Not Carol, his dream date was with Marcia. Reverend Jim was spacey, but not so much so that he didn’t realize that The Bob Newhart Show was fiction. But he was a huge fan and didn’t know why Marcia’s character wasn’t featured more prominently.
I suppose it wouldn’t have been out of the question. Some TV shows are set in the same fictional universe, but Taxi and The Bob Newhart Show are not.
Whoa, for real? Damn, it’s been a long time since I’ve watched this show.
Anyway, RIP Marcia Wallace.
Trivia: She was on The Simpsons from the very beginning. The very first episode made, Bart the Genius*****, featured her not only as Mrs. Krabapple but also as Bart’s teacher at the gifted school.
*****Technically it was the *second *episode made because the first, Some Enchanted Evening, was of such poor animation quality that it was sent back to be redone and didn’t air until the end of season one…
Didn’t know it was her voice on the Simpsons but always thought it sounded familiar. Dang.
She definitely will be missed on The Simpsons. My condolences to Ned, Rod & Tod.
This. Not being a Simpsons fan, my reaction to the headline was, “Oh, that’s too bad.” When I figured out it was Marcia, my reaction was a heartfelt, “Awwww, shit!”
Her turn on Murphy Brown was television brilliance.
When the local news radio station first reported this, the newscaster referred to “Mrs. (long pause) Crab Apple.”
Obviously not a Simpsons fan.
Or possibly a big Simpsons fan: I remember hearing on the Simpsons DVD commentary that the joke was that people would think her name was Crab Apple. The writers were always surprised that no one seemed to notice.
Probably, though, they just didn’t know the character.
Incidentally, I don’t think they should retire or kill off Edna. I don’t think it would be disrespectful to Wallace’s memory to get a new voice actor, and I would think most people would want their characters to live on. One of the voice actors for South Park died early in that show’s run (I believe she voiced Kyle’s mom) and though they didn’t have the characters she played on for a few episodes, eventually they replaced her.
I heard the overnight national ABC radio news also call the character “crab apple”.
Yeah, although years & years later one of the students (Milhouse gone bad I think) finally calls her that, and Nelson goes, “Crab-apple!?! I never thought of that!”, they actually first briefly mentioned it in the great second season episode One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish where Homer thinks he’s going to die because he’s eaten fugu poison. The inexperienced assistant chef had to prepare it because the head chef is outside making out with Mrs. Krabapple in her car. You don’t actually see her but he clearly says, “Oh Miss Crab-apple!”, the joke being he spoke in broken Chinese ‘Engrish’ and yet he got that right!
That was Mary Kay Bergman (and it was Cartman’s mom). She did a lot of VO work before doing South Park. In fact, because she worked for Disney voicing Snow White, she briefly used the pseudonym ‘Shannon Cassidy’ when she started on South Park. She was afraid that because SP was so offensive it might have cost her her Disney job. She suffered from life-long clinical depression and shot herself right at the height of SP-mania (right after the film came out). Fortunately she deliberately voiced Mrs. Cartman, who for quite a awhile was a crack-whore slut, in a generic 50s, sweet, ‘apple pie-baking’ mom voice. The woman who took over replicated it near perfectly.
That’s what I came in to say.
RIP Marcia.
[OT]Mary Kay Bergman did play most of the female characters on South Park. She played Liane Cartman, Sheila Broflovski, Sharon Marsh, Shelly, Mrs. MacCormack, Wendy, and Ms. Crabtree.[/OT]
I was very sad to hear this. Mrs. Krabappel was one of my favorite characters on the show- when I started watching the Simpsons she reminded me of some of the most apathetic, soul-dead teachers I’d had. Unlike them she did at least have a twisted sense of humor and once in a while a human side. I’ve had mixed feelings on the way a lot of the Simpsons characters have changed over the years - sometimes when they gain complexity the core of the character gets a little diluted - but Skinner and Krabappel were great together, and I found I was very happy for Mrs. K when she got a chance to be happy with Flanders. That was an inspired pairing, I thought. The writing was usually great but I think it was Wallace’s performance that made you believe this cynical character really had a soul and that made you root for her. She deserved a break after teaching Bart for 25 years. I assume she recorded the rest of the season’s worth of episodes, give or take, but at some point it’s going to be very different when Bart is in class.
Yeah, it’s going to be a lot harder to dodge the issue like they did Phil Hartman’s characters or Lunchlady Doris. Of course depending on the recording schedule it’s unlikely to be an issue until late in next season.
D’Oh!***
Ditto. RIP, Marcia. 
I’m curious if they’ll re-voice her character. As far as I can remember The Simpsons has never done that even with secondary semi-regular characters. Apu’s wife Manjula was originally done by SNL-vet Jan Hooks. Sometimes she’s come back and voiced her but more often they’ve just had Tress MacNeile do her. When Phil Hartman died they retired both Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz (they made Gil the lawyer) out of respect for him. Of course his death was extra tragic. And of course the reverse happened with Maude Flanders. The actress who voiced her, Maggie Roswell, just wanted a small raise to cover her plane fare but the studio decided to kill off her character instead!
Personally I just can’t picture anyone else doing Mrs Krabapple’s voice…
They’ve said they won’t. They actually unretired Lunchlady Doris a while ago (with Tress MacNeille doing the voice), and since they only did it a couple of times and none of them were all that crucial, I don’t know why they bothered.
Bart the Genius wasn’t the first aired, though. That was Simpsons Roasting On an Open Fire. (Discounting the Ullman shorts, obviously)
Marcia Mitzman Gaven voiced Maude in a few episodes before they killed the latter off.