Mary Jo Catlett
American actress

Mary Jo Catlett (born September 2, 1938) is an American actress and comedian. She is a main cast member on the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants, providing the voice of Mrs. Puff. She is also known for originating the role of Ernestina in the 1964 Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! and for playing Pearl Gallagher, the third housekeeper on Diff'rent Strokes.
Catlett was born in Denver, Colorado, where she performed in a variety of plays and eventually directed a company of Pirates of Penzance. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she performed in Off-Broadway and Broadway musicals, often taking lighthearted, humorous roles. Since the late 1960s, Catlett has appeared in television shows such as M*A*S*H, The Dukes of Hazzard, and General Hospital. Catlett received Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards in 1978 and 1980, a nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical at the Ovation Awards in 1995, and a Daytime Emmy Award nomination in 1990.
In 1998, Catlett joined the main cast of the then-upcoming Nickelodeon cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants as the voice of Mrs.
The public source identifies “Mary Jo Catlett” as american actress. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mary, Catlett and American.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q674255. VIAF identifies the subject as 76504398. The Library of Congress control number is n86140020. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1964, 1978 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mary Jo Catlett” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.