In Memoriam: Carl Reiner 1922-2020

Unlike so many comedy icons who rose to prominence in the mid-20th century, particularly those born to Jewish immigrants and raised somewhere in New York City, Carl Reiner never played the Catskills. In fact, he was never really a stand-up comedian at all except when maybe after he already had become famous he was asked to emcee various show biz functions. The facts are murky, but Reiner seems to have started out as a straight actor. Somewhere along the way a now-forgotten Broadway casting director thought he might make a good straight actor in comedies--that is, a straight man, the guy who feeds the lines to some clownish character who then turns the whole thing into a joke. The more successful of these comedies were "revues", collections of skits and musical numbers, including Call Me Mister, which dealt with returning World War II vets (Reiner himself happened to be one in real life.) Television came along about this time, and the revue format made the transition to the new medium, where it soon became known as the "variety show". Texaco Star Theater, starring Milton Berle, was one early example. Another was Your Show of Shows.

Your Show of Shows had evolved out of the Admiral Broadway Revue (and later evolved into Caesar's Hour.) Ninety minutes long, it featured elaborate musical numbers, and, what it soon became best known for, comedy sketches. These sketches were enacted by host Sid Caesar, and costars Imogene Coca, Howard Morris, and Carl Reiner. Caesar, Coca, and Morris were three classic rubber-faced comedians who could changes their voices, talk with exaggerated foreign accents, and basically disappear into extreme comic characterizations. Mildly handsome back in the day, Reiner was anything but rubber-faced. Nevertheless, given half the chance, he could change his voice, exaggerate a foreign accent, and disappear into an extreme comic characterization with the best of them. But more often he maintained a normal, vaguely mock-dramatic presence that the other three could play of of. In particular as a reporter in an overcoat and fedora interviewing, and feeding lines to, Caesar's flaky German professor (Reiner: Professor, what keeps birds in the air? Caesar: Courage!) But if feeding lines was considered Reiner's chief asset onscreen, offscreen he soon proved to have a knack for inventing lines.

Sid Caesar wasn't just content to act in these sketches but also wanted some say in how they came to be written. And he thought, or hoped, his costars might want some say also. To that end the entire cast had an open invitation to the writer's room. Reiner took this invitation very seriously, so much so that, long before this week's obits appeared, he was regularly described as having been a member of the Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour's writing staffs, alongside such future comedy legends as Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart. Yet he never received any onscreen credit. His contribution would have been hard to pin down anyway. Caesar's sketches were room written. A single person may have come up with a central concept (often Caesar himself), but then a dozen or so writers added jokes. That is, if they could be heard above the din as this highly competitive bunch weren't known to politely take turns (a young, introverted Woody Allen, who worked on specials Caesar did toward the end of the 1950s, hated the atmosphere, preferring to write a ton of jokes at home and then see if he could fit them in somewhere.) Watching the old kinescopes on YouTube, it's fun to speculate that "This joke could only have come from Brooks" or "That gag has Simon written all over it" but they were just as likely to have been written by Head Writer Mel Tolkin, well-respected in his field though never a household name. And even once the sketch was put down on paper, Caesar wasn't above ad libbing. Getting back to Reiner, since he wasn't listed in the credits, and there were enough writers already, could his be contribution have been exaggerated? I would say yes if it weren't for the fact that onscreen proof of his writing talents in a non-Caesar project was right around the corner.

Ironically, Reiner the non-writer writer was the first of Caesar's crew to write a book, an autobiographical novel titled Enter Laughing, which fellow Your Show of Shows writer (and future Fiddler on the Roof librettist) Joseph Stein turned into a hit Broadway play that Reiner himself adapted for the big screen. But Reiner hadn't yet given up playing straight man. In fact, he was primed to play straight man in one of the most celebrated, if intermittent, comedy teams of the postwar era.

One of the many friends the likable Reiner had made in Caesar's writing room was the aforementioned Mel Brooks. The two had cooked up a parody of TV news shows that had some eyewitness to history as an interview subject, which in the 1950s could have been a far back as the Spanish-American War. Reiner and Brooks wanted to go back further, all the way to ancient Mesopotamia if necessary. For whatever reason, such a sketch never made it onto Your Show of Shows or Caesar's Hour. But Reiner and Brooks kept the idea alive as a comedy routine they performed in front of friends at social gatherings (it certainly beats watching someone dance with a lampshade on their head.) Another TV comedy star of the day, Steve Allen, thought they should put the act down on record and even provided them the studio to do so, resulting in the comedy album 2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks. The 2000 year old man was just one character among many Brooks played, which included a Yiddish-accented astronaut and a Yiddish-accented rock and roll teen idol (!), but the twenty-centuries old Yiddish-accented geezer is what caught on, getting the two of them on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Hollywood Palace, and other variety shows. The success of the album raised Brooks profile considerably, as he was until then unknown outside of comedy writing circles. Reiner was again the straight man but as the act seems to have been a combination of previously-agreed upon exchanges and improvisation, he would often challenge Brooks one-liners, forcing the latter to come up with even funnier one-liners. While both men would soon (very soon, in the case of Reiner) move on to separate projects, they would revive the bit whenever asked to do so, even doing an animated version in the 1970s.

In fact, Carl Reiner had a much more ambitious project in mind. He would write, produce (along with former tough guy actor Sheldon Leonard) and star in a situation comedy called Head of the Family. Reiner played a New York-based TV comedy writer named Rob Petrie, who had young, pretty wife named Laura, a young son named Richie, and two co-workers named Buddy and Sally. If you recognized all those just named, then you know that no such TV series with Carl Reiner in the lead ever aired with any regularity. Ah, but the pilot does exist today on YouTube, where comparisons can be made with a later, more famous version. Head of the Family is funny enough, and Reiner is funny enough in it,  so why didn't CBS purchase the pilot? Reiner's Rob Petrie had a certain brashness about him, as well as a slight New York accent, which could be interpreted as "Jewish". At least, that is the prevailing theory. Now, it's not like a brash New York City Jew couldn't star in his own sitcom--Phil Silvers is a famous example--but as a suburban father? Not in that WASPish era. Reiner believed in the possibilities of his proposed sitcom more than he did in the possibilities of his own stardom, and so swallowed some pride and set about finding himself a new Rob Petrie.

He found one in the Midwestern born-and-raised, John Alden-descended, Tony Award-winning star of the hit Broadway show Bye, Bye, Birdie: Dick Van Dyke. The Dick Van Dyke Show premiered on October 3, 1961, and ran for five years, only leaving the airways when Reiner decided it should go out on top. It very nearly went out on bottom, as CBS decided to cancel it after the first season. The network only changed its mind after sponsor Proctor & Gamble, which obviously believed in the show, threatened to pull all its afternoon soap operas, unless the sitcom was allowed to find an audience. Ironically, it found its audience when it was rescheduled right after the highly-rated The Beverly Hillbillies. I say ironically because TDVDS is often held up as the most sophisticated television that the 1960s has to offer, whereas the country bumpkins-turned-oil barons sitcom is seen (perhaps unfairly) as among the least sophisticated. To that end I wonder if there was some strategic decision behind Van Dyke tripping over the ottoman at the beginning of the second season (the first season's opening credits just showed photographs of the stars), a way of assuring the yahoos watching Hillbillies that nothing too hifalutin was about to follow. Actually, compared to later sitcoms such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, MASH, Cheers, and Seinfeld, The Dick Van Dyke Show may not seem as sophisticated as it once did. But it remains quite funny, a mélange of workplace comedy, domestic comedy, physical comedy, and musical comedy, along with being a show biz satire (but then satire is merely a hifalutin form of comedy, isn't it?) In this revamped version of Reiner's original concept, Van Dyke's Rob Petrie is a smart, decent, but accident-prone family man whom, it's suggested, derives comic inspiration from his own klutziness. In fact, I sometimes think the slapstick may have been the most truly sophisticated aspect of the series, a reminder that no matter how good a joke a Rob Petrie can come up with on a typewriter, God, Fate, or Chance will come up with an even better one, that you can sidestep the ottoman, but stumble on the carpet anyway (as happens in later seasons.) Van Dyke was assisted by a terrific acting ensemble (none of whom were in the Head of the Family pilot.) The aforementioned Mary Tyler Moore as the pretty, now downright sexy capris pants-clad wife, Borsht Belt comic Morey Amsterdam as Borsht Belt comedy writer Buddy Sorrell (reportedly based on Mel Brooks), gravel-voiced Rose-Marie as the wise-cracking comedy writer Sally Rogers (reportedly based on Selma Diamond, who wrote for Caesar), Richard Deacon as the stuffy, sycophantic producer Mel Cooley (reportedly based on Mitch McConnell--no, just joking, that would be impossible), Ann Guilbert as the excitable next-door-neighbor Millie Helper, Jerry Paris as Jerry Helper, Millie's more laid-back husband (he has to be, he's a dentist), and Larry Mathews as Rob and Laura's son, who showed up every now and then to remind everyone that Rob was indeed a family man. Carl Reiner wrote over 50 episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, including such classics as "Never Bathe on Saturday" (in which Laura gets stuck in a bathtub--you had to be there), and "It May Look Like a Walnut" (an Invasion of the Body Snatchers parody in which a zombified Buddy Sorrell asks "Did you hear the one about the nearsighted turtle who fell in live with an army helmet?") Eventually, Reiner handed over the writing to others, including writing teams Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson (who later co-created the 1970s TV version of The Odd Couple, and, separately, the former created Happy Days and the latter wrote the screenplay for the 1970s feature film Smile, a beauty pageant satire), and Bill Persky and Sam Denoff (who later co-created That Girl.) Reiner stayed on as a producer. And made one other, in my opinion, huge contribution to the series.

There's a character I haven't told you about yet, the guy Rob, Buddy, and Sally works for. Technically, I suppose that would be producer Mel Cooley, except Cooley has no real power over that bunch and is in fact regularly insulted by Buddy--who shows no fear of getting fired--whenever he enters the room. Besides, Mel himself takes his orders from the star of the fictional variety/sketch comedy show, Alan Brady. I'm going by memory as the Internet is no help whatsoever here, but I don't believe we see Alan at all during the first season of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Even in an episode ("The Sick Boy and the Sitter") that takes place in Alan's home, we don't see him. And he never visits the writers room. This, of course, isn't the way Sid Caesar did things (but it may be the way another 1950s TV comedy legend, Jackie Gleason, did things. According to Mel Brooks, Gleason had his writers slip his scripts under his dressing room door.) I'm not absolutely certain of this, but I think Alan Brady makes his first appearance in a second-season episode titled "When a Bowling Pin Talks, Listen", but only the back of head. Now, it's easy to imagine what the front of his head looks like, because Alan Brady was played by none other than Carl Reiner. So why the modesty? Knowing that he had been only a "second banana" on Sid Caesar's various shows, and that CBS didn't think he should star in a sitcom based on his own life, Reiner felt nobody would accept him as a longtime TV comedy star (according to one 1961 episode, The Alan Brady Show already had been on the air about ten years.) And so for the next two seasons, when we saw Alan Brady at all, it was just the back of his bald or toupee'd head. Then, in season 4, in an episode titled "Three Letters from One Wife" Reiner was finally prevailed upon to show his face, and from that point on, he never looked back. Vain, egotistical, self-involved, insensitive, and motor-mouthed, Alan Brady is a bull in a china shop, with Rob, Laura, Buddy, Sally, Mel, and, in one story ("A Day in the Life of Alan Brady"), even Millie and Jerry, as the plates, cups, and saucers. Brady is the focal point of several episodes in the last two seasons, and in these episodes, The Dick Van Dyke Show becomes a wickedly funny satire of television and show biz, which it hadn't quite been up to then. And if the situation comedy itself had proven Reiner's skill as a writer, then the Alan Brady-centered episodes showed just what a great comedian he could be, his talents as a comic performer most likely wasted in his years as a second banana or straight man. In fact, in the scenes they appear in together, it's Van Dyke who comes off as the straight man!

After The Dick Van Dyke Show went off the air in 1966, there were a few more stabs at producing and writing for TV, most notably The New Dick Van Dyke Show, which ran for three years in the early 1970s. As far as acting goes, Reiner got to star in what turned out to be a box office hit, the Cold War satire, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966). But mostly, Reiner settled into a long, relatively successful career as a feature film director. In 1977, he had a huge hit with Oh, God! starring George Burns and John Denver, with a screenplay by old Caesar's Hour cohort Larry Gelbart. He then gave Steve Martin a big boost by directing him in three films in which they both worked on the screenplays, The Jerk (1979), the film nor parody Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), and my personal favorite, the mad scientist spoof The Man with Two Brains (1983). There was a fourth film that Reiner directed and Martin starred but which neither one wrote the screenplay, All of Me (1984), that has the latter possessed by a prim and proper Lily Tomlin. Reiner's final film was 1997's That Old Feeling with Bette Midler. I have a vague memory of once seeing an ad for it, and that's all. After the filmmaking career ended, he did many, many, many guest appearances on TV shows, and maintained his comic timing right up to the end.

   

In Memoriam: Mary Tyler Moore 1936-2017

(Yes, I know it's been almost two months since she went to that Great TV Newsroom in the Sky, but, hey, it's Mare we're talking about here. She's worth the wait, don't you think?)

Who can turn the world on with her smile?

Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?

Well it's you girl, and you should know it

With each glance and every little movement you show it

Love is all around, no need to waste it

You can never tell, why don't you take it

You're gonna make it after all

You're gonna make it after all

How will you make it on your own?

This world is awfully big, girl this time you're all alone

But it's time you started living

It's time you let someone else do some giving

Love is all around, no need to waste it

You can never tell, why don't you take it

You might just make it after all

You might just make it after all

--Theme song for The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Moore was born in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York, where, among other things, the Dodgers played.

When she was eight, she moved with her family to Los Angeles.

I don't know that there's any connection, but the Dodgers eventually followed suit.

At 17, Moore decided to become a dancer. Her first job was as "Happy Hotpoint", a dancing elf in a series of appliance commercials.

She also did pinups.

Deciding she'd like to act as well as dance, Moore auditioned but was turned down for the part of the eldest daughter on a show called Make Room for Daddy, which later became The Danny Thomas Show. Thomas later explained that "no daughter of mine would have a nose that small."

  
Whatever.

The size of Moore's nose didn't matter much when she played David Janssen's secretary on Richard Diamond Private Eye. You never saw her face.

While Moore was looking for her show biz niche, this fellow was trying to expand his. Carl Reiner had achieved a certain amount of celebrity as Sid Caesar's sketch comedy sidekick throughout the 1950s (Your Shows of Shows, Caesar's Hour), had done some uncredited writing for Caesar as well, and now had an idea for a sitcom in which he himself would star. He would play Rob Petrie, a writer on a sketch comedy show who had a wife and young son waiting for him at home. The network liked the idea, just not with Reiner as the lead.

Still wanting to go on with the show, if only as the producer and head writer, Reiner enlisted the services of this up-and-coming actor, who had just had a hit on Broadway (Bye, Bye, Birdie).

So who would play Rob Petrie's wife, Laura? Danny Thomas, whose production company would bankroll the show, remembered the girl with the three names, and suggested her to Reiner. As you can see in the above picture, they seemed to hit it off (um, is it my imagination, or does his head look a little different than before?) 

The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1967), today regarded, and rightfully so, as a television classic.

Well-written as the series was, I think the part of Laura Petrie may have been somewhat underwritten. For a good reason, though. She wasn't the main character, her hubby Rob was. And a good deal many stories revolved around his job as the head comedy writer for The Alan Brady Show. And in those episodes, he spent more time with Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam), Sally Rogers (Rose Marie), and Mel Cooley (Richard Deacon) than Laura, who had to wait for her husband to come home and tell her all the fun he'd had at work.

Nevertheless, you saw enough of Laura to get some idea of her character. She was reasonably intelligent, reasonably kind, a reasonably loving mother to Richie,  a reasonably loving wife to Rob, reasonably good at helping her husband off the ground after he tripped over the ottoman. Was there anything else? I've read various obituaries of Moore to see if there was anything further I could say about Laura Petrie. Here's what I found:

"...sporty capri pants..."

"...hip-hugging capri pants"

"...she even caused a small controversy by wearing capri
pants..."

"...made capri pants wildly popular..."

"...rocked America's gender norms with capri pants..."

Until The Dick Van Dyke Show, in fact, DURING The Dick Van Dyke Show, TV housewives such as June Cleaver or Donna Reed wore beautiful dresses with pearls while vacuuming the floor or cooking dinner. So Laura's choice of casual wear could be seen as a blow for reality and common sense. Even proto-feminism. Whatever controversy it may have caused at the time, I doubt if too many males complained about it. More likely, they looked forward to this particular rocking of gender norms, at least when they saw it on the tube. Which makes me wonder if the beautiful, sexy Moore wasn't, at least initially, meant to be merely eye candy on this show. Husband Rob certainly had something to look forward to at night...

...sleeping arrangements notwithstanding. 

Whatever his reasons for hiring her, it's to producer Reiner's credit that he soon realized that this particular brand of eye candy had a secret and hitherto undetectable ingredient: ENORMOUS comedy talent.

The tears. Nobody, not Lucille Ball, not even the great Stan Laurel, could produce a funnier crying jag than Moore-as-Laura.

I wouldn't be surprised if some day Lady Gaga adopts that look 

Here's Moore at her funniest, at least as far as The Dick Van Dyke Show is concerned. Let me set it up. Laura and her neighbor and friend Millie Helper (Ann Morgan Guilbert) are in the audience of an afternoon game show, and the former is asked to come up on stage to participate. This was in the era when game show hosts would gently mock the contestant, kind of get them to make a fool of themselves, whether they won or not (Laura wins). The game show host here does much worse than gently mock Laura when he finds out her husband works for the famous TV comedian Alan Brady: 

Host: Have you ever been to Alan Brady's house?
Laura: Oh, yes. Many times.
Host: Does he wear his toupee at home?
Laura: Oh golly, yes. He wears it all the time. 
Host: You mean that Alan Brady is really bald?!?
Laura: No!
Host: Then why does he wear a toupee? (to audience) That's it, ladies, the secret is out. She knows, and she said it! How about that, folks?

This is not information Alan Brady wanted to get out. Believing her husband's job is now in jeopardy, Laura goes to Brady's office to make amends.

Despite Brady's apparent anger, Laura's revelation gives his show a lot of free publicity, and she and her husband find themselves off the hook. That's producer Carl Reiner playing Brady (remember me showing you the first-you-see-hair-then-you-don't photos earlier?)

The Alan Brady Show was supposed to be a variety show, a TV genre quite popular in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. For those of you too young to remember Milton Berle, Dean Martin, or Carol Burnett, among many others, a variety show was basically an aggregate of comedy sketches and Broadway-style musical numbers. Actually, that's a pretty good description of The Dick Van Dyke Show itself. Most of the central characters had performing backgrounds of one sort or another. Rob had been a disk jockey and and a bandleader in the army. Buddy was a borscht belt comic who once had his own show in the early days of television. He and Sally also have a nightclub act. Even Laura and Millie had been in the USO. Thus, in many an episode, the story being told would end prematurely so we could watch all the main characters sing and dance. To be honest, I used to find that kind of annoying. Not that I don't like Broadway-style musical numbers. I very much do, just not in a sitcom. I felt I was being cheated, that the writers were slacking off, unwilling or unable to come up with enough jokes to fill a half-hour.  I've since changed my mind. Maybe it's because Broadway-style musical numbers have become so rare on TV these days (you're most likely to find them on PBS, of all places) that I'll take them wherever I can get 'em, even on old reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Besides, this cast was really quite good at singing and dancing, including Moore, who, if you'll remember, originally wanted to be a dancer.

 Watching that, I now wish the show's writers had slacked off more often.

The Dick Van Dyke Show went off the air after six seasons, but not at the insistence of the network. Still getting very high ratings, producer Reiner simply wanted to go out strong. Over the years the show had won 15 Emmys, including three for Moore (after the first one she said, "I know this will never happen again.") 

Moore did a few movies afterwards. Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) with Julie Andrews as the title character was the most successful. The comedy takes place in the 1920s, and Moore looked just as good in a flapper dress as she did in capris. 

How she looked in basic black is matter of opinion. In A Change of Habit, Moore has to choose between God or Elvis Presley. While I'm sure many of you would choose the latter, Moore's much better off with God, at least as far as this movie is concerned. It's not religious conviction that makes me say this. It's just that Moore and Elvis have absolutely no chemistry together. Maybe if they had added a Broadway-style musical number. Or even Off-Broadway (Nunsense came about two decades too late to help this film.)

Let me go back to The Dick Van Dyke Show for just a second. Van Dyke's brother Jerry, a very funny fellow in his own right (remember him as Luther in the '80s sitcom Coach?) appeared on several episodes as Rob's brother Stacey. Someone must have thought that since one Van Dyke scored with a sitcom, so could another. Maybe one that would last six years.

 It was not to be. My Mother the Car, frequently cited as the worst TV show of all time (I can't say since I've never seen it), certainly had one of the oddest premises ever. An attorney played by Jerry Van Dyke goes to a used car lot, and finds out his mother (voiced by Ann Southern) has been reincarnated as a 1920s automobile! The show lasted only one season, and Moore doesn't appear in a single episode. So why am I even mentioning it?

Because of this guy, Allan Burns (bit of a problem googling that name--I kept getting Gracie and George.). He and his partner Chris Hayward started out writing for the animated Rocky and His Friends, later renamed The Bullwinkle Show. Perhaps not the most prestigious assignment in the world, but it was a way of breaking into show biz. They then went from writing cartoons to writing live-action cartoon shows, such as The Munsters, which they created. You have to remember that in addition to social upheaval and the Vietnam War, the 1960s was also the era of the silly sitcom: Gilligan's Island, The Beverly Hillbillies, Mister Ed, The Addams Family, etc. My Mother the Car would have fit right in, except it didn't (maybe it wasn't silly enough!) Burns and Hayward were simply going where the work was. They broke up soon after the MMTC debacle, Hayward going on to produce, in the more sophisticated sitcom era of the 1970s, Barney Miller. That sophisticated sitcom era would serve Burns well, too. In fact , he would help bring it about. It all started when he went to a party and met this fellow:

James L. Brooks had been a writer for CBS News in the early 1960s. By all means this would have been, in that pre-Twitter era, a highly prestigious and highly paying job. Nevertheless, he quit in 1965 and moved to Los Angeles. As Brooks himself once said "I still haven't quite figured out how I got the guts to do it."  Well, there IS that one neighborhood in LA. You know, with all the movie studios. Hollwood has a way of fortifying even the meekest among us. But Brooks still more or less stuck with news, writing documentaries for producer David Wolper. Unfortunately, Wolper's company had to cut back and Brooks was laid off. This turned out to be a major career move in disguise. Instead of checking out the want ads Brooks went to a Hollywood party. Irresponsible, you say? Not this time. He met the aforementioned Burns, found out he produced My Mother the Car, and began pitching him story ideas. That a man who once wrote for Walter Cronkite could come up with stories about a talking car is a testament to Brooks versatility as a writer. Burns was certainly impressed. He hired Brooks on the spot. It turned out to a be a short term job, but at least he had something to put on his resume, a resume that now stressed entertainment over news.

After writing episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, My Three Sons, and That Girl, Brooks was asked by producer Gene Reynolds to create a series about an American high school. Brooks did just that and showed the pilot script to Burns, who again was impressed, impressed enough, in fact, that he asked if he could write for this new series, which was less a sitcom and more a comedy-drama. Burns ended up not only writing but also became a producer for the new series as well. Room 222 was a high-quality show that didn't always get high-quality ratings. Winning many Emmys, it kind of limped along for a few years before it was finally cancelled after four seasons, with just enough reruns to assure a decent afterlife in syndication. And it did have one important fan...

...Grant L Tinker, NBC's West Coast head of programming throughout part of the 1960s, where he helped develop the hit shows The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and I Spy, before moving to Universal Studios, where he developed another hit, Marcus Welby M.D. Just as significant, at least as far as I'm concerned, he wed Mary Tyler Moore in 1962. As the 1970s inched closer, Moore's film career hadn't been much to speak of, but she was still sought after by the TV networks. Tinker knew that, so he and the missus...

...formed their own production company. 

In case you didn't get the joke. 

As I said, Tinker liked Room 222 and lured two of that show's writer-producers, the aforementioned Burns and Brooks, away to create a new show for his wife.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977) The greatest situation comedy of all time, in my none-too-iconoclastic opinion. Note that I didn't say it was necessarily the funniest situation comedy of all time. It may just be that there were a few more laughs to be had on Seinfeld, The Honeymooners or (silliness notwithstanding) The Beverly Hillbillies, but not THAT much more. By greatest, I'm talking about the totality of the show. Superlative acting combined with intelligent scripting that shed real insight on the human condition. A weekly New Yorker short story dramatized, and yet it STILL made you laugh out loud on a regular basis. Enlightenment and giggles in a single half-hour package. What more could you ask for in a sitcom?

Mary Richards, so exquisitely brought to life by Ms. Moore, is said to have been TV's first feminist. I don't want to take anything away from that, but I feel it should be pointed out that feminism is something that the Mary character falls into rather than seeks out. She was never as outspoken about it as her landlady and married friend Phyllis (who, in reality, was less independent than Mary.) You could say Mary Richards led by example, but as this was a sitcom and not a political tract, it was, by necessity, an often hilarious example.

Let's start with the woman's personal life. As originally conceived, Mary Richards was to be a divorcee, but the network balked. In 1970, there was still a stigma attached to divorce. Also, the network worried viewers might think she had divorced Rob Petrie, despite Moore's character having a different name (when trying to sell a sophisticated sitcom, you'd think the network would give viewers a little credit for sophistication as well.) So, instead, it's merely the end of a two-year relationship. The boyfriend comes after her in the pilot episode, and he's every bit as bland as just about every other guy she dates during the show's seven-year run (it's a testament to Moore's acting ability that she makes us believe she's actually broken up over this guy.) Mary is 30 at the time (Moore herself was 34.) By the series finale in 1977, Mary is 37 and still unmarried. The character is not some man-hating woman's libber against marriage in principle. She's just waiting for Mr. Right to come along and he never does (I wouldn't be surprised if at least one male watching this show didn't shout out loud at the TV screen, "Let me be the one Mary, let me be the one!") She doesn't seem particularly distraught about her single status, and that is precisely the point. It's OK for a woman to be over 30 and unmarried. Also, if you were paying ver-r-r-y close attention to this show, it also made the point that it was OK for a woman over 30 to be unmarried and NOT a virgin. There's more than one episode where Mary Richards goes out on a date at night, and returns the very next morning. I don't think she and her fellow were whiling away the time at a 24-hour laundromat.

Her professional life. After Mary Richards arrives in Minneapolis, she applies for a job as a secretary at TV station WJM (located in the building above) but, as that position is already filled, is instead hired as an associate producer. Is it really that easy to become an associate producer, especially if one has no experience? Well, WJM was portrayed as a rather ramshackle operation--ramshackle to everyone but Mary, to whom it was an opportunity of a lifetime. This despite being told she's making less money than the station's secretaries, even though the duties are the same. Mary doesn't care just then, but complains later on when she finds out that the male who had the job before her was making more money. Her boss explains that the man was raising a family, an explanation that satisfies Mary until she takes a moment to think about it. As she tells her boss, if pay is based on a family's financial needs, than a man raising three children should get paid more than a man raising just two, and so on. Good rebuttal, but the boss STILL refuses her a raise (though he gives in later on in the episode.) Mary regularly battles with her boss throughout the course of  the series, and wins more often than she loses. If that's all you knew about her, you might say she's the perfect feminist heroine. Except that these battles aren't fought in the midst of any war Mary may have declared on her boss, but instead are mere skirmishes during an otherwise deferential peace. This is no phony or calculated deference, either. I mean, jeez, the woman can't even bring herself to call her boss by his first name, even though it would please him greatly (and possibly make those battles end much sooner) if she did.

"I've been around--well, all right, I might not have been around, but I've been nearby."

A paradoxical, complicated woman, this Mary Richards. Perhaps the most complex character ever to grace a sitcom. How to explain her? It can be tricky psychoanalyzing a fictional character, especially a fictional television character, where any contradiction can be explained away as a revolving door of TV writers making things up as they go along. But I don't think that's the case here. After all, there's plenty of passive-aggressive types in the non-fictional world we all inhabit. They didn't all spring forth from some sitcom scribe's typewriter. So let me offer you this clue. I opened up this piece with the The Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song. Here's one line of that song:


"Well it's you girl, and you should know it."

That's the thing, she DIDN'T know it. Her friends knew it, her co-workers knew it, we in the television audience knew it, but Mary Richards, doubly blessed with beauty and brains, never thought she was anything special. She wasn't blind to the fact that people around her thought she was special, but felt it was undeserved. I wouldn't say she had an inferiority complex, exactly, but Mary was awfully self-effacing. In nearly every episode, she has to confront one self-doubt after another. She usually forges ahead, and more-or-less triumphs, but the self-doubt always returns. It's hard to say exactly why she is like that. It could be that the ending of the two-year relationship that forced her to flee wherever she was originally from so shattered her self-confidence that it took seven seasons to pick up all of the pieces (or maybe longer, as the series doesn't quite end on a confidence-boosting note.) Or maybe it was that self-doubt that ended the relationship in the first place. It could go back to childhood. There's a couple of episodes where she seems uneasy around her mother, Dottie (played by Nanette Fabray.) Whatever the reason, Mary Richards self-effacing manner is one reason we all love her, one reason we find her special. If she ever DID see herself as special, we'd probably stop seeing her as such. And it did help her fit in with that motley crew that she surrounded herself with.

And what of that motley crew? I once heard Ed Asner say on Larry King that the MTM characters were a bunch of lovable losers, but I think that's kind of harsh. Not the lovable part, but that they were losers. After all, they were all members of the Great American Middle Class (at least up until the series finale.) I think it's more accurate to say they were all insecure. Neurotic, even. However, unlike the neurotics Woody Allen usually plays, they tried mightily to hide their neurosis. It's when they couldn't that the laughs ensued.

"Because, in an infinite universe, on a planet the size of a pin, we are mere specks of dust, just waiting to be blown away. You see what I'm trying to tell you?" 

Lou Grant (Ed Asner). The gruff boss with a heart of gold. It's obvious to everyone that when he gives Mary a hard time, starting with her job interview, that he's merely having fun with her. In fact, it soon becomes fairly obvious to Mary herself, though she can't quite help but get nervous anyway. In the one episode where Lou actually does have to admonish her (she and her best friend, under the influence of bit too much wine, write some comical obituaries that accidentally go out on the air) he in fact seems less gruff than usual. Despite that, Mary's offended enough by what she regards as rough treatment to quit her job.  When she realizes she's made a mistake, comes back but finds she's already been replaced, Lou plays up the gruffness, but helps ease her way back into her old job anyway. He must have realized he made a mistake, too.

Lou Grant comes across as a basically self-assured individual, but look again. The series kind of danced around the subject, and never said so for certain, but Lou may have been--and I don't use this term lightly--an alcoholic. He keeps a bottle of scotch in his desk drawer, and offers Mary a drink during her job interview. Now, this was back in 1970. It may just be there was more drinking going on in the workplace back then. Except that, on the very same day Lou hires Mary, he later shows up at her apartment drunk! Quite a debut for a sitcom character, wouldn't you say? True, his drinking never reaches such bizarre proportions again, but it keeps reasserting itself throughout the run of the series. When he's (temporarily, as it turns out) promoted upstairs, his swanky office actually comes equipped with a liquor cabinet. But it's all the way across the room, not close enough for Lou, and as his new desk, essentially a glass table, lacks a drawer, he uses the wastepaper basket to store his bottle instead! In another episode Lou gets drunk before going on the air to report the news during a TV strike, but ends up giving a flawless performance, so at least he's a functional alcoholic. In interviews he gave after the series had ended, Asner occasionally bemoaned having played a drunk for laughs. But at least it was a different kind of drunk than Dean Martin, Foster Brooks, or Otis on The Andy Griffith Show. Like that other top-rated 1970s sitcom, All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show dealt with serious topics from time to time, but in a less sensationalist manner. Or to put it this way, on Family a serious topic was depicted as a disruption of the ordinary, whereas on TMTMS the serious topic didn't disrupt so much as quietly, almost gently, subvert the ordinary. So it was with Lou's drinking. But why was he like that? His marriage breaks up halfway through the show's run, but alcohol doesn't seem to be the cause of the problem. Rather, wife Edie (Priscilla Morrill), in the parlance of the times, wants to 'find herself'. And anyway, even back when Lou mistakenly thought his marriage was a happy one, he drinks to excess. In fact, in that episode where he shows up at Mary's place drunk, he writes a love letter to his wife! The arc of Lou's journalistic career, which is gradually revealed throughout the years, might have something to do with it. Lou was once an up-and-coming reporter who once worked alongside Walter Cronkite when they were both war correspondents during World War II. But Cronkite ended up at CBS, Lou at WJM. I suspect disappointment that his once-promising career had lost its promise was behind his drinking. Lou eventually goes back to print journalism, but that's another TV show.

"Allow me to introduce myself, I'm another person in the room."

 Rhoda Morgenstern (Valarie Harper) The Mary Tyler Moore Show is often thought of as a "workplace comedy", but in the early years the series was neatly divided between Mary Richard's professional life and her personal life. If Lou Grant was the linchpin of the former, then wisecracking upstairs neighbor and best friend Rhoda served the same function in the latter. Not that the two worlds didn't occasionally merge, as Rhoda eventually becomes a familiar figure to the WJM-TV gang (MARY: Rhoda, you know my boss, Mr. Grant? RHODA: Oh, yeah. Hi, Lou!) Rhoda also figures into the workplace stories in another way. Whatever was going on in the newsroom, Mary was sure to tell Rhoda about. Just as what was ever happening in the many Rhoda-centric episodes, the WJM bunch was to find out through Mary. Nevertheless, it was outside of work that this relationship mattered. Mary and Rhoda forged a female friendship that rivaled that other sitcom pair, Lucy and Ethel. And without having to don disguises so as to sneak into a nightclub act. Pals and confidants as the song goes. Despite many differences between them. Mary was a WASP. Rhoda was Jewish. Mary grew up in the Midwest, Rhoda was from the Bronx in New York City. Mary was the daughter of a doctor, Walter (played by Bill Quinn), and thus probably grew up in the upper-middle class. I'm not sure what Rhoda's father, Martin (played by Harold Gould), did for a living--the internet is coming up short--but Rhoda has a kind of working-class brashness about her. What made this friendship especially intriguing, as well as comically tense at times, is that Rhoda had an inferiority complex that seemed centered on her best friend! Though roughly the same age, Mary was certainly the more mature of the two, and could sometimes come across as more as an older sister than a best friend. Rhoda was more streetwise, or at least came across as more streetwise, and sometimes called her more mature friend "kid" as a way of putting her in her place. But the main point of contention is that Rhoda envied Mary her good looks. Now, to my eyes, and no doubt to yours, too, Rhoda was herself a damn good-looking woman. True, in the early years of the show she had a weight problem. I know this because she would tell everyone, and especially Mary, that she had a weight problem ("I don't know why I'm putting this in my mouth. I should just apply it directly to my hips.") Eventually, she loses the excess pounds and even wins a beauty contest at the department show where she works (in an episode written by Treva Silverman, often credited for, if not creating, then at least fine-tuning the character of Rhoda.) What vexes me is that in those episodes where's she supposed to be overweight, she merely looks to my eyes to be wearing baggy clothes. Nor is there any evidence that Valarie Harper (who like Moore started out as a dancer) ever had a weight problem. So did Harper just wear baggy clothes to convince us that the character she played was overweight, or maybe, just maybe, the character of Rhoda was never overweight to begin with, but just THOUGHT she was? I suspect the latter, but can't prove it. Anyway, the new, improved Rhoda didn't hang around for long. No, I don't mean she put the weight, or the baggy clothes, back on. She got her own show! And with Rhoda gone, The Mary Tyler Moore Show truly did become a workplace comedy. Some would say THE workplace comedy.

I said earlier that, based on a single episode, that Mary Richards may have had a problem with her mother, that she found her kind of cloying. But as with everything with her character, it may have been a matter of perception. Her perception. The mother actually seemed like a perfectly nice woman, naturally concerned about her daughter, but not overly so (in fact, we find out at the end of the episode that it's the father that's the worrier.) Rhoda Morgenstern also had a problem with her mother, also found her cloying, except in this case it's not mere perception but a cold, hard fact. To give you an idea just how meddlesome Ida Morgenstern is, we see far more of her than Mary's mom, even though the latter lives in the same state as her daughter, whereas Ida lives a half a continent away in New York City! The overbearing Jewish mother was already a well-worn comic stereotype in 1970, but the great comedy thespian Nancy Walker made is seem like we were being introduced to such a character for the very first time. Walker had hit it big on Broadway back in the 1940s (she played the female taxi driver in the original stage production of On the Town; Betty Garrett acted the part in the 1949 movie.) As is often strangely the case with Broadway stars, she had a more minimal presence in motion pictures. By 1970, her heyday seemed to have been long in the past, but thanks in part to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the 48-year old Walker became a household name, a feat more easily accomplished on TV than in the theater.

"With councilmen, municipal judges and sewer bonds I vote the straight eeny-meeny-miney-moe ticket."

Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod) Mary Richards co-worker, and in some ways her confidant, at least at the office. He was also the personification of quiet desperation, the character who had the hardest time hiding his inferiority complex. Again, looking at it objectively, he didn't really seem to have all that much to complain about. After all, he was married to the attractive, charming Marie (Joyce Bulifant) and had what I would imagine was a fairly interesting job writing the evening news. Even if that particular line of work is overrated, it still beats cleaning rest rooms. But Murray clearly wanted more out of life. He also wanted Mary. This becomes evident as early as the first season when he stares dreamily at her as she relates some bit of business involving Lou or Rhoda or whoever. Murray eventually reveals his feelings to her, and she lets him down in as bighearted, if somewhat self-embarrassed, a way as possible, and they're able to remain friends. Murray may seem like a rather depressing person to be around, but, fortunately, he has a highly mitigating sense of humor, which actually makes him a bit of a trip at times, and, in his asides to Mary, often acts as a wisecracking Greek chorus to the goings-ons in the newsroom.

The woman pictured above, Miss Chicago, competed in but did not win the 1946 Miss America pageant, proving those pageants mean squat as far as future career prospects go. Read on:

"It's just an...involuntary shudder"

 
Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman) Mary Richard's landlady and apparently an old friend, though I can't track down how they met. I do know that they already knew each other by the time Mary agrees to rent an apartment from her. Phyllis is a piece of work--opinionated, defensive, self-absorbed, often obnoxious,  and completely unaware that she's anything but perfect. She's also quite humorless, which of course makes her funny as hell. However far back she go with Mary, Phyllis still has to compete with Rhoda for the title of Best Friend, and isn't any luckier than Leachman was in Atlantic City back in 1946, but it's great fun watching her try. One drawback for her in the Best friend sweepstakes (other than self-absorption, obnoxiousness, etc.) is that she just couldn't spend as much time in Mary' apartment as she had a dermatologist husband (the unseen Lars) and a precocious daughter, Bess (Lisa Gerritsen) waiting for her at home. On top of everything else, Phyllis saw herself as a progressive parent and insisted her daughter call her by her first name, though you got the feeling Bess might have preferred Mary or even Rhoda as a mother. As I said earlier, Phyllis was an outspoken feminist, but when her husband dies, leaving her penniless, she actually has to go out and get a job (as well as a spinoff series, which takes place in San Francisco)

"And so, until tomorrow, this is your Happy Homemaker reminding you that a woman who does a good job in the kitchen is sure to reap her rewards in other parts of the house."

Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White) If Phyllis Lindstrom lived vicariously through the type of modern woman she read about in the pages of Ms. magazine, than Sue Ann lived vicariously through Hints from Heloise. She was the anti-Gloria Steinem. At least that's what she wanted everyone to think. Sue Ann is actually a one-woman object lesson in not believing everything you see on TV. Hosting a show on WJM titled The Happy Homeworker, in which she cheerfully dispensed goofy household tips (such as using dead goldfish as fertilizer for houseplants) to stay-at-home wives, an already vanishing species in the 1970s. Sue Ann herself did not belong to that species as she was unmarried and obviously a career woman. When the TV camera was turned off she turned into a sharp-tongued, nymphomaniac, vicariously living her non-professional life through a combination of Cosmopolitan and  Winning Through Intimidation. She almost steals Lars away from Phyllis (the latter's suspicions are raised when she realizes how clean her husband's clothes are lately) and actually gets a drunk Lou Grant to bed her! It was rather difficult to believe that Mary Richards would ever let this hilariously sweet-talking ("dear, sweet naive Mary"), duplicitous bitch become part of her inner circle even if she did work right down the hall, and the sitcom eventually had to move Sue Ann into the newsroom itself (after The Happy Homemaker was canceled) to justify her weekly presence, but why carp? I'll happily accept a suspension of reality if I know a good laugh will come out of it. Sue Ann makes her debut in Season 4, and may have just been meant as a one-shot character, but then you saw her again a few episodes later, and again a few episodes after that. Her visibility increased greatly once Rhoda and Phyllis moved out of town. And that increased visibility was a huge career boost for Betty White. She had been a minor celebrity going back to the early days of television, and by 1973 was probably best known for co-hosting the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade (with Lorne Greene.) She really wasn't know then for her comic abilities. Forty years or so later it's hard to remember there was a time when she was anything but funny.

"I really miss Phyllis. Of course, I never knew her very well. Maybe that helps."

Georgette Franklin, later Georgette Baxter (Georgia Engels) Rhoda's co-worker and friend who becomes Mary Richard's friend as well. In fact, after Rhoda moves back to New York (and to her own sitcom) Georgette more-or-less replaces her as Mary's confidante, albeit a much more docile confidante. With her vacant stare and soft, childlike voice, it would be tempting to write Georgette off as just another dumb blonde, except I can't remember her ever saying or doing anything dumb. Well, there IS her choice of a soulmate...

"This just in. You've got something between your teeth."

Ted Baxter (Ted Knight) The pompous, gaffe-prone, woefully unprepared anchorman of WJM-TV's Six O'Clock News. Ted is such a broadly comic, over-the-top character, he sometimes seems like he'd be a better fit on Gilligan's Island than the more sophisticated Mary Tyler Moore Show. But maybe that's the point. Ted is a farcical bomb dropped in the midst of all the nuanced storytelling. His mere presence sometimes forces the other characters to adopt a more broadly comic attitude, merely as a way of dealing with him, such as when Mary tells him to shut up on the air. But what makes him tick? Is he merely a comedy contrivance, a soulless punchline who barely needs a setup? Has he no interior life? Or is his head so far up his ass it's the exterior life he's lacking? Is he not a character but a caricature? A mere cartoon? Sure, he's played by a flesh-and-blood actor, but the same can be said of Moe, Larry and Curly. Except that Ted is not nearly as invulnerable as those three, not physically (he has a heart attack late in the series run) but, more importantly, not psychologically. As time goes on, another, more realistic, but no less funny Ted Baxter emerges, one wracked with insecurities, who refuses ever to go on vacation for fear he might be replaced, who believes everytime he's called into Lou's office he might be fired. So great is his respect for his boss, that one wonderful episode has Ted happily turning down a job as a game show host when Lou, under his breath, lets slip an emotional "don't go." Or how about when Gordy (John Amos), the station's weatherman in the early years, returns to Minneapolis a nationally-known TV personality, to Ted's chagrin? You can't help but feel for the latter, malapropisms and all. Frankly, I think Ted's over-the-top, broad comedy is really nothing more than a coping mechanism. And in the end , maybe that proves he does belong more on The Mary Tyler Moore Show than Gilligan's Island. Those seven castaways were never insecure about anything (or else why did think they were about to get off that island at the beginning of nearly every episode?) Finally, Ted's courtship and eventual marriage to Georgette does a great deal to humanize him. Amazingly, without dehumanizing her in the process.

  When Mary met Lou.

That's the most famous part of the job interview, but what I found that was nearly as funny was this exchange that occurred a few minutes earlier:


Lou: What religion are you?
Mary: Mr. Grant, I don't quite know how to say this, but you're not allowed to ask that when someone's applying for a job. It's against the law.
Lou: Wanna call a cop?
Mary: No.
Lou: Good. Would you think I was violating your civil rights if I asked if you're married?
Mary: Presbyterian.

Mary has a bad day--and see how it ends! 

I told you before about all the musical numbers on The Dick Van Dyke Show and how it was a chance to see Moore sing. Well, she did once on her other hit show, too, though it's arguably not quite the same thing.

Lou's turn to sing. 

Georgette outdoes both of them.

One final musical number--along with a knock-knock joke!

Rhoda consoles Lou, after he ruins Mary's parties (not that it wouldn't have been ruined anyway; she seemed to have problems in that area.)

Mary and Rhoda are not forgotten. Here's a tribute to the two I found on You Tube.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show as a foreign film.

Move over, Robert Frost. Sue Ann waxes poetic about the weather.

Georgette tries to fill in for Rhoda.

Edie gets married, but it's really just an excuse on my part to show yet another Mary and Lou clip. Moore and Asner just worked so well together.

Mary delivers an editorial about the perils of overpopulation.

Here's how the above episode ends:

TED: You're giving her a fifty dollar raise after she told me to shut up on the air?
LOU: It's all I can afford, Ted.

When Ted met Walter. 

As I said earlier, woefully unprepared.

But where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns
Quick, send in the clowns...

 
...Don't bother
They're here

I've tried to make the point that insecurity was a major theme of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Well, after seven years, the characters finally had a valid reason for all that insecurity. In the series finale, a new station manager takes over and fires everyone but the one character you might think would have the MOST reason to feel insecure: Ted Baxter. But I'm going to skip all that and instead show you the curtain call, which aired only once.

Mary Tyler Moore did a few other things in her career, but I'm going to end it here.

No, wait, I can't quite end it that way.

. 

See that woman in the background with scarf and glasses? Don't you just love that look on her face? She's probably thinking to herself, "What the hell?..."