Mary Tyler Moore, who died Thursday at the age of eighty, and who was an eminence in the industry.
For those who don't know her, it is easy to claim her Oscar nomination for Robert Redford's Ordinary People (a film for which a very young Timothy Hutton would win). But its importance and influence had nothing to do with cinema and everything to do with television. Murphy Brown, Ally McBeal and Liz Lemon existed, in part, because they had previously appeared on home screens.
“Murphy Brown, Ally McBeal or Liz Lemon exist because she opened the doors of television to independent women”
She would earn her first two Emmys for The Dick Van Dyke Show, which began at age 25 in 1961 and where she was Laura Petrie, a character that fit the canon of the time. She was Van Dyke's wife, a retired dancer and current housewife, who was waiting for her busy husband every day. And no, it is not this role for which Michelle Obama admits to being a fan of hers.
After five seasons at the crest of the wave (and a Golden Globe nomination) and having tried his luck in the cinema (Millie, a modern girl), the legendary James L. Brooks and Allan Burns made him a tailor-made vehicle and with his name loud and clear. It was The Mary Tyler Moore Show, known here as The Girl on TV, which would mark a before and after on television.
The secret to her relevance has to do with her plot. The actress played Mary Richards, a thirty-year-old single woman who moved to Minneapolis to work at a television station. Doesn't seem groundbreaking, does it? Well, in 1970, while the Franco regime was still established here, it was the first American series to have a working, independent and single woman as the protagonist.
Mary Tyler Moore, who was married at the time (to television director Grant Tinker, her second husband), wanted to be even more groundbreaking. The Mary of the title began her adventures as a secretary after a tragic breakup and Moore wanted it to be a divorce. The managers would not dare with such a risky argument for the time.
"She is a reference for Michelle Obama because she had a profession and she was not desperate to find a husband."
What she did achieve, however, was that the United States perceived her as such. As the audience had her very much in mind as Dick Van Dyke's fictional wife, many saw that character as an emancipated and divorced version of the series that had launched her to fame.
It paid off. In 1973, 1974 and 1976 she would win three more Emmys for best comedy actress and The Mary Tyler Moore Show would be a platform for actresses like Valerie Harper and Cloris Leachman, who would have their own spin-offs titled Rodha and Phyllis, like their characters, as well. by Lou Grant, which would win 13 Emmy Awards as a one-hour drama and run for five seasons.
In August, Michelle Obama explained to the Variety portal why Mary Tyler Moore had been a role model for her: “She was one of the few working women on television at that time. She was not married. She wasn't looking for a husband. At no point did the series end with a happy ending with her finding a husband, which seemed like the right path for a woman.”
But a fundamental detail is that Mary Tyler Moore was not only the star of the vehicle but also the producer. With her husband Grant Tinker she had created a production company with her own initials, MTM, which would be the home of such emblematic series as St Elsewhere, The Bob Newhart Show, as well as the spin-offs of her own series, The Betty White Show, Canción sad Hill Street or Remington Steele.
She would create a very lavish production company with works such as 'The Bob Newhart Show', 'Sad Song from Hill Street' or 'Remington Steele.'”
Unlike her most mythical character, she did have a son, Richard Meeker Jr, who died at the age of 24 when he accidentally shot himself in the head due to a defect in a pistol, whose model would be withdrawn from the market. She was married for the third time to Robert Levine, who was her husband until the day she died, and she never wanted to leave the profession.
She won her sixth Emmy in 1993 as a supporting role for the television movie Stolen Babies and in 2013 she had her last role in Póker de Reinas alongside Betty White, a friend with whom she had coincided on television since the seventies. She defined herself as liberal and, unlike feminist figures of the time such as Gloria Steinhem, she was on the Republican side.
