Actress Nancy Walker, the busybody Jewish mother on television's "Rhoda" and the wisecracking waitress in commercials for the "quicker-picker-upper" paper towel, has died of lung cancer at 69.
Walker died at her Studio City home on Wednesday.The elfin redhead won an Emmy nomination in 1975 for her "Rhoda" role as Ida Morgenstern, who drove TV daughter Valerie Harper crazy with well-intentioned advice.
"I truly feel like I've lost a relative," said Harper, who starred as Rhoda Morgenstern from 1974 to 1978. "She was as good as it gets in terms of performing. She could get a laugh, as they say, when it was blood from a stone."
Walker was also famous as Rosie, hawking Bounty paper towels - "the quicker-picker-upper" - in TV commercials.
Most recently she co-starred in the Fox Broadcasting Co. comedy "True Colors" as a Jewish mother whose daughter is married to a black man. She had just finished the season's last episode, said family friend Frank Liberman.
She won three Emmy nominations in the 1970s for her role as Mildred, the outspoken housekeeper on "McMillan and Wife." The series starred Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James.
Walker was one of the few women to direct and act on Broadway and TV.
In 1956 she made her Broadway directing debut with "UTBU," starring Thelma Ritter and Tony Randall. Beginning in the 1970s, she directed episodes of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Rhoda" and "Alice."
She appeared in the movies "Stand Up and Be Counted" (1972), "Forty Carats" (1973) and "Murder By Death" (1976).
In 1976, after "Rhoda" and "McMillan and Wife," Walker had two flop TV series in one season - "The Nancy Walker Show" and "Blansky's Beauties."