Oh, I could pick a different image. On the other hand, she’s one of the many Working Actors we’ve covered over the years, and most of her appearances are minor. It’s actually possible she’s been to the house I grew up in; she’s in Anywhere But Here, and I haven’t seen it recently enough to know who “Jack” is, much less “Jack’s mother,” and I don’t know if that puts her in the part that was filmed there. It’s also possible she’s been not terribly far away from that, because Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis was filmed a mile and a half from where I grew up, and she was in that. But while I have actually seen it, because my mom liked Dobie Gillis, I haven’t seen it in decades.

Her first language was Yiddish. She was born in Chicago. And that’s practically all the information available about her on my usual sources. I’m able to find out from her Variety obituary that she was over thirty when she started acting. There’s a tribute to her on an MST3K fan page. And she was buried in Mount Sinai Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills. Delightfully, her tombstone bears the epitaph, “If all the world is a stage, I need better lighting.”

So many people just slip through the cracks. I wouldn’t remember her if she hadn’t played Eakian’s grandmother. It’s a minor role in a busy movie. She’s the driving force behind a turning point, the reason Shoop has to start teaching properly. It’s clear that she wants the best for her wayward grandson, and if she’s a fearsome presence, well, one is needed at that point. One who isn’t doing things out of spite but because it’s time we all move on and do things properly instead of going to petting zoos.

I think it tells you something about her that she’s miscredited on an episode of Parks and Rec; she’s listed as “Lilliam Adams.” Even in 2010, after literally decades of acting and in an era where people are considerably more careful about that sort of thing, Adams was so minor an actress that such a major mistake could slip through. I could understand leaving out an “l,” but getting an entire letter wrong is just not acceptable. You feel sorry for her, because that just feels disrespectful.

The MST3K fan base remembers her, because the MST3K fan base remembers all sorts of random people. She was sixth-billed in Tormented, one of the few sympathetic characters. And that’s the sort of thing that gets people to remember you for the rest of your life. She’s actually on several shows’ wikis, because several shows have that sort of devoted fan base. It’s just that none of them have any more information about her than I do.

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