Mary Tyler Moore


A leggy reed-thin smiler who played the ideal all-American wife, the funny and attractive Laura Petrie on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" from '61-'66, she then graduated to a musical star with Thoroughly Modern Millie in '66, and later she became an Elvis Chick in the King's last film, Change of Habit. Ultimately Mary became a TV legend in the early '70s as the quintessential single career gal in her own "Mary Tyler Moore Show" and then as producer of popular TV shows like "Hill Street Blues" and "St. Elsewhere," despite living a life full of traumas and turmoil.


BIRTH: Mary was born in '36, so she was a youthful 24 and a symbol of young, energetic Americans as JFK's Camelot years began in '60. Her exotic birthplace: Flatbush, Brooklyn. Her moniker: Originally planning to be billed simply as Mary Moore, she added Tyler because there were already six Mary Moore's listed in the Screen Actors Guild.

IMPACT ON THE '60s: In the '60s Mary helped to change the history of TV with "The Dick Van Dyke Show." She herself described what she did that was important: "Up until 'The Dick Van Dyke Show,' the wives were extensions of their husbands, they weren't people in their own right, but Laura was a person in her own right." Originally "The DVD Show" was conceived as a vehicle for Carl Reiner, instead he went behind the scenes to show what his experiences were like when he was a writer on the classic "Your Show of Shows." "The DVD Show" built its popularity slowly but after two years was a huge hit. It stopped production in '66 at the height of its popularity because the cast was afraid the show would get stale. Later, Mary's impact was so strong that even the obscure people around her got famous, as exemplified by Hazel Frederick, who was the mesmerized bystander watching Mary toss her hat during the opening credits of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." That famous "hat toss" in the street was improvised on a freezing Minneapolis day while the crew waited for the light to change. Hazel happened to be shopping in downtown Minneapolis that day and was caught on film watching the improbable scene unfold. You can't miss her if you watch the scene, Hazel's in a green coat and a scarf. Hazel herself didn't know she was shown until the show had been running three weeks, she was spotted by a neighbor who eventually told her family. Based on that quick exposure, Hazel made several public-speaking appearances, and when Hazel died in December '99, national newspapers ran her obituary!

CAREER IN THE '60s: Mary worked all decade, though the first half has all her proudest accomplishments. Her movie debut came in 1961's X-15 with Charles Bronson, directed by Richard Donner, who would go on to direct The Omen and the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies. Then she did four more small-to-medium movies before Change of Habit in '69: Thoroughly Modern Millie with Julie Andrews in '67, Don't Just Stand There in '68, What's So Bad About Feeling Good in '68, and Run a Crooked Mile in '69. However, in the A&E "Biography" about her, Change of Habit (in which she played a nun and Elvis played an inner-city doctor) and most of her other late-'60s movies aren't even mentioned because they were so slight (in Leonard Maltin's review of Change of Habit, he called it "substandard drama"). Mary also made a splash on Broadway in '66 as the star of a musical version of Breakfast at Tiffany's, written by Truman Capote and with Richard Chamberlain as the young writer, but the show flopped and she got the first bad reviews of her career.

CAREER OUTSIDE THE '60s: Mary's family moved from cold N.Y to sunny L.A. in '46, when Mary was still a child. She craved attention and was entertaining people at a young age. Her first job came when she was eighteen, she was "Happy Hotpoint," the dancing pixie in the national Hotpoint TV commercials. Mary almost got the role of a daughter on "The Danny Thomas Show," but the producers decided she didn't look like she'd be related to Danny. Her first major role was in '59 as "Sam," the secretary to suave David Janssen in "Richard Diamond, Private Detective," but we never saw her face, only her gams and hands while she spoke in a deep, breathy voice. She was making $90 a week, asked for $100, and promptly got fired, but she soon landed roles on "77 Sunset Strip" and also on Broadway before "The DVD Show" in '60. After the '60s, of course, she was best-known as the star and producer of one of TV's all-time great shows, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" which made her millions and brought her a string of Emmy Awards. She got it when she sang and danced on a Dick Van Dyke special in '69, and impressed CBS execs decided to give her a series. She started her MTM Enterprises, run by husband Grant Tinker, to produce it. Originally "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" had her character as a divorcee, but the network didn't think that was funny, and the network also thought that audiences would think she had divorced Dick Van Dyke, so they changed her status to merely "single." The show was as notable for its humanity as for its humor, and Mary wisely assembled a stellar ensemble cast that played characters who were both flawed and funny: scene-stealer Ted Knight played the confused anchor, Ted Baxter, Gavin "Love Boat" MacLeod played newswriter Murray Slaughter, Ed Asner played Mary's boss, Lou Grant, Valerie Harper and Cloris Leachman played Mary's friends, Rhoda Morgenstern and Phyllis Lindstrom (Asner, Harper, and Leachman all had spin-off shows produced by MTM). By the way, MTM's logo of a meowing kitty was a spoof of MGM's powerful lion's roar. In '80 Robert Redford gave her the departure role as the bitter, hard mom in his first directorial effort, Ordinary People, and she got nominated for an Oscar. She then returned to Broadway and rave reviews with the play Whose Life Is It Anyway? She's also the person who brought David Letterman to television, using him in the background on her shows, which is why she regularly turns up on HIS show. In '95 she wrote her autobiography, After All, a frank examination of her life's triumphs and tragedies. In early 2000 she and Valerie Harper reprised their Mary and Rhoda roles for a popular TV movie about their further adventures as grown women with kids.

TALENT: Mary was a rare quadruple threat who could act, sing, dance, and produce. During the '60s her acting on "The DVD Show" was nominated for an Emmy in '63 and she won it in '64 and '66. She also won the Golden Globe in '65 as Best TV Star. Dick Van Dyke called her "the perfect straight man, she made me funny." Mary was a perennial Emmy nominee throughout the '70s, with Lead Actress nominations every year from '71-'77 and wins in '73, '74, and '76. She got nominations for her performances in TV movies in '79, '85, and '88, and she won an acting Emmy for "Stolen Babies" in '93. In contrast to all the kudos, based on Change of Habit, Mary was given a Golden Turkey Award by authors Harry and Michael Medved in '81, the award category was "Worst Performance by an Actor or Actress as a Clergyman or Nun." She was elected to the Television Hall of Fame in '85. And in December 2001 Biography magazine chose her as one of fifty "American Classics," along with such luminaries as Elvis, Frank Sinatra, and Amelia Earhart. By the way, in that same issue Mary named what she thought was "the greatest creation in television history": the Lucy Ricardo character from "I Love Lucy."

HER '60s LOOK: With that great wide smile and bouncy hair, she was pretty without being devastatingly beautiful, which made it easier for contemporary women to identify with her. She looked especially adorable when she was crying, all vulnerable and emotional; in fact, some of "The DVD Show's" funniest moments came when Mary held in, then gave in to, total sobbing. For this she says "I copied Nanette Fabray, I out and out admit it," thus she would almost hyperventilate when she cried (actress Fabray played Mary's mom on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and she is the aunt of Shelley Fabares. Mary also had two of the most famous gams in the biz, on par with those belonging to Juliet Prowse, who like Mary was a dancer. In '63's Movie Life Yearbook her stats were given as 5' 2" and 100 pounds, 35-23-34. Of the clothes Laura Petrie wore on "The DVD Show," she said, "I will take credit for this -- I was the one who said 'this is the way she's gonna look,' and I don't wear frocks," thus she sported around in clingy tights and capri pants, showing off her slender shape to great effect.

LIFESTYLE: Mary was married for nearly the entire decade, first to Richard Meeker, "the boy next door," whom she had married in the mid-'50s when she was 18. With him she immediately had a son, Richie, who was born in '56. However, in the mid-'60s her career came between them and they separated, but she quickly fell for ad exec Grant Tinker in a love-at-first-sight meeting on the set of "The DVD Show," and they were married six months later. That lasted until the late '70s when she and Tinker separated, reconciled, and finally divorced. Unfortunately, pressures drove Mary to alcohol in the mid-'70s. In '78 her sister died of an accidental drug OD, and her son Richie shot and killed himself by accident in '80. Mary rebounded by marrying Dr. Robert Levine, who was fifteen years younger and who had treated her mom's bronchial infection in '82. Mary and her doc married in '83 and are still together, living on a farm plus other residences. In '91 her younger brother died of cancer after a botched attempt at assisted suicide, with Mary the assistor.

EXTRAS: Her dad was a clerk, her mom was a drinker and pinball addict, and Mary had a younger bro and sis ... also in the cast of Change of Habit was Ed Asner as Lt. Moretti (he would later play Lou Grant on her show) and Barbara McNair (who was a '50s Broadway star, a '60s nightclub singer, host of her own weekly TV show in '69, and the subject of a nude pictorial in Playboy) ... Asner had played in an earlier Elvis film, Kid Galahad in '62 ... when Mad magazine spoofed "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," they called her Mary Tailor Made ... ... a diabetic, Mary injects herself with insulin four times daily, and she's a major fundraiser for diabetes research ... Mary: "Nobody gets out of this life without paying something, everyone has something, everyone has a very heavy weight, and maybe for the moment I've had more than other people have, that's not to say it'll always be that way, but it is the random aspect of life and I use it to give me the strength to be ready for anything else that might happen" .