The Mary Tyler Moore Show further established television situation comedies featuring independent women and helped develop shows that blended socially relevant situations with simply comedic ones.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show began airing on September 19, 1970, and went off the air on September 3, 1977. It was one of the most literate and lasting situation comedies of the 1970’s. More important, it was one of the pioneers of the “independent woman” television genre. Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) is the idealized single career woman. She moves to Minneapolis, Minnesota, after her fiancé leaves her, then gets a job as assistant producer of the local news show on television station WJM-TV. She moves into an old apartment building and finds friendship with Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper), an interior decorator for a local department store. Rhoda also is single, but unlike Mary, she desperately seeks a husband. Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman
At the office, Mary finds another family to rely on. Her boss, Lou Grant (Ed Asner), is a cantankerous and mildly sexist man, soft underneath his gruff exterior. Murray Slaughter (Gavin McLeod
The program had a cast of other recurring characters, including Bess Lindstrom (Lisa Gerritsen), Phyllis’s daughter on the show from 1970 to 1975. John Amos played Gordy Howard, WJM-TV’s weatherman, from 1970 to 1973. Sue Ann Nivens, played by Betty White
Although Moore was the star, The Mary Tyler Moore Show had no single perspective. Moore’s role often was to react to others, to play within the framework of a solid ensemble to sharpen and define herself and the other characters. James L. Brooks, a coproducer of the show, believed that its success stemmed from its plausible characters. Where Norman Lear
Brooks also stressed that the show was more attuned to verbal comedy than were Lear’s programs, which dealt more with situations than with subtlety. Even though The Mary Tyler Moore Show theoretically did not take on problems of magnitude, it did tackle issues within an individual framework. One episode dealt with Rhoda coming to terms with one of Mary’s friends who is prejudiced, and another focused on Phyllis trying to get her brother interested in Mary, not knowing that he is gay. Others dealt with Lou’s divorce and Murray’s thoughts of infidelity. These big issues were treated on a small scale, but they were big issues nevertheless.
Mary Tyler Moore as an actor was not new to television success. She played Laura Petrie, wife of television writer Rob Petrie, on the highly successful The Dick Van Dyke Show
Grant Tinker was married to Mary Tyler Moore from 1963 until they divorced in 1981. MTM Enterprises was founded by Moore, Tinker, and Arthur Price
Tinker was very influential in making The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but the writers who created the series also deserve credit for being the driving forces behind the new type of television series pioneered by the program. Writers Allan Burns and James L. Brooks had been successful with the popular television series Room 222 in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, so they were seasoned and ready to take on the responsibilities of creating a new program for CBS. Brooks was executive producer and cocreator of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Later he cocreated Rhoda, sharing the title of executive producer for that show as well as for Lou Grant. Brooks would also become known for writing and directing Broadcast News (1987).
A shift in viewing habits in the early 1970’s caused television executives to seek innovative types of programming. Demographics were coming into use, breaking down audiences by age, sex, income, and other sociological variables. These data described networks’ target audiences. The Brooks and Burns concept for The Mary Tyler Moore Show fit into this new mold, appealing to upscale audiences with more refinement and sophistication than previously seen on network television. Programs like The Mary Tyler Moore Show set the tone for prime-time entertainment for decades to come.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show did not magically appear on the airwaves without having had some formidable influences. That Girl,
Like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, That Girl dealt with different aspects of a woman’s life by looking at her family, work associates, friends, and neighbors. For the first time, television audiences got a glimpse of a working woman’s life. Even if it was often a rather shallow representation, just the idea that a woman could have a happy and productive life outside her roles of wife and mother was a startling image for television. The Doris Day Show (1968-1973) also helped establish the marketability of the “independent woman” genre.
Another popular series that debuted soon after The Mary Tyler Moore Show began its run was All in the Family
As a direct result of The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s popularity, a cascade of spin-offs, television’s answer to the sequel, populated the screen. Valerie Harper won three Emmy Awards as supporting actress (1971, 1972, and 1973) for her role as Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Harper left the show in 1974 for her own spin-off series, Rhoda,
Lou Grant ran for five seasons, from 1977 to 1982. It was, along with Rhoda, the most popular of the spin-offs. Asner played Lou Grant, formerly Mary Richards’s boss at WJM-TV, and now editor of the city desk at the Los Angeles Tribune, a family-owned daily newspaper. The series strived for realism, paying close attention to the details of journalistic life. The program dealt with relevant social and political issues such as rape, environmental pollution, exploitation of migrant workers and illegal aliens, and corruption of big business and corporations. Like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Lou Grant relied on its ensemble cast as a vital element of its success. Through the responses of individual characters, political issues were made relevant, bringing the problems and possible solutions to a personal level.
The impact The Mary Tyler Moore Show has had on viewers and on television itself is enormous. The series probably is one of the most influential in television history. The success of the show itself and of the MTM production company established a nurturing environment for the writers, producers, and actors dedicated to this particular style of presentation, mixing comedy and drama. That influence remained evident into the 1990’s in series ranging from Cheers to Alf to The Cosby Show to The Tracey Ullman Show to Family Ties. All these programs had MTM offspring as members of their production teams.
Not only did members of MTM Enterprises continue personally to influence production values of television series, but the subject matter introduced by The Mary Tyler Moore Show also remained of vital importance to later programming. Shows about women such as Murphy Brown, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, Designing Women, and The Golden Girls; ensemble shows such as Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law; and even Charlie’s Angels owed their opportunity to have women in central roles and show alternative lifestyles for women in part to the success and influence of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
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Bathrick, Serafina. “The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Women at Home and at Work.” In Critiquing the Sitcom: A Reader, edited by Joanne Morreale. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2003. Examination of the representation of gender in the public and private spheres in The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Bibliographic references and index. -
Harris, Jay S., ed. TV Guide: The First Twenty-five Years. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978. Interesting collection of articles about and photographs of television programs and personalities from 1953 through 1977. Includes color reprints of TV Guide covers and essays by performers and personalities about their work in television. Wonderfully dated material gives the reader a taste of the journalistic style of the time. Contains critical arguments about the impact of television upon society as well as information about a wide variety of personalities and programs. -
McCrohan, Donna. Prime Time, Our Time: America’s Life and Times Through the Prism of Television. Rocklin, Calif.: Prima, 1990. Good collection of essays on different phases of television history. Deals with individual programs within a larger framework. Cites interesting trivia and top-rated programs for past years. No photographs. -
Newcomb, Horace, ed. Television: The Critical View. 7th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. This collection of essays on various themes in television delves into specific programs as well as more abstract criticism of television’s effects on its audience. Included in this edition are essays on soap operas, Happy Days, and Laverne and Shirley; the politics of Lou Grant; and television’s aesthetics, ideology, and role in popular culture. -
Settel, Irving, and William Laas. A Pictorial History of Television. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1969. Good pictures combined with commentary on the history of television. Combines facts about television in general mixed with stories about the stars. -
Taylor, Ella. Prime-Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. A feminist-oriented discussion about the portrayal of family life on television. Fascinating cultural and social analysis, featuring chapters on episodic series (1946-1969), entertainment programming in the 1970’s, television’s changing families (1970-1980), and television families in workplace settings, along with a section comparing and contrasting television families of different eras. Cohesive and intelligent analysis of its topic. Each chapter is placed in historical context for a broader understanding of the driving forces behind particular modes of programming.
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