Mary Tyler Moore, veteran TV actress, died today at age 80.
She played Laura Petrie on "The Dick Van Dyke Show." Nine years later, she played Mary Richards on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," for seven years. This show won a number of Emmy's, and spawned the spinoffs "Rhoda," Phyllis," and "Lou Grant," also Emmy winners. It also had one of the most memorable series finales of all time. The whole staff, save Ted, was fired. Mary was the last to leave the TV station, and she quietly turned the light off, marking the end of an era.
She later hosted a short-lived variety show, and did a complete change of pace when she played the cold, distant mother in "Ordinary People."
RIP, Mary. You really did make it after all. :(.
She started her tv career in the detective series Richard Diamond, Private Eye as the switchboard operator shown from the legs down. She also played the tiny Happy Hotpoint who plugged Hotpoint refrigerators and appliances in commercials. She broke the wardrobe barrier when she wore Capri pants as Laura Petrie. Her Mary Richards character was a ground breaker as a real and funny female sitcom character in the 1970's who was recovering from a broken romance and moving to Minneapolis and working at Tv station WJM's news department. Moore's MTM Productions produced the spinoffs Rhoda and Phyllis, The White Shadow, The Bob Newhart Show, Newhart, Hill Street Blues, and St. Elsewhere. MTM also produced two animation projects with the Carlton Your Doorman special and the short lived NBC sitcom The Duck Factory that starred Jim Carrey and Scooby Doo voice actor Don Messick in his only live action acting role.
In 2013 the five main female cast members from The Mary Tyler Moore Show reunited to appear together in an episode of Betty White's TVLand series Hot in Cleveland about a ladies bowling league. The article in TV Guide about this reunion said that Mary Tyler Moore could barely stand because of her diabetes. (The article also said that it would probably be the last time the five of them would be together because of MTM's diabetes, Valerie Harper's brain cancer, and the advanced ages of Betty White and Cloris Leachman. Looks like they were right.)
In 1980, Mary Tyler Moore would star on Broadway in the lead role in Who's Life Is It Anyway? The part she played as a quadriplegic contemplating death is grimly prescient now. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2010/03/mary-tyler-moore-on-broadway.html
Too bad...She was a pinnacle of television in the 60's and 70's. She even had her own production studio named MTM.
Didn't she provide voice-over for cartoons?
If she did, they'd be listed in her filmography.
