Allyn Ann McLerie

Allyn Ann McLerie (December 1, 1926 – May 21, 2018) was a Canadian-born American actress, singer, and dancer whose Broadway career spanned from 1943 to 1963. Born in Grand-Mère, Quebec, Canada, she was the only child of Vera Alma MacTaggart and Allan Gordon McLerie, an aviator and World War I veteran who died of a heart attack four months before her birth. McLerie and her widowed mother relocated to the United States when she was one year old. She trained in dance at a studio in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and her mother, Vera, died on McLerie's 54th birthday in 1980 at the age of 83.

McLerie made her Broadway debut as a teenager in Kurt Weill's One Touch of Venus and subsequently replaced Sono Osato in the role of Ivy in On the Town. She earned a Theatre World Award in 1949 for her performance as Amy Spettigue in the 1948 Broadway production of Where's Charley? Over the course of her stage career, she worked with prominent Golden Age choreographers including George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, and Jerome Robbins. Her additional Broadway credits include Miss Liberty, the drama Time Limit, Redhead — in which she understudied Gwen Verdon — West Side Story, and The Beast in Me. A life member of The Actors Studio, McLerie remained active in the theatre through 1963.

Her screen career began with the film adaptation of Where's Charley? in 1952, in which she reprised the role of Amy. She appeared as Katie Brown in Calamity Jane (1953) and went on to take roles in Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954), They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Cowboys (1972), The Way We Were (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), and All the President's Men (1976). She also appeared in the television films Born Innocent (1974) and Death Scream (1975).

McLerie built an extensive television career as a character actress, making guest appearances on series including Bonanza, The Waltons, The Love Boat, Barney Miller, Benson, Hart to Hart, St. Elsewhere, and Dynasty. From 1976 to 1978 she played Miss Janet Reubner, Tony Randall's secretary, on The Tony Randall Show. She portrayed Carmen Carlson, the wife of Arthur Carlson, in a recurring role on WKRP in Cincinnati from 1978 to 1982, and appeared in three episodes of Punky Brewster in 1984 alongside her husband, actor George Gaynes. From 1987 to 1991 she played Florence Bickford, the mother of the title character, on The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. Her final screen appearance was in an episode of Brooklyn Bridge in 1993.

In her personal life, McLerie was first married to lyricist and librettist Adolph Green from 1945 until their divorce in May 1953. She subsequently married actor George Gaynes in 1953; the couple had two children and remained married until Gaynes's death in 2016. McLerie died at her home in North Bend, Washington, on May 21, 2018, at the age of 91, from Alzheimer's disease.