I’m a little disappointed to discover that Suzanne Pleshette is not a Disney Legend. Oh, I know—I’m the only person who thinks of her from her work with Disney first. (I’m just not all that into Bob Newhart.) But so what? Betty White is a Disney Legend, and most people are unaware that The Golden Girls is technically through Disney. Pleshette did three movies for them, and if they aren’t necessarily Disney’s best-regarded, at least two of them are genuinely pretty entertaining. It’s been too long since I’ve seen The Ugly Dachshund for me to have an opinion on that right now.

Pleshette was a go-to for bright, attractive, acerbic women. It’s no wonder that Hitchcock wanted her for the role of Lil in Marnie, that she was considered for Laura Petrie in The Dick Van Dyke Show. She was such a great foil for Dean Jones that my brain for years inserted her into The Love Bug. It’s a shame that I consider Support Your Local Gunfighter to be a lesser movie, since she’s a great foil for James Garner in that one as well. That’s basically the thing she did best—work really well opposite her male costars.

Don’t get me wrong; I have no doubt that she could’ve carried a movie on her own. Anyone who could make Swinging London-era Ian McShane uncertain of his chances was capable of holding her own. But the roles that really made her famous were her opposite amusing men, and her job was often to take them down a peg. She was a consummate straight woman.

What’s more, she did it while still being fun herself. Look at her in Blackbeard’s Ghost, which I strongly encourage watching for a lot of reasons. Yes, she’s convinced that Dean Jones as Steve Walker is having a breakdown, but be fair—she doesn’t know she’s in a Disney movie, and he’s being haunted by Peter Ustinov as Blackbeard. Wouldn’t you think he’s having a breakdown? And yet during the track meet scene, she’s clearly delighted to watch Godolphin College win and the local mobster get his comeuppance.

I have a bit of a habit of casting people I write about in movies I wish got made, and I really would have liked to have seen Pleshette as a lead. Not the put-upon wife. Not the woman to be wooed. The actual main character, who drives the plot through her own actions and force of will. It didn’t happen, because she was acting after Women’s Pictures stopped being a force in Hollywood. I’ll have to settle for watching her take down the men who were actually the leads in the movies.

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