and a "counterculture icon" best known for his roles in 1970s cult films. Namely two. In 1970’s "Brewster McCloud," Cort played an owlish misfit who dreams of flying through the Houston Astrodome. Then came the role that cemented his stature as what the Los Angeles Times would call "a generational icon" and "a kind of midnight movie poster boy," the role of an angelic-faced, troubled rich kid obsessed with death who develops a strange but wonderful relationship with a wildly free-thinking 79-year-old woman in 1971’s "Harold and Maude." Film Quarterly celebrated it as "one of the best movies to come out of Hollywood in years. It is a love story, a sentimental black comedy, a ludicrous tear-jerker, a grisly social satire."

Bud Cort, Ruth Gordon in "Harold and Maude" (1971)

Bud Cort was born Walter Edward Cox, but since show business already had a Wally Cox…As Bud Cort, he started his film career in 1967 as an extra in "Up the Down Staircase," starring Sandy Dennis, followed by a role as a flower child in 1969’s "Sweet Charity," starring Shirley MacLaine. He did commercials, had a role in the daytime drama "The Doctors," and started performing standup comedy at New York clubs. He was 17, and Lily Tomlin would often drive him home at night. He dated Elaine May’s daughter and studied acting with the venerable Stella Adler. After watching Cort’s standup, director Robert Altman cast him as Private Boone in 1970’s "MASH," followed by the title role in "Brewster McCloud."

In 1979, Cort was driving on the Hollywood Freeway on his way back from a Frank Sinatra concert when he collided with an abandoned car blocking a lane into which he was turning. An arm and a leg were broken, and he sustained a concussion from a fractured skull, while his face was severely lacerated, and his lower lip was nearly severed. He told People magazine in 1984, "When I got up the nerve to look at myself in a mirror for the first time, I screamed. I looked like a monster, with my forehead, face and lip all sewn up. I wanted to die." He endured three operations for plastic surgery (unsatisfied with the results, he said, "I try not to look in mirrors"), substantial hospital bills (which depleted all of his savings), a lost court case (in which he had sought $10 million from the owner of the abandoned car), and the disruption of his career.

His career did resume, and he has remained a sought-after actor for an array of independent, mainstream, and cult films, including "The Secret Diary of Sigmund Freud," "Invaders from Mars," "Dogma" (as John Doe Jersey aka God), "Coyote Ugly," Pollock," "Made," and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou."

Bud Cort peers over Bill Murray's shoulder
in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (2004).

Reflecting on "Harold and Maude" and the onus of his subsequent cult status, Bud Cort said it was both "a blessing and a curse," telling the Los Angeles Times in 1996, "I’ve had my moments where I just cursed that movie and wished I’d never done it." He said, "I was typecast to the point where I didn’t make a film for five years after ‘Harold and Maude.’" He was offered a role in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest" but turned it down because "I just didn’t want to play crazy. I fought certain opportunities off because I wasn’t ready to be a brand name. In retrospect, I should have done everything."

Before his life changed forever, Mark Hamill had a regular gig as the voice of Corey Anders on the Saturday morning cartoon "Jeannie" (above), based loosely on the TV series "I Dream of Jeannie," Corey being the "master" of Jeannie (who was not voiced by Barbara Eden). It was Hamill’s friend, actor Robert Englund (the perennial "Nightmare on Elm Street" killer, Freddy Kruger), who urged him to audition for the role of Luke Skywalker in what would become known as "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope" (at least, that’s the title so for, until George Lucas dicks around with it again for the umpteenth time).

On January 11, 1977, the day before Hamill was scheduled to reshoot a "pickup" scene for "Star Wars," he was in a single-car accident in which he fractured his nose and left cheek bone. He required seven hours of surgery, while a double had to be used for the "Star Wars" reshoot. The 25-year-old actor had recently appeared in a pilot for the upcoming series "Eight Is Enough," and he wanted out of his contract in anticipation of "Star Wars" becoming a hit and leading to further film work. The accident released him from his television obligation (prompting ridiculous rumors that Hamill intentionally had the accident to get out of his contract), and his "Eight Is Enough" role was taken by Grant Goodeve.

Hamill later recounted the accident, "I was way out in the sticks somewhere and there were no cars and no traffic, thank God. I was going about 65 to 70…I was going too fast, and what happened, I think, was that I tried to negotiate an off-ramp and lost control, tumbled over, and went off the road." He remembered, "I read in magazines, ‘Mark Hamill almost killed in auto crash.’ And what prose! ‘As he dragged himself from the wreckage…the flames were higher’…‘and his nose slid off his face.’ And I’m going, ‘Wow, this is great! But I don’t remember it!’"

Hamill said, "I just woke up, and I was in the hospital, and I knew that I had hurt myself very, very, very badly, but I wasn’t really sure. And then someone held a mirror up to my face…I was so upset how badly I had hurt myself." He recalled, "I just felt that my career was over."

His career, of course, was not over, but what happened next has been the topic of nerdish debate for several years - depending on whom you talk to at sci-fi and comic book conventions. Hamill reprised his role as Luke Skywalker in 1980’s "Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back," and in his first scene, he is wounded when he tangles with a woolly, Yeti-like beast called a Wamba. Supposedly, the sequence was designed to "scar" Luke in an attempt to explain the difference in the actor’s appearance from the first film.

Mark Hamill in "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope" (left) and
in "Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back" (right)

On the other hand, there are those who insist that the scene was filmed as planned long before Hamill’s accident. George Lucas himself meekly offered the excuse that Luke’s three years of fighting in rebellion against the Empire (since the events depicted in the previous movie) was sufficient explanation for Luke’s scars, although he did fess up that the scene "helped the situation."

(Speaking of "Star Wars" actors and automobile accidents, Harrison Ford’s signature chin scar stemmed from an accident he had at the age of 20 when his Volvo 544 hit a telephone pole - not from the business end of a bullwhip he cracked at a lion on a circus train as a boy scout.)

Cathy Moriarty (above) made her stunning, Oscar-nominated debut as Vikki LaMotta, the sultry, smoky-voiced wife of boxer Jake LaMaotta (Robert De Niro) in 1980’s "Raging Bull." She was 18, 17 when she auditioned for the role for director Martin Scorsese.

Moriarty followed "Raging Bull" with a steamy role in the 1981 dark comedy "Neighbors," starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, but a 1982 car accident led to a number of back surgeries, and she didn’t appear in another movie until the 1987 bizarre thriller "White of the Eye." She reunited with Robert De Niro in the 2002 comedy "Analyze That," playing a female Mafia boss.

Together again: "Raging Bull" stars Robert De Niro and Cathy Moriarty

What all this comes down to, we guess, is - to turn a phrase usually associated with landing an airplane - any car wreck you can walk away from is a good one.

Lesley Ann Warren as Miss Scarlet, Colleen Camp as Yvette,
Eileen Brennan as Mrs. Peacock in "Clue' (1985)

Eileen Brennan’s post-accident-recuperation-addiction-rehab career was busy with guest appearances on several TV series, including "Magnum P.I.," "Murder, She Wrote," "Newhart," "thirtysomething," "Home Improvement," "Walker, Texas Ranger," "ER," and "Will & Grace," as well as occasional roles in such motion pictures as "Clue," "Texasville," and "Jeepers Creepers" (as a delightfully creepy, shotgun-brandishing cat lady). In 2005’s "Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous," starring Sandra Bullock, she portrayed William Shatner’s mother - never mind the fact that she was a year his junior.

Justin Long, Eileen Brennan, Gina Philips in "Jeepers Creepers" (2001)

While appearing in a 1989 production of "Annie," she fell off the stage and broke a leg. The following year, she was treated for breast cancer. In a 1999 interview, Brennan declared, "I’m here, aren’t I? What else can they do to me? The lesson is, you just take it day by day. That’s what all of us have to do. Some of us just have to learn it the hard way."