The Mary Tyler Moore Show Thread (Love Is All Around)

*Take off glasses, look concerned*

"Throws hat in air, freeze frames."

Just read the first half of that book clemenza posted. Pretty good. Plenty of good stuff I didn't know perhaps will post some later.

In The Betty White Show, she would play a character named Joyce Whitman, a TV actress who has to work with her ex-husband as the director of her new show. Georgia Engel would play Joyce’s best friend. White had watched Star Trek from its beginning in 1966, often to her husband’s chagrin, so she pitched the idea of Joyce’s series being a space show. It would not only provide two contrasting worlds for Joyce, but it would also be hilarious, she thought.

OK, definitely recommend that book to clemenza and others. A few things I learned, which maybe you all knew already

Ed Asner nearly didn't get the job because he gave a too-angry reading of "I hate spunk" during his audition.

Gavin MacLeod originally read for Lou but turned around as he had his hand on the doorknob to leave and asked to read for Murray.

Creators Brooks and Burns prior show was Room 222. Before that Allan Burns' biggest show was perennial gag-line My Mother The Car , which was where he gave James L. Brooks his first break into TV writing.

Guy who directed the famous credit sequence also did the same for the Hawaii Five-O and Get Smart among others.

Your revive reminded me that this was out there, so I ordered a copy from Amazon yesterday. Love the episode LL mentioned above.

Just watched the episode where Mary has to work the Christmas late nite shift. It's really tender and alleviates the holiday sads a little.

Any thoughts on Rhoda, the series?

Only a few episodes in but it seems hard going.

I did not love the pilot

That's Valerie Harper's whole career right there. She kept trying to be a lead, but she's really just a support.

then they married Rhoda off outta desperation. still think of Julie Kavner as Brenda rather than Marge tho.

and Nancy Walker got TWO leads in a sitcom after that.

One was Blansky's Beauties, iirc. What was the other?

Bosom Buddies

never ever ever think about the theme song for "valerie's family/valerie" or you will not get it out of your head for daaaaaaays possibly weeks

to cleanse your brain immediately
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50k-dCwV6SU

I could never get into Rhoda either. I liked the set dressing, clothes, etc but the stories were boring, or I didn't understand them bc I was a kid.

Wasn't Phyllis worse?

Phyllis was cursed. Lady who was playing her boss died in some kind of car crash, had to be replaced in third episode.

Ha, probably. I don't think I watched that one at all. By the time I knew Cloris Leachman, she was Beverly Anne on Facts of Life and I was just like ok who is this lady now? She was such a weird character.

She had spiky hair.

She was quasi den mother for adult women/store owner/adoptive mother of a cute blonde boy who appeared to have come out of nowhere.

that poor show died a terrible death

anyway, phyllis!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8--8V7bVeI

I may be jumping the shark here, but Phyllis gives out a strong TS vibe to me.

Book showed up a few days ago, will get to it soon. Also found the third season on sale, so I resumed watching the first season, which I bought many years ago (along with the second) but put aside after the first episode. In the second episode, I recognized the office gopher who remarks on Mary's age but couldn't place him; it's David Hayward, the assassin in Nashville. John Schuck's hard to take for most of his episode, but by the end, the story comes together nicely.

When I recently rewatched the Xmas Eve episode learned that the familiar-looking actor who played the character Mary subbed for, Fred, was a guy named Ned Wertimer who was best known for playing the doorman on The Jeffersons.

i am watching LOU GRANT

i don't know why there's not a thread for it, it seems p. good

he seems like such a weird character, i can't quite get a bead on what sort of masculinity he's supposed to have. but then i've never watched much late-70s tv.

The famous spunk scene notwithstanding, he's really conceived very broadly (gruff, gruff, and gruffer) the first few MTM episodes. One of those sitcom characters who got better and more shaded with time. (Never watched his own show, so I can't speak to that.)

well, he's in a position of authority, and when he exercises it he usually sounds kind of the way he stereotypically looks - decisive boss, long experience of work. etc. (which they underscore w/ the early backstory: a varied career, time in different cities - detroit as well as minneapolis, no problem with picking up and transferring to l.a. for a job), seen many things as a journalist - but that's blended in with i guess some career uncertainty (having just been fired from a long-term tv job, not confident about being able to handle the city desk job he didn't even know he was applying for) and different sorts of timidity w.r.t. the other editorial staff (lots of editorial meetings, hashing out what goes in the day's edition) and the publisher nancy marchand (of a different sort, since she's rich and imperious and everyone's afraid around her). but then despite some standard mid-century middle-american manhood signifiers (eats lots of cheeseburgers, red meat, thinks tacos are weird, but will wolf them down once they taste good; p. chauvinistic despite some well-intentioned instances of fairmindedness), he's all bashful and incompetent with women outside of a work context. also a strange but endearing tendency to walk into getting sonned by those around him and then doubling down on owning up to embarrassments / blunders / shortcomings out of some kind of integrity / honesty that goes beyond the sort which is a point of principle for the journalists around him.

like, what's the good counterpart of a schlub called?

whereas yeah from what i know of MTM and had picked up before, from wherever, i just thought of him as like a cigar-chomper.

Early on, very much so--he practically barks every other line in the first few episodes. It sounds like his own series continued the evolution of his character on MTM. I'm speaking from memory, but his sentimental side came to the fore more and more often as the series progressed. Don't recall that he ever crossed the line that Carroli O'Conner did, though (and I'm not sure if I'm remembering late All in the Family or his spinoff show), into an insipid shell of himself.

When I recently rewatched the Xmas Eve episode learned that the familiar-looking actor who played the character Mary subbed for, Fred, was a guy named Ned Wertimer who was best known for playing the doorman on The Jeffersons.

Also famous in B-movie circles for his role in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

Redd, Nancy Walker's other failed sitcom was called The Nancy Walker Show. (ran a half season, as did Blansky's Beauties which followed hard upon)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nancy_Walker_Show

I remember The Nancy Walker Show! I loved Sparky Marcus, he was one of my first crushes.

Phyllis was cursed. Lady who was playing her boss died in some kind of car crash, had to be replaced in third episode.

― Can One Hear the Shape of a Ron Decline Bottle? (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, December 27, 2013 8:24 AM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the story is worse than that unfortunately.

On July 24, 1975, just three episodes into the TV series Phyllis, Colby and an acting colleague, James Kiernan, 35, were walking to their car following an acting class in Venice, Los Angeles, California, when they were shot inside a parking area. Colby was killed instantly; however, Kiernan was able to describe the shooters to police before he also succumbed to his wounds. Kiernan said that he did not recognize the two men who shot them, and that the shooting had occurred without warning, reason or provocation. Police noted that there was no attempt to rob the pair and concluded that it was a random drive-by shooting. The killers were never identified.[1]

Just watched Nancy Walker's debut on MTM. Sign of the times: right out of Woody Allen, but the word Jewish is never mentioned. Lou finally has a softer moment after threatening to fire Mary: "No...it's just a scare tactic."

the story is worse than that unfortunately.
Remembered this later but left it for someone else to correct didn't feel like bearing the bad news.

Paul Sand's brilliant as the tax auditor--first sustained bit of greatness in season one, I think (couldn't find a video clip).

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/photopost/data/725/MTM1anPaulSand.jpg

Just finished the book. Worth reading. The focus is more on Brooks, Burns, and all the female writers than MTM herself. Probably not a surprise that the show almost never got off the ground. The first thing CBS balked at was the idea of Mary coming off a divorce--that changed, of course--and even after giving the go-ahead for the first 13 episodes, they were basically waiting for the show to die.

I went back to season one, too. After the IRS episode I mentioned above, the next great one is the famous Christmas episode. Mostly for the sentiment, but Lou and the blank cheque was brilliant.

Wait for it: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117694/alex-trebek-last-king-american-middlebrow

All the seasons seem to have been repackaged and reissued at a cheaper price. I filled out the four seasons I didn't have for $8 each. I'm just not very diligent at watching them--still back where I was when I posted in January, just above.

Had to click on the link to see why I posted Trebek profile

“You got spunk. I hate spunk,” he told me one day,out of nowhere, then demanded to know if I could identify the source of the quote.

Nope.

He followed with another line, this one in a different, high-pitched voice: “Oh, Mr. Grant! ...”

Disappointment at my silence.

“Ed Asner as Lou Grant to Mary Tyler Moore.”

love this show so much but the version in syndication seems oddly hypersaturated (as in, with color). i mean the 70s could be gaudy but it just looks wrong. maybe i should buy the DVDs.

How will you freight it on your own … ?

http://i.imgur.com/MDS603E.jpg

This rig is awfully big, girl this lane you're all alone.

(many xposts ago...) Phyllis spinoff costarred Henry Jones, who left such a lasting impression on me in The Bad Seed as a kid that I couldn't stand seeing him in a sitcom.

https://sp.yimg.com/ib/th?id=JN.Bl3YV1xIBajXTVg3NjhYtg&pid=15.1&P=0

I still have never seen The Bad Seed; before Phyllis, i'd seen HJ sell the bike to Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy, in Sipport Your Local Sheriff!, and i'm sure as guest judges or doctors on TV. Now I principally think of him in Vertigo and 3:10 to Yuma.

oh and the two Tashlin dillys in the '50s, Rock Hunter and The Girl Can't Help It... He was only about ten years older than Cloris Leachman, too.

Morbs, get yrself to Bad Seed asap. One of my alltime favorites, scared the crap out of me as a kid, amazingly campy as an adult.

i gen avoid camp (see also Mommie Dearest)

Aw, it's a way better movie than Mommie Dearest, though.

Shut the hell up.