While her career includes the long running role as “Carol” the receptionist on The Bob Newhart Show and an Emmy winning role as Ms. Krabappel on The Simpsons — 4 of TV Guide's funniest episodes in television history have featured Marcia — her greatest success has been weathering her own stormy life.  Note the title, please!  This is a life lived out to the edges, dominated by a powerful life force and her big personality.

She's been through it all, can share her turbulent life and make us laugh and cry with her along the way.  She's a likely successor to the late Erma Bombeck, a down-to-earth wit who can use the stuff of her own experiences to reach American women and become a fixture in their homes.  Erma did just that, selling millions of books, writing 4,500 newspaper columns and Marcia Wallace has that same voice.  She's another great dame with an eye and ear for our common experience.

Marcia was met with some formidable challenges at birth.  She was born to an unloving mother, an abusive father and not pretty or popular in the Midwest of the 50's.  But she was gifted with talent, tenacity and a big heart.  And, most importantly, an almost congenital inability to feel sorry for herself.  She tells her story – a story with more than its fair share of sadness – with acceptance and humor.  She's learned a lot and learned it the hard way and her story has a meaning for all women but ‘Girlfriends of a Certain Age’ will feel especially inspired by Marcia's lack of self-pity and resilience. More importantly, she has become a national spokesperson for breast cancer awareness, going on the road to tell her story of survival and hope.