Struthers is best known for her Emmy-winning performances as Gloria Bunker-Stivic in All in the Family, but the film and television industry appear to have written her off. That’s why she spends so much time, particularly in musicals out of town, though she’d rather work at home in Los Angeles.

She’s currently playing the role of Frau Blücher in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts through October 9th. This is the second time she’s played the role which was introduced to the world by Cloris Leachman in Brooks’ 1974 movie. If you’ve seen the film (or the musical), she’s the character that smokes cigars, plays the violin and makes horses bray at the mere mention of her name. This is an opportunity that means the world to her.

“To finally, finally, all in capital letters, get a great role in a Mel Brooks musical in Los Angeles County is an answer to a very long, nightly prayer,” Struthers said in a phone conversation earlier this week. “It’s mostly been theater for the last 25 years, and I have not been able to get arrested in my own town. It has been a phenomenon that escapes me. I’m here. I’m a Los Angeles resident. I have been available. I don’t know why I am never asked to audition. I am never offered a job here. But, you give me Texas, you give me Maine, you give me Virginia, you give me New York, you give me Connecticut and there’s a job for me, always. They clamor to have me back the next year in something else.”

It was in elementary school that Struthers fell in love with acting and comedy. She was named Best Actress in the 7th Grade Class Play at Faubion Elementary School. She went on to Ulysses S. Grant High School and then Pasadena Playhouse College.

Before All in the Family, she appeared in the film Five Easy Pieces with Jack Nicholson. She was a regular on the Tim Conway Comedy Hour and appeared in The Getaway in 1972. But it would be another 25 years before another film role came around. Television gave Struthers more opportunities with roles in The Gilmore Girls, 9 to 5 and providing the voices for numerous animated shows in addition to guest star parts, but not the bigger parts she’s coveted.

Struthers has an idea why other film and television roles haven’t come her way.

“If you’ve become known to the public, not as a star of something, but as the fourth banana, I believe you remain in that fourth banana status in people’s heads. It’s not age. I just think an actor gets forgotten because there’s so many new ones coming along.“

Young Frankenstein was released in movie theaters while Struthers was appearing in All in the Family. When she saw the film she knew Mel Brooks was one-of-a-kind.

“He is insanely funny. He is the most wacky. He does it all,” she said letting out an infectious laugh as if remembering a line from one of his films. “He’s like Robin Williams on steroids. He just he goes there. He’s fearless.”

Any actress who takes on the role of Frau Blücher in the musical version of Young Frankenstein is given the tremendous gift of a monologue in the middle of the song, He Vas My Boyfriend!

“I wait for that monologue in the middle of that song every night because it’s just delicious,” she offered. “You can mine gold out of Mel Brooks’ writing and you can do all the gestures and make all the faces you want. It all works because the words are there.”

Obviously her comedic timing landed her this part. It was also comedy skills that impressed playwright Neil Simon when Struthers was cast in female version of The Odd Couple as the hyper-neat Florence Unger.

“Neil Simon came into my dressing room and said to me that it was so unusual that I was willing to make all sorts of faces and do physical insanity on stage and my physical comedy was hilarious. He has found that attractive women don’t usually want to do that. Beautiful and pretty actresses do not want to look awkward or unattractive. And I said, ‘Well, I’ve never considered myself beautiful, but I’ve always considered myself character actress. So I will do the backflip and land on my face. I don’t care.'” 

Though she met that legendary playwright, she has never crossed paths with Mel Brooks. That’s something very high on her list of things to do and she was hoping he’d visit this production.

“His best friend was Carl Reiner [father of her All in the Family co-star Rob Reiner]. They had dinner together every night. And when Anne Bancroft [Brooks’ wife] passed away, that became even more important to Mel. Mel would drive over to Carl Reiner’s house every evening. One night he drove over and the housekeeper said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Brooks. Mr. Reiner passed away yesterday.’ I don’t think his life has been the same. If I had a way to reach him, I would want to tell him that I would be happy to have dinner with him every night and hopefully a few times during the evening make him laugh as much as he has made me laugh. I don’t know who he’s hanging out with for dinner, but it worries me.”

She also didn’t meet Leachman until much later even though the two actresses shared a network and were often nominated for Emmy Awards opposite each other.

“I had absolutely no time with her and did not know her at all until many years later when there was an airline called MGM Airlines. It was almost like taking a private jet – maybe had 20 passengers. You had your own room on the plane and I got on it to fly, I think to New York. I was put in one of those, quote unquote rooms with Cloris Leachman. And we talked the whole way. I was fascinated while I was talking with her because she slowly took off her clothes down to wearing a slip. They came in and folded out a table in front of us to serve a meal. When they put the food down and closed the door, she took a bag out beside her seat and put it on the table. She brought her own strange food. She sat there in her underwear, never missing a beat, talking with me and eating things that I couldn’t decipher. I don’t know what that was, but it was fascinating. That was my entire relationship with the ever so wonderfully fabulous Cloris Leachman.”

Struthers has found a way of navigating the ups-and-downs of her career with her charm and sense of humor fully intact. What was meant to be a 30-minute conversation became a thoroughly enjoyable hour that only ended because I had other commitments. But before it did, I asked Struthers what advice she would give the 11 or 12-year-old who accepted that acting award at her elementary school.

She thought long and hard about it before answering.

“You know, you’re not tall, but hold your head high and maybe people won’t notice.”

Of course audiences around the world have taken notice for over fifty years. That’s something that is not lost on Struthers.

“If I just sat down in front of a crystal ball and The Wicked Witch of the West was showing me my life to come, I think it would have confused and overwhelmed me. There has been so much excitement and joy and adventure and privilege.”

In the end, Struthers would just like a few more opportunities to be funny. To be fearless. To make people laugh. And she knows with whom she’d still like to work.

“Isn’t Tyler Perry just the bee’s knees?” She had seen him several days earlier on Chris Wallace’s new show on CNN. “He’s just so elegant and so funny and articulate and brave and driven and kind. He just fascinates me. I think that the only thing that I haven’t done that I would like to do before I, as my friend Carole Cook says, take a taxi, is I would like to be in a Tyler Perry movie.”

At that moment I suggested that in a perfect world scenario she would appear in a Tyler Perry movie that shoots in Los Angeles; she wraps early and has dinner with Mel Brooks.

“Oh, my God. I really then could take a taxi. Yeah, it would be okay. I mean, there’s all sorts of things that I thought I would be that I’m not. And I have made my peace with all that. But I still want to have dinner with Mel Brooks every night if he wants and be in Tyler Perry movies. Those are my 75-year-old woman dreams. I’m supposed to say I want world peace and Putin to drop dead, but I’m being selfish.”

Main photo: Wesley Slade and Sally Struthers in Young Frankenstein (Courtesy La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts)

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