Goodman Tells No Tales

Dody Goodman, professional twit, has died at the age of 93. With a voice she described as a “tweetie pie cartoon bird strangling on peanut butter,” she made a career for herself by playing the delightfully unaware airhead, starting as a frequent guest on The Jack Paar Show before the cranky old bastard got tired of being upstaged, then on stage, and in films, TV guest stints and voice overs. Best known roles included Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’s mother mother who talked to plants and slept with hot-air balloonists who crashed into her house, Rydell High’s secretary Blanche in Grease, the voice of neighbor Miss Miller on The Chipmunks cartoon, and, if you’re like me, and I know I am, Phillip Drummond’s beloved sister Sophia in a handful of Diff’rent Strokes episodes and one of Henry Warnimont’s neighbors on Punky Brewster.