After appearing on TV Land’s Hot in Cleveland in 2011 as “Diane” alongside her former Mary Tyler Moore co-star Betty White, Moore returned as Diane in 2013 for an episode titled “Love Is All Around”. But she will be forever remembered, in a moment frozen in time, as the wide-eyed, independent news producer who tossed her hat to the sky, ready to take on the world. As a television icon she swiftly became America’s TV sweetheart, only to earn a prized Oscar nomination for playing an ice queen of a grieving mother with a broken heart in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People. “The courage she displayed in taking on a role, [in Ordinary People], darker than anything she had ever done, was fearless and enormously powerful.” Wow. Her show was one of the first to support women’s advocacy, with her TV news producer character Mary Richards calling for equal pay to her male co-workers. Thankfully, the internet makes it much easier to find the books of those we’ve lost.
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Liz Matt, better known to some Philadelphians as Lizabeth Starr, the host of Channel 6’s AM Philadelphia and later as the host of Good Day Philadelphia on Fox 29, was in college watching the show as it aired. She broke ground. She forged through. “Mary (MTM) was a gem”. BRITISH ACTOR STEPHEN FRY “Rehearsing on the #MaryTylerMoore stage today”. On The Dick Van Dyke Show she was a stay-at-home, devoted wife and mom, who was very smart, but prone to declare “Oh, Rob”, when she needed assistance.
To those who followed Moore’s later years, he death at 80 Wednesday was not really a shock. “You were a role model in so many ways”.
Mary Tyler Moore, as Georgia Tann, in a scene from “Stolen Babies”. She landed her first regular series gig in 1959 on the TV series “Richard Diamond, Private Detective” – and was heard but only seen from the legs down as the sexy receptionist Sam.
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All of that came to a head in 1997, when, under the guise of a show about Winfrey’s favorite celebrity women, the Oprah staff surprised Winfrey with a drop-in appearance from Moore. “What a person. Always gracious, filled w/good humor”.
