I Remember Mary Tyler Moore

What a joy it was for this young TV critic to spend a day on the set of the huge CBS sitcom hit The Mary Tyler Moore Show in June 1972.
I got to meet all the gang and even the chief writers and then at lunch in came Mary herself and we spent the next hour in ballet class as I desperately tried to keep up with her.
"I'm a child of TV" she told me. "And I wouldn't have it any other way."
She and her husband Grant Tinker had just bought the old Republic studios out in Studio City and the sound stages were soon all booked with hit MTM TV series.
On Thursday night along with fellow TV critics I attended a filming of the next episode --there was one complete run through at 7 p.m. followed by a second at 9 and I couldn't see any change in the script or basic blocking.
The next night we all went out to CBS Studio City to watch a filming of All In The Family and the atmosphere was completely raucous. There was a 7 p.m. filming complete with much shouting by star Carroll O'Connor and when the cast re-assembled for the 9 p.m. filming the script had been completely turned around.
When I'd asked Mary about the reason for her sitcom success she said ":Oh, the writers. It's always about the writers. I just come in every week and say their beautiful lines."
She was born in Flatbush on December 29 1936 to Marjorie Hackett and George Tyler Moore who was a clerk.
"I think I wanted to be a dancer since I could walk," she told me. "It was a very Catholic household and like a good Catholic girl I married at 19 and soon had a son Richie."
Her first TV appearance?
"I danced on TV commercials for Hotpoint appliances which ran on the series The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harrie. Then I was the answering gal on the series Richard Diamond with only my legs were shown."
Sttardom followed as Laura Petrie on The Dick Vamn Dyke Show.
"In the first pilot a lovely actress Barbara Britton was used but she tested as too sophisticated.  The show's creator Carl Reiner told me to let the others get the laughs and react as naturally as I could.
"Wives back then had certain standards --when I came on the set one day wearing slacks all hell broke loose. The chief CBS censor came running to the set and eventually he relented.""
When Dick Van Dyke folded Moore decided to try for the movies.
"I had the second female lead in Thoroughly Modern Mille (1967) and then I was a nun in an Elvis Presley thing Change Of Habit (1967). Then I did a Broadway musical version of Breakfast At Tiffanys opposite Richard Chamberlain which was the biggest stinker of the season."
Second husband Tinker put together the MTM Show in 1970 but she voluntarily ended it in 1977 when it still was a Top 10 hit.
"Biggest mistake of my life," she later told me. "We could have gone a few more years and made ever so much more money in reruns."
I remember a lavish MTM dinner on the top floor of Chasen's restaurant in Beverly Hills with 25 tables for the 100 TV critics and a separate MTM star at each table: Ed Asner, Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachman.
Later on MTM went into drama with such hourlong hits as Lou Grant and Hill Street Blues.
I later became good friends with Valerie Harper who said "With Mary what youy see is what you get. No temper tantrums. She was the sane one on the sjhow and let the crazies act all around her."
Bette White told me" "In 1980 mu husband and I had dinner with Mary and Grant one night in 1980. They'd just signed the papers to divorce. I felt so terrible I was in tears but Mary was strangely composed."
When I later asked Moore how closely her own personality had followed that of Mary Richards she said later  "Not much at all. I'm far tougher. Not always nice."
And her personal life was filled with sorrow: both sister Elizabeth and her brother predeceased her.
And in 1981 she and Tinker would divorce.
In 1980 Moore dazzled in the film Ordinary People garnering an Oscar nomination.
"Director Robert Redford says he saw me walking alone down at the beach and saw a side of me the public had never seen. It was a dream assignment but I now realize a lot of that troubled woman was really me."
Moore tried to return to series TV three times but all attempts were flops: a variety hour titled  The Mary Tyler Moore Show, (1979).  and two sitcoms Mary (1985) and Annie McGuire (1986).
We had a grand reunion in the Toronto Star Newsroom in  1984 when she was shooting the CBS TV movie Heartsounds opposite Jim Garner.
As a favor I asked her to pose with managing editor Lou Clancy in the newsroom for a Star photographer and the next day  it was splashed over the front page with the cute caption :" Mary? Lou?"
And I miss her already.