In a touching tribute published in a Hollywood trade, writer Christopher Lloyd has opened up on the passing of his wife Arleen Sorkin, the inspiration and initial voice of DC’s Harley Quinn. Shared on the Variety website Saturday morning, Lloyd wrote at length about his relationship with Sorkin, Lloyd recalled some of the most fond memories he shared with his late partner, especially her charitable passions.
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“When you arrive at home on a Tuesday evening and have to double-check your own address because there is a line of valet parkers in front, one of whom hands you a ticket, and when you proceed into your home of find a crowd of well-dressed people, most of whom you do not know, and an orangutan sitting on your chair at the head of the table – when all of this happens and you’re not really that surprised, there is a better than average chance that you are married to Arleen Sorkin,” Lloyd wrote.
He added elsewhere, ” I came to learn that she worried about everyone. Which often meant the bulk buying of items that ‘someone might need.’ While I did grow accustomed to opening my front door and stepping into, say, a concert given by a newly out of the closet, 300-pound former NFL lineman whose singing aspiration she had decided to champion, I never quite got used to opening a cabinet door and having 12 defibrillators fall out (“who knows who might need one — they’re good to have!”). Other cabinets held quantities of baldness-reversing combs, battery-powered fly swatters, reversible belts with digital message display (“could help someone break the ice on a first date”). As a comedy writer I should be ashamed to admit I missed the irony when an opened closet nearly buried me alive under 15 earthquake preparedness kits.”
Lloyd then evoked one of Sorkin’s most popular roles to date, the debut of Quinn on Batman: The Animated Series.
“But her spirit never flagged. She loved people, believed in them,” the writer concluded. “I’m not sure Harley Quinn, the now world-famous character based upon Arleen and whose original voice she provided, wasn’t defined by that very quality, that achy loyalty, an unwillingness not to lead with her heart, come what may.”
Sorkin passed on August 27th of complications from pneumonia and multiple sclerosis. She was 67. She’s survived by her husband and their two sons, Eli and Owen.
