Mary Tyler Moore (December 29, 1936 – January 25, 2017) was an American actress, producer, and social advocate. She is best known for her television roles on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966) and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977), which "helped define a new vision of American womanhood" and "appealed to an audience facing the new trials of modern-day existence". She won seven Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Tony Awards.
Moore was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the drama film Ordinary People (1980).Darrach, Brad; MacKay, Kathy; Wilhelm, Maria; and Reilly, Sue. "Life Spirals Out Of Control For A Regular Family" People (December 15, 1980). She had major supporting roles in the musical film Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and the dark comedy film Flirting with Disaster (1996). Moore also received praise for her performance in the television film Heartsounds (1984).
Moore was an advocate for animal rights and vegetarianism in addition to her acting career. She was also a significant contributor to causes for diabetes awareness and research. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 33.
Early life Moore was born December 29, 1936, in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood in New York City, the first child of Marjorie () and George Tyler Moore, a clerk. She had one younger brother, John, and a younger sister, Elizabeth. Moore's paternal great-grandfather, Confederate Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Tilghman Moore, owned the house that is now the Stonewall Jackson's Headquarters Museum in Winchester, Virginia. The family was of Irish Catholic descent and Moore was raised Catholic.
Moore spent her early childhood in Flatbush, of which she recalled: "[We] and one other family were the only Catholics in an Orthodox Jewish community where my grandfather owned the house that we would live in." She attended St. Rose of Lima Parochial School in Brooklyn. The family also resided in Flushing, Queens, for a time. Moore's parents were both alcoholics, and she and her siblings were sometimes placed in the care of relatives.
The family relocated to Los Angeles, California, in 1945 when she was 8 years old, at the recommendation of her uncle, an employee of MCA. Moore attended Saint Ambrose School and Immaculate Heart High School in Los Feliz in Los Angeles.
Moore's sister Elizabeth died at age 21 from a drug overdose. Her brother died at the age of 47 from kidney cancer.
Career Television Early appearances
Moore's television career began in 1955 with a job as "Happy Hotpoint", a tiny elf dancing on Hotpoint home appliances in TV commercials that ran during breaks on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. After appearing in 39 Hotpoint commercials in five days, she received approximately $6,000 (). She became pregnant while still working as "Happy", and Hotpoint ended her work when it became too difficult to conceal her pregnancy with the elf costume.
Moore was an uncredited photographic model for record album covers, many for the Tops Records label, and auditioned for the role of the elder daughter of Danny Thomas for his long-running TV show, but was turned down. Much later, Thomas explained that "she missed it by a nose... no daughter of mine could ever have a nose that small".
Moore's first regular television role was as 'Sam', a mysterious and glamorous telephone switchboard operator/receptionist in the series Richard Diamond, Private Detective, which starred David Janssen. Sam's sultry voice was heard talking to Richard Diamond from her switchboard; however, only her legs and occasionally her hands appeared on camera—never her face, adding to the character's mystique. After creating a minor sensation by appearing as Sam in 12 episodes of Richard Diamond as an uncredited player, Moore asked for a raise—and was promptly fired by the show's producers and replaced by Roxane Brooks in the role. However, Moore was able to parlay the publicity from 'revealing' Sam's identity to the press into several flattering articles and profiles, giving her career a boost.
About this time, she guest-starred in John Cassavetes' NBC detective series Johnny Staccato, and also in the series premiere of The Tab Hunter Show in September 1960 and the Bachelor Father episode "Bentley and the Big Board" in December 1960. In 1961, Moore appeared in several big parts in movies and on television, including Bourbon Street Beat; 77 Sunset Strip; Surfside 6; Wanted: Dead or Alive with Steve McQueen; Steve Canyon; Hawaiian Eye; Thriller and Lock-Up. She also appeared in a February 1962 episode of Straightaway.
The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966)
In 1961, Carl Reiner cast Moore in The Dick Van Dyke Show, a weekly series based on Reiner's own life and career as a writer for Sid Caesar's television variety show Your Show of Shows, telling the cast from the outset that it would run for no more than five years. The show was produced by Danny Thomas's company, and Thomas himself recommended her. He remembered Moore as "the girl with three names" whom he had turned down earlier.Profile, the Paley Center for Media. Retrieved April 3, 2009.
Moore's energetic comic performances as Van Dyke's character's wife, begun at age 24 (eleven years Van Dyke's junior), made both the actress and her signature fitted capri pants popular, and she became internationally known. When she won her first Emmy Award for her portrayal of Laura Petrie, she said, "I know this will never happen again." As Laura Petrie, Moore often wore styles that recalled the fashion of Jackie Kennedy, such as capri pants, echoing an ideal of the Kennedy administration's Camelot.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977) Moore and husband Grant Tinker successfully pitched a sitcom that centered on Moore to CBS, in 1970, after performing in the one-hour musical special Dick Van Dyke and the Other Woman. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was a half-hour newsroom sitcom featuring Ed Asner as her gruff boss Lou Grant. The Mary Tyler Moore Show bridged aspects of the Women's Movement with mainstream culture by portraying an independent woman whose life focused on her professional career rather than marriage and family.
The show marked the first big hit for film and television producer James L. Brooks, who also did more work for Moore and Tinker's production company. Moore's show proved so popular that three regular characters, Valerie Harper as Rhoda Morgenstern, Cloris Leachman as Phyllis Lindstrom, and Ed Asner as Lou Grant spun off into their own three separate series playing the same characters, albeit with Lou Grant being an hour-long drama instead of a half-hour sitcom.
The premise of the single working woman's life, alternating during the program between work and home, became a television staple.
The show spent six years in the top 20 of the ratings,"The Mary Tyler Moore Show" museum.tv. Retrieved April 3, 2009. then slipped to number 39 in season seven. The producers decided that the show should end, afraid that the show's legacy might be damaged if it were renewed for another season. The 1977 season won its third straight Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy despite the decline in the ratings. The program won 29 Emmys and Moore won three awards for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy in seven seasons. The record was unbroken until 2002, when the NBC sitcom Frasier won its 30th Emmy.
Later projects Moore appeared in Mary's Incredible Dream, on January 22, 1976, while season six of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was in progress. This show was an experimental musical/variety special for CBS, that also featured Ben Vereen. She described it as "a totally different concept from anything ever attempted on television... We go from song to dance to song and back again, telling a story of the eternal cycle of man. They can just enjoy the music and dancing, if the viewers don't want to follow the story."A first: 'Mary's Incredible Dream'", by Vernon Scott, UPI report, Lowell (MA) Sun, January 5, 1976, p.24 She starred in a second CBS special, How to Survive the '70s and Maybe Even Bump Into Happiness, in 1978 where she received significant support from a strong lineup of guest stars: Bill Bixby, John Ritter, Harvey Korman and Dick Van Dyke. Moore also starred in two unsuccessful CBS variety series in the 1978–79 season. The first, Mary, featured David Letterman, Michael Keaton, Swoosie Kurtz and Dick Shawn in the supporting cast. CBS brought Moore back in March 1979 in a new, retooled show, The Mary Tyler Moore Hour, after the series was canceled. This format was described as a "sit-var" (part situation comedy/part variety series). Moore portrayed a TV star putting on a variety show. The program lasted just 11 episodes.
Moore returned to CBS in the 1985–86 season in a sitcom titled Mary, which suffered from poor reviews, sagging ratings, and strife within the production crew. Moore said she asked network to pull the show because she was unhappy with the direction and production. Moore also starred in the short-lived Annie McGuire in 1988. Moore returned in 1995, after another lengthy break from TV series work. She was cast as tough, unsympathetic newspaper owner Louise "the Dragon" Felcott on the CBS drama New York News, the third series in which her character was involved in the news media. Moore was disappointed with the writing of her character and was negotiating with producers to get out of her contract for the series when it was canceled.
Moore appeared as herself in the mid-1990s on two episodes of Ellen. She guest-starred on Ellen DeGeneres's The Ellen Show, in 2001. Moore reunited in 2004 with her Dick Van Dyke Show castmates for a reunion special, The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited.
Moore guest-starred in 2006 as Christine St. George, the high-strung host of a fictional TV show, in three episodes of the Fox sitcom That '70s Show. Moore's scenes were shot on the same sound stage where The Mary Tyler Moore Show was filmed in the 1970s. She made a guest appearance on the season two premiere of Hot in Cleveland, which starred her former co-star Betty White. It marked the first time that White and Moore had worked together since The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended in 1977."Mary Tyler Moore to guest star on 'Hot in Cleveland'", November 1, 2010. Moore reprised her role on Hot in Cleveland in the fall of 2013, in a season four episode that reunited Moore and White with former Mary Tyler Moore Show cast members Cloris Leachman, Valerie Harper and Georgia Engel. The reunion coincided with Harper's public announcement that she had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and was given only a few months to live, though she would outlive Moore by two years.
Theater Moore appeared in several Broadway plays. She was the star of a new musical version of Breakfast at Tiffany's in December 1966, but the show, titled Holly Golightly, was a flop that closed in previews before opening on Broadway. In reviews of performances in Philadelphia and Boston, critics "murdered" the play in which Moore claimed to be singing with bronchial pneumonia.
She starred in a gender-reversed revival of Whose Life Is It Anyway? with James Naughton, which opened on Broadway at the Royale Theatre on February 24, 1980, and ran for 96 performances, and in Sweet Sue, which opened at the Music Box Theatre on January 8, 1987, later transferred to the Royale Theatre, and ran for 164 performances.
Moore and her production company produced five plays during the 1980s: Noises Off, The Octette Bridge Club, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Benefactors, and Safe Sex.
Moore appeared in previews of the Neil Simon play Rose's Dilemma at the off-Broadway Manhattan Theatre Club in December 2003 but quit the production after receiving a critical letter from Simon instructing her to "learn your lines or get out of my play". Moore had been using an earpiece on stage to feed her lines to the repeatedly rewritten play.
Films