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Thelma Leeds
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Thelma Leeds aka Thelma Bernstein (born Thelma Goodman circa 1911 - d. May 27 2006), was an American actress.
She was the mother of actor/director Albert Brooks, Bob Einstein (TV's Super Dave Osborne), and Clifford Einstein, chairman of Dailey & Associates Advertising in West Hollywood, California and chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
In the early 1930s, Leeds sang
light opera on the radio. She also performed in
New York nightclubs as Thelma Goodman, her birth name. One night in the mid-1930s a
RKO talent scout caught her nightclub act. The studio signed her to a contract and gave her the name
Thelma Leeds.
She had an uncredited role in the 1936 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical Follow the Fleet. She later had supporting roles in The Toast of New York and New Faces of 1937.
She met her husband Harry Einstein, a dialect comedian, while filming New Faces of 1937. Leeds retired from show business after marrying Einstein in 1937. Two years after Einstein's death in 1958, she married Irving "Bernie" Bernstein. He died in 1983.
In 1981 Leeds played Albert Brooks' mother in Modern Romance. She reprtedly was the inspiration for Brooks' 1996 comedy Mother, in which Debbie Reynolds played the title role.
"I think mom was bugged that she couldn't play (Brooks' mother in
Mother)," Clifford Einstein told the
Los Angeles Times. "She loved to laugh at herself and loved the portrayal of
Mother that, while not her story, was certainly loosely based on her: the kind of mother that loves to control everything."
Leeds died at her home in Beverly Hills, California of natural causes, aged 95.
