Actress, singer, and dancer Patty Maloney, 89, died on March 31. At 3’11’, she had a hard time getting good roles, but managed to get a lot of “walking punchline” roles. Her many vehicles included Far-Out Space Nuts, The Brady Bunch Variety Hour (as a Disco Duck, omigawd), Charlie’s Angels, Rhoda, The Love Boat, Ernest Saves Christmas, The Addams Family, Star Trek: Voyager, and My Name is Earl. Maloney’s best showcase was as one of Goldie Hawn’s coworkers in Swing Shift; she also played Chewbacca’s child Lumpy in the legendarily awful Star Wars Holiday Special. Of her Lumpy costume, she recalled to interviewer SKot Kirkwood, “It wasn't that uncomfortable, it was just extremely warm, very very warm. There was hardly any place to really breathe because the mouth needed to be closed a lot of the time . . . they had someone standing there that would open the mouth for me and put a straw through so that I could breathe and get some good clean oxygen! But they were great, they were right with me the whole time.”
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