She was best known as the mom on Everybody Loves Raymond, a show I consider one of the top five comedies of all-time. She passed away yesterday at the age of 90.
I had one encounter with Doris during my radio days. My writing partner Dave and I wrote a script for Everybody Loves Raymond, and during a CBS media tour in Los Angeles, tried to give it to her to see what she thought. She reacted like she was being given something radioactive. That's when I learned the Hollywood rule about scripts. No one will take an unsolicited script like that for fear of being sued if they came up with something similar. (I still have that script somewhere...I should dig it out and post a scene or two. It obviously doesn't matter anymore--the show has been off the air for more than a decade.)
Other than the radioactive horror, she was actually very nice. And quite funny. Her character in the show was simply tremendous...
