Marcia Wallace in a still from The Bob Newhart Show.
Los Angeles:
Actress Marcia Wallace, the voice behind the scoffing schoolteacher Edna Krabappel on the hit TV series The Simpsons, has died. She was 70.
Wallace, who earlier played the quick-witted receptionist on The Bob Newhart Show, died following a long battle with an unspecified illness at her home in Los Angeles, surrounded by her family, reported TMZ online.
"I was tremendously saddened to learn this morning of the passing of the brilliant and gracious Marcia Wallace. She was beloved by all at The Simpsons and we intend to retire her irreplaceable character," said Al Jean, The Simpsons executive producer, in a statement.
"Cheers to the hilarious, kind, fab Marcia Wallace, who has taken her leave of us. Heaven is now a much funnier place because of you, Marcia," Yeardley Smith, who voices Lisa Simpson, wrote on Twitter.
Wallace won an Emmy Award for her voice work as Ms Krabappel in the 1992 The Simpsons' episode "Bart the Lover."
After the elementary school teacher gives Bart a month of detention, he gets his revenge by responding to her newspaper singles ad.
That was her 10th of 177 episodes on the series.
On Newhart, which aired on CBS from 1972 to 1978, Wallace played Carol Kester, the wise-cracking, independent receptionist in a Chicago high rise that housed the offices of psychologist Bob Hartley (Newhart) and orthodontist Jerry Robinson (Peter Bonerz).
She was in 139 of the show's 142 episodes.
In addition to her well-known role on The Simpsons and The Bob Newhart Show throughout the 1970's, she also featured on shows as Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, Murder She Wrote and Full House.
Wallace, who earlier played the quick-witted receptionist on The Bob Newhart Show, died following a long battle with an unspecified illness at her home in Los Angeles, surrounded by her family, reported TMZ online.
"I was tremendously saddened to learn this morning of the passing of the brilliant and gracious Marcia Wallace. She was beloved by all at The Simpsons and we intend to retire her irreplaceable character," said Al Jean, The Simpsons executive producer, in a statement.
"Cheers to the hilarious, kind, fab Marcia Wallace, who has taken her leave of us. Heaven is now a much funnier place because of you, Marcia," Yeardley Smith, who voices Lisa Simpson, wrote on Twitter.
Wallace won an Emmy Award for her voice work as Ms Krabappel in the 1992 The Simpsons' episode "Bart the Lover."
After the elementary school teacher gives Bart a month of detention, he gets his revenge by responding to her newspaper singles ad.
That was her 10th of 177 episodes on the series.
On Newhart, which aired on CBS from 1972 to 1978, Wallace played Carol Kester, the wise-cracking, independent receptionist in a Chicago high rise that housed the offices of psychologist Bob Hartley (Newhart) and orthodontist Jerry Robinson (Peter Bonerz).
She was in 139 of the show's 142 episodes.
In addition to her well-known role on The Simpsons and The Bob Newhart Show throughout the 1970's, she also featured on shows as Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, Murder She Wrote and Full House.
