Marcia Wallace
Marcia Wallace is an actor, born 1942.
A talk show got her the job. Wallace was a frequent guest on The Merv Griffin Show, which led to a personal request that she appear on The Bob Newhart Show in a part written specifically for her: Carol Kester, the receptionist, from 1972. Tall, red-haired, with a laugh you could identify from the next room, she spent five decades in American television doing the hardest thing in a sitcom, which is reacting well.
The second career is the one most people know without knowing the face. From 1989 she voiced Edna Krabappel on The Simpsons, an elementary school teacher whose default setting is disappointment, and she won an Emmy for it in 1992. The character was retired after her death in 2013 and now appears only through archive recordings, which is a rarity for that show and says something about how specific the voice was.
Everything between the two is steady character work: Mrs. Carruthers on Full House, Mrs. Lyman on ALF, Molly on Murphy Brown, Dodo on Charles in Charge, Mrs. Malloy in Teen Witch, Maggie Hawley on That's My Bush!, and voice parts on Darkwing Duck. Almost all of them are variations on the same reliable comic type, and she never appears to be bored by it.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1985 and spent the rest of her life as an activist on it, which ran alongside the acting rather than replacing it.
Movies (6)
TV (13)
Where to start with Marcia Wallace
Everyone arrives from The Simpsons, and there is no reason to fight that. Edna is one of the great supporting voices in the show's best years, funny mostly because Wallace refuses to add any energy the line does not already have. The Simpsons Movie carries the same character into a feature.
The performance to seek out, though, is The Bob Newhart Show. Carol Kester was written for her and it shows: a receptionist given real jokes rather than reaction shots, in a series built on people being extremely dry at each other.
The rest is comfort television with her doing exactly what she was hired to do. ALF and Murphy Brown are the sturdy ones, Full House is the one people remember from childhood, and Teen Witch is the daft 1989 film, with her as Mrs. Malloy. Darkwing Duck is the other voice credit worth a look.
The Simpsons
Twenty-three years as Edna Krabappel, a teacher who has given up on almost everything and is still very funny about it. The Emmy came in 1992 and the show retired the character rather than recasting it.
The sitcoms
Six years as Carol on The Bob Newhart Show made her, and then two decades of guest work across American sitcoms. The laugh is the through-line: enormous, dry and slightly disappointed in everyone.
The films and game shows
The film work is thin and mostly comic, and she was a fixture on American game shows for years, which is its own kind of career. Teen Witch is the one with a genuine cult behind it.