As Edna Krabappel on The Simpsons, Marcia Wallace may be the only 4th-grade teacher to have the same student for 24 years. Before that, she was beloved as Carol Kester, the lovelorn, wisecracking secretary on The Bob Newhart Show.
Wallace’s work as the cynical, abused, and sarcastic Mrs. Krabappel won her an Emmy for outstanding voice actress in 1992, and was nominated for outstanding guest actress in a comedy for Murphy Brown, playing the most efficient of the journalist’s constantly changing secretaries — reprising her role as Carol Kester. Adding to the joke, Newhart also made an appearance on that episode.
Born and raised in Creston, Iowa, the daughter of a shopkeeper, she moved to New York after college to pursue stage acting. She started her onscreen career making regular appearances on The Merv Griffin Show, and in 1971 had bit parts on Bewitched, Columbo, and The Brady Bunch.
A year later, The Bob Newhart Show made her a star. Her flame-haired, feisty, and free-spirited receptionist was a counterpoint to Newhart’s buttoned-down psychiatrist. She played the role of Carol Kester in 139 episodes from 1972-1978.
After that, Wallace became a regular on a litany of gameshows such as Match Game, Hollywood Squares, and The $25,000 Pyramid. She guest starred on single episodes of Magnum, P.I., Gimme a Break!, and Murder, She Wrote, among many others, and had a recurring role as Mrs. Caruthers on Full House. She also had a small role in the 1989 film Teen Witch and became a popular voice-over actress in animated shows, playing characters on Darkwing Duck and Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Later, she also co-starred as the housekeeper on the short-lived 2001 Comedy Central spoof of President George W. Bush That’s My Bush!
But it was the droll, chain-smoking, semi-defeated Edna Krabappel on The Simpsons that would give Wallace her defining role. Originally set up as a Nurse Ratched-like nemesis of trouble student Bart Simpson, she evolved into one of the richest, and most nuanced characters on the series.
The actress was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1985 but fought it back and became a prominent activist and advocate for early detection procedures. In 2007, she won the Gilda Radner Courage Award from Roswell Park Cancer Institute for her decades of work for the cause.
She was married for six years to hotel owner Dennis Hawley, until his death in 1992 from pancreatic cancer. The couple had one son, Michael Hawley, and Wallace wrote about her illness, the loss of her husband, and the challenges of motherhood in her 2004 autobiography Don’t Look Back, We’re Not Going That Way. Despite tackling dark issues, readers acclaimed the book for its sense of humor and optimism.
The subtitle for the book was “How I overcame a rocky childhood, a nervous breakdown, breast cancer, widowhood, fat, fire and menopausal motherhood and still manage to count my lucky chickens.”
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This woman was one of my early crushes. Sigh.