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Georgia Engel of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Everybody Loves Raymond” fame has died at 70

This is just shocking.

Georgia Engel, best known as Georgette Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has died.

She was 70 and the cause of death is not known.

Reports The New York Times:

John Quilty, her friend and executor, said the cause was undetermined because Ms. Engel, who was a Christian Scientist, did not consult doctors.

Ms. Engel was twice nominated for an Emmy Award for her work on “Mary Tyler Moore,” which she joined in 1972, during the show’s third season.

She had a high-pitched, innocent voice that, as one writer put it, “sounds like an angel has just sniffed some helium,” and she used it expertly to contrast with the blustery Ted Baxter (played by Ted Knight) and the usually levelheaded Mary Richards, Ms. Moore’s character.

She brought the voice — her real voice — and the comedic skills to other sitcoms after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” ended in 1977, most notably “Everybody Loves Raymond,” where she had a recurring role from 2003 to 2005. She was nominated for an Emmy for each season.

“She could get a laugh on literally every line you gave her,” Philip Rosenthal, the creator of “Raymond,” said in a telephone interview. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Ms. Engel’s castmates on “Mary Tyler Moore” included Betty White, with whom she would go on to work on “The Betty White Show” in the 1970s, and “Hot in Cleveland” this decade.

Although she was best known from television, Ms. Engel began her career onstage, reaching Broadway in 1969 as a replacement player near the end of the run of “Hello, Dolly!” She enjoyed a late-career resurgence in the theater, including a leading role last year in “Half Time,” a musical staged at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey about 60-and-older dancers who perform at halftime of professional basketball games.

Ben Brantley, reviewing that show in The New York Times, noted the echoes of Ms. Engel’s “Mary Tyler Moore” breakthrough in her performance.

“Here she is, some 40 years later and 69 years old, deploying that same perplexed stare and breathy little-girl voice,” he wrote. “And she totally lights up the stage, while bringing bright new inflections to song and dance moves inspired by Biggie Smalls, Tupac Shakur and Run-DMC. I hadn’t been conscious that I was missing Ms. Engel, but evidently I was.”

Ms. Engel also had recurring roles on “Jennifer Slept Here” in the 1980s and “Coach” in the 1990s, among other shows.

In the 1990s she toured with versions of the “Nunsense” musical theater franchise, and in 2003 she joined an all-star 20th-anniversary “Nunsense” touring production that also featured Kaye Ballard, Mimi Hines, Darlene Love and Lee Meriwether.

Ms. Engel was in the original Broadway cast of “The Drowsy Chaperone” in 2006, playing a dotty woman named Mrs. Tottendale. The role required her to aim repeated spit takes at her character’s butler. She ended up doing a lot of spitting: After originating the role on Broadway, she joined the tour and stayed with it for more than a year.

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Comments

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2 Remarks

  1. awww.. sorry to read this.. condolences to her family during this difficult transition.

  2. May God bless her, she was such a gentle, sweet soul and gave us lots of good memories.

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