Dena Dietrich from the "It's Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature" margarine commercials is dead to me!

Margarine probably killed her.

Omg! What happened?!

Gloria on Golden Girls

“It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature” sounds like a DL motto to me!

She was fighting an oil rig fire in the Gulf of Mexico. She was almost 92, R2!

She was scalded to death by a malfunctioning margarine fountain.

R6 better than an olestra fountain

Has her mother Marlene commented?

She was fabulous as Janet Green's awful mom on All My Children.

R1 The original Elsie, the Borden Cow, was killed in a truck accident in the 1940s. There's a headstone at the Walker-Gordon Dairy in Plainsboro, New Jersey where she lived.

Can I have her flower crown?

She was only 91?! Jesus, she looked 60-something 50 years ago

No survivors?

I always knew Mother Nature was a big ol' dyke

R13, Funny that you should say that, because I was just about to say that when I lived in LA (which was around the time that her mother-nature commercial ran), I briefly dated a guy who told me that she was his landlord, and she was a lesbian.

Mother Nature was family!

I just saw her on Emergency today. She was everywhere in the seventies.

Posters have said she was lesbian here in the past.

She bearded for James Coco back in the 70s.

She made a lot of money off of those Mother Nature commercials/ads, which ran for almost a full decade, along with steady episodic TV work for decades. So she lived comfortably in her later years after retiring.

I ate her out several times with real butter.

[quote] The original Elsie, the Borden Cow, was killed in a truck accident in the 1940s. There's a headstone at the Walker-Gordon Dairy in Plainsboro, New Jersey where she lived.

I'm available for the bio-pic!

If she had lived 11 more days she would have been 92.

Not quite sure what's going on in this photo!

She voiced a friend of Tilly on the Escape from Party Island episode of King of the Hill. Tilly's other friends being voiced by Betty White, Uta Hagen and Phyllis Diller.

Interview

The last few years of her life, she resided

A funny short film she made while residing at The Motion Picture and Television Fund home.

R22 That was great--thanks for posting.

So young...

I actually thought she'd already died.

But she was great, and a flavor of personality we may never see again.

That Skip guy in the r22 interview is EXACTLY like Martin Short's interviewer character, Jiminy Glick! That has got to be who Short based Jiminy on.

I sodomized her because Dorothy wouldn’t do that.

She played Karen Valentine’s bitchy mother in law in the Disney film North Avenue Irregulars. The guy who played her son was a big queen who never acted again-his name was Dick Fuchs.

She also played Janet and Natalie’s mother from hell on All My Children.

So young!

I remember James Coco going on the Tonight Show in the 70s and telling Johnny Carson that he was engaged -- to Dena. He seemed so sincere, and it was very sad, but Carson congratulated him and went along with the ruse.

I always wondered what forced Coco to do that -- family or professional pressure?

Here they are in an NBC teleplay around that time.

Chiffon was discontinued in 2002 for production in the US and Canada. However, it can still be purchased in the Caribbean.

R20 That is from her guest-star role as a "rogue space trader named Marcia" in the "My Favorite Marcia" episode of "Space Academy".

When you think it's butter

but it's SNOT

After months of endless screeching marys nonstop covid threads,

it is so nice to fall into a Dena Dietrich hole.

Right on the tail off last night's Lola Falana hole.

Thank you Datalounge and youtube for the tributes to these two great dames!

She got me off the monkey!

She was a pussy hound.

Does show business even have these types of actors anymore? Great old character actors, male and female, that played all the necessary supporting roles in shows and movies...the problematic relatives and nosy neighbors and saucy servants. They came in all shapes and sizes except "normal" or "average". They were usually odd looking or at most, off-beat. The women might be "handsome" while some of the men were a bit too "pretty".

Now, EVERYONE on TV is good looking and very fit. You seldom see oddballs or fatties or middle aged/old people who actually look old.

It's a bit of a bore, really. Bring back the Character Actor!

Now who is going to play Gloria in The Golden Girls revival!?!

It was, r28...

I just finished watching Hazel with Miss Maudie Prickett as Rosie.

The episode I'm watching now has Norma Varden. Even their names go with their character role niches.

Those commercials were brilliant. They got the message across, and were entertaining and memorable.

I swear I still think of them when buying butter... I-I mean margarine.

As a margarine spokeswoman, she was no Eleanor Roosevelt.

"I remember James Coco going on the Tonight Show in the 70s and telling Johnny Carson that he was engaged -- to Dena. He seemed so sincere, and it was very sad, but Carson congratulated him and went along with the ruse."

That's like when Paul Lynde "dated" lily Tomlin

R22, thank you for sharing the video. Dena Dietrich was so warm and friendly. She told marvelous stories about her career and co-stars.

She was from Pittsburgh. Wonder if she partook of the famous Double Digit Dicks of the area?

R31, meet R26...

Did she and David Dinkins have a suicide pact?

No Dena Dietrich thread would be complete without this pic. It was a meme for quite awhile.

R51 "No, I'd be a REAL teacher."

R51 you are absolutely right, which is why it was the THIRD post in the thread!

But we still have Josephine the Plumber.

Jane was a doll...

Great post r39. I miss quirky character actors. For decades, Hollywood had lots of character actors who looked like real people and they filled lots of roles. Now everybody looks very "LA," even middle-aged and older actors. It kind of takes you out of the story when something is set in Small Town USA and yet everybody in it looks trim and fit and gorgeous with obvious cosmetic enhancements.

"She was from Pittsburgh"

Squirrel Hill?

[quote]Great post [R39]. I miss quirky character actors. For decades, Hollywood had lots of character actors who looked like real people and they filled lots of roles. Now everybody looks very "LA," even middle-aged and older actors. It kind of takes you out of the story when something is set in Small Town USA and yet everybody in it looks trim and fit and gorgeous with obvious cosmetic enhancements.

Damn right. We could've used a man like Mr. Whipple to help us through the toilet paper shortages of 2020.

YEEEESSSS???

It’s not nice to fool mother!

r39 Mary Wickes is a great example of the old-time character actor. A very quirky-looking woman who had a career that lasted for sixty or so years playing the types of roles you described. Offhand, I can't think of a single modern actress who is like that.

[quote]Offhand, I can't think of a single modern actress who is like that.

Fuck you!

I liked the original Gloria better.

Anna Wolek Craig played the original Gloria.

I thought Sally Struthers did.