Actress Louise Lasser was born on this day in 1939. She's best known for playing the pigtailed, Mary Quantesque-attired, neurotic-but-childlike working-class housewife title character on...
Not surprisingly, given the passage of time, she looks a lot different. But the toothy grin is still there, and when she talks about the show, I find myself...
...transported back in time.
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman had a lot of famous and/or outrageous set pieces, from the man drowning in chicken soup to the aspiring country singer totally ruining her career by cheefully referring to Jews as Christ-killers on Dinah Shore's talk show to Mary having a nervous breakdown on David Susskind's talk show to the boy preacher electrocuted in a bathtub by a wayward television set to the wife beater who ends up impaled on an artificial Christmas tree and whose feet show up where the head should be at an open casket funeral. Unfortunately, I can't show you any of those set pieces because they're only available on YouTube in full half-hour episodes. What I can do is provide little snippets that should give some idea of MHMH's low-key out-of-key humor.
Linoleum--attention must be paid!
Forget I asked.
Not that it excuses the old fart's behavior...
...but there was a sexual revolution going on at the time:
Maybe one of them should put on an overcoat. Maybe both of them should put on an overcoat.
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We do know that Tom and Mary had sex at least once:
My earliest memory of the word "cramps" had to do with a warning by my mother not to go into the water less than a half hour after eating. Later on, I found out it could also mean something of a more intimate nature. In the comment section of the YouTube page where I snagged the above video, the following exchange occurred:
carley must have noticed the typo.
Mary sings Gershwin:
I don't know if it was necessarily "over" her...
...but someone was definitely watching.
"I can't talk now. I'm on the phone."
ReplyDeleteHi, Kirk!
Happy 83rd birthday to Louise Lasser! Turns out Louise is five days older than my big brother.
The part of this tribute that I liked most was Mary Hartman's dead slow performance of "Someone To Watch Over Me." It's a great moment in television. The "dead air" worked in her favor. It drew me in. However, the rest of my comment will surely disappoint you, good buddy, because I am sorry to report that I was not a regular viewer of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and didn't love the show as much as did critics and millions of fans. I watched a few episodes of the dry, low-key, existential, satirical soap opera slash comedy-drama, but found it more boring and depressing than funny. Mary was so bleak, pathetic and forlorn that I felt like crying rather than laughing, and I was not overly fond of the other characters. The pace of the show, with its prolonged scenes of dialogue without any action, was too slow for my taste.
I think it has to do with the fact that I don't score well on any of Norman Lear's shows. Just now when I scrolled down the list of iconic TV series created by Lear, I realize that his style didn't resonate with me as it did with so many others. I didn't regularly watch most of the shows he produced, and of those I did watch, I could not get myself to love them the way so many others did. They include The Jeffersons, Maude, One Day at a Time and All in The Family. I watched every episode of the latter, but my approval of the series dropped as seasons went by and Archie mellowed and became softer and more sympathetic.
I recognize Louise Lasser as a talented actress, edgy and quirky, qualities I admire. I vaguely recall her appearance on SNL but, I'm sorry to say, I couldn't get into the groove of watching her TV series MH, MH or it's spin-off Fernwood 2 Night.
Thanks for putting together this birthday tribute and have a great week, good buddy Kirk!
Shady, I'm not disappointed because you often disagree with me when it comes to comedy and the likability of television characters (and whether likability should even matter.) As for Louise Lasser's song stylings, I should point out that she was an understudy for Barbra Streisand in the musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale, the Babs first big Broadway hit (it's where she met Elliot Gould.)
DeleteI won't go into all those Norman Lear shows for the simple reason I may do posts on each and every one of them sometime in the future.
At least you find Lasser edgy and quirky. As former husband Woody Allen once told her, "I do jokes. You do attitude."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ettElmB0pMQ
That scene from Bananas is truly hilarious. They were both brilliant and had me laughing out loud. The entire sketch seemed to be an improv. I saw that movie years ago but forgot how great it is. Thanks, good buddy!
DeleteR.I.P. Gilbert Gottfried. The caustic, abrasive, vulgar, shrill voiced comic died today at age 67.
I so loved Mary Hartman Mary Hartman. Maybe because I was always stoned.
ReplyDeleteMitchell, it was a very mellow show at times.
DeleteI don't remember much about Mary Hartman. I do remember All in the Family and Sanford and Son. Looking at at the four clips reminds a little of Seinfeld, which I didn't watch either.
ReplyDeleteWhat did catch my eye was the Masters and Johnson book. They were based out of St. Louis and I saw the give a presentation at the University of Missouri, St. Louis (UMSL) back in the 60s.
Mike, I just now looked it up and see that M&J are part of the St. Louis Walk of Fame (along with Tennessee Williams, who may have disagreed with them on the necessity of conversion therapy.)
DeleteIt was a crazy show, man, so ahead of its time. I was a fan of its spinoff "Fernwood 2 Night" too.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, Debra, Martin Mull, who played both Garth and Barth Gimbel. Mull grew up in suburban Cleveland, as did I.
DeleteMy parents loved Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman!! I remember them watching it and they would always tell us to leave the room. I also remember stumbling upon the book "The Joy of Sex" in my father's colleagues room (we were at a dinner party and us younger folk were noisy and banished to a guest room that had a television in it. The book was on the night stand).
ReplyDeleteJM, though tame by today standards, MHMH was considered quite racy back in the day. As for The Joy of Sex, I imagine that's STILL considered racy.
DeleteHello Kirk, I never saw Lasser in anything, although I remember commercials for the show. I do recall the parodies on the Hoolihan-Big Chuck-Little John show:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vilQr8nxTio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFLfU9Wttd0
There are others if you look up "Mary Hartski" on Youtube.
By the way, when Mary looked in the Yellow Pages, there was another of those "I must be getting old if I remember that" moments!
--Jim
p.s. In my family, we still call CVS Revco.
Oh, Jim, I certainly do remember "Mary Hartski, Mary Hartski". Those skits originated on Houlihan and Big Chuck when Louise Lasser's show was still on the air and then continued on the renamed Big Chuck and Little John right into the 21st century. In the 1990s I worked with some guy who was 20 years younger than me. He knew Mary Hartski but not Mary Hartman, the show that was being parodied (technically, it was a parody OF a parody.) It was the same with me and Ben Crazy. Houlihan and Big Chuck started those long-running series of doctor sketches when Ben Casey was still on the air. But growing up in the 1970s, I didn't know Ben Casey. It was just a funny name as far as I was concerned.
DeleteAnd Jim, since you're from the area, you may be interested in knowing that the picture below K-Mart is the insides of Parmatown Mall, circa late '70s. As you may or may not know, the once-busy mall has since been torn down and is now The Shoppes at Parma, a giant shopping center with a rather confusing parking lot (though not nearly as confusing as Great Northern's.)