1936-2017
Who Was Mary Tyler Moore?
Award-winning actor Mary Tyler Moore became one of television’s most beloved wives, playing Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show in the 1960s; she won three acting Emmys for her work on the series. The Mary Tyler Moore Show—groundbreaking for Tyler’s starring role as a single, 30-something woman in the working world—started in 1970 and won her three more Emmys. Her roles in these classic TV sitcoms have made her one of the most popular actors in television history. The legendary actor died in January 2017 at the age of 80.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Mary Tyler Moore
BORN: December 29, 1936
DIED: January 25, 2017
BIRTHPLACE: Brooklyn, New York
SPOUSES: Richard Meeker (1955-1961), Grant Tinker (1962-1981), and Robert Levine (1983-2017)
CHILDREN: Richard
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn
Early Life and Career
Mary Tyler Moore was born on December 29, 1936, in Brooklyn, New York, to George Tyler Moore, who worked as a clerk, and Marjorie Hackett Moore. She was the eldest of three children and was raised in the Catholic faith. Her family moved from New York to Los Angeles when she was 8 years old, and she began acting and dancing while in high school.
She got her start in show business as a dancer in commercials, playing the part of Happy Hotpoint, a dancing elf to promote home appliances in the mid-1950s. Moore also found work as a chorus dancer in television variety shows and, in 1959, landed a role in the TV drama Richard Diamond, Private Detective, playing Sam, a glamorous secretary whose face was never shown but was represented by her shapely legs. She made several guest appearances in television shows including Johnny Staccato, Bachelor Father, The Tab Hunter Show, 77 Sunset Strip, Surfside 6, Hawaiian Eye, and Lock-Up.
She made her film debut in 1961 in X-15, an aviation drama starring David McLean and Charles Bronson.
"The Dick Van Dyke Show"
Moore became a household name in 1961 when she landed the role of Laura Petrie, one of television’s most beloved wives on The Dick Van Dyke Show, created by Carl Reiner and starring Dick Van Dyke. As the charming Petrie, Moore showed off her flair for comedy and won Emmys in 1964 and 1966 for her work.
After the show ended in 1966, Moore focused on making movie musicals, including Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), where she played an aspiring actor opposite Julie Andrews, and Change of Habit (1970), starring as a nun who falls in love with a doctor, played by Elvis Presley, as she prepares to take her vows. She also played a dramatic role in the television thriller Run A Crooked Mile (1969), starring opposite Louis Jourdan.
"The Mary Tyler Moore Show"
Moore didn’t have another hit until her return to television, with her own show The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970. She not only starred in the series, but also produced it with her second husband Grant Tinker through their company MTM Enterprises.
The show became a cultural phenomenon, tapping into changing attitudes about women in the workplace. Moore played television producer Mary Richards, one of the first female television characters to be a successful single woman. The TV comedy followed Mary’s personal and professional life at WJM-TV in Minneapolis and also featured Ed Asner, Gavin MacLeod, Ted Knight, Betty White, Valerie Harper, and Cloris Leachman.
Moore won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in 1973, 1974, and 1976 for the show, which aired its final episode in 1977.
In addition to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, her company produced a number of other popular television programs, including The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78), Taxi (1978-1982), Hill Street Blues (1981-87), Remington Steele (1982-87), Cheers (1982-1993), and spin-offs from The Mary Tyler Moore Show including Rhoda (1974-78), Phyllis (1975-77), and The Lou Grant Show (1977-1982).
To celebrate Moore’s iconic role as Mary Richards, a statue of her tossing her hat in the air as seen in the iconic show opening was unveiled in downtown Minneapolis in 2002.
Later Theater and Film Work
Moore made several attempts to return to television, including Mary (1978) and New York News (1995), but these shows didn’t catch on with television audiences. Moore continued to have success in other acting endeavors, though. In 1980, she won a Tony Award for her performance in Whose Life Is It Anyway? on Broadway. That year, Moore also received an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of an emotionally guarded mother in Ordinary People, directed by Robert Redford.
In her later career, she appeared in several television movies: First, You Cry (1978); Heartsounds (1984); Finnegan Begin Again (1985); Lincoln (1988), playing Mary Todd Lincoln; and Stolen Babies (1993), for which she earned another Emmy Award. In 1996, she returned to big-screen comedy playing the adoptive mother of Ben Stiller’s character in Flirting with Disaster (1996), directed by David O. Russell.
Personal Life
Moore was married three times. She married Richard Meeker in 1955, and they had a son, Richard, who was born the following year. After they split in 1961, she then married television executive Grant Tinker. That marriage lasted from 1962 until their divorce in 1981. Tragedy struck the family when Moore’s son, Richard, died from an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1980. In 1983, she married Robert Levine, a doctor who had treated her mother. They were married until Moore’s death.
During her life, Moore struggled with alcoholism, a disease her mother and father also battled, and not long after she married Levine, she checked herself into the Betty Ford Clinic for treatment. When she was in her early thirties, Moore was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. She became a well-known spokesperson and international advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
In her later years, Moore battled complications from diabetes including kidney and heart problems and the loss of her vision. In 2011, she faced another health challenge when she had a benign tumor removed from her brain. In 2012, the Screen Actors Guild presented Moore with a lifetime achievement award.
An animal lover and vegetarian, Moore was also an activist, working with organizations including the Humane Society and Farm Sanctuary. She and Bernadette Peters co-founded Broadway Barks in 1999. The group organizes an annual event with Broadway stars to promote pet adoptions from shelters.
Death & Legacy
In January 2017, Moore was hospitalized in Greenwich, Connecticut, and reported to be in grave condition. She died on January 25, 2017, at the age of 80 from cardiopulmonary arrest, following a bout with pneumonia.
Moore’s fans, co-stars, fellow celebrities, and the charitable organizations she worked with remembered the beloved TV icon as a trailblazing star in front of the camera and behind the scenes. “She’ll last forever, as long as there’s television,” Carl Reiner told the Associated Press. “Year after year, we’ll see her face in front of us.’’
Quotes
- I never went the Actors Studio route. I’m not an actress who can create a character. I play me.
- My grandfather once said, having watched me one entire afternoon, prancing and leaping and cavorting, “This child will either end up on stage or in jail.” Fortunately, I took the easy route.
- I think of myself as a failed dancer.
- I knew at a very early age what I wanted to do. Some people refer to it as indulging in my instincts and artistic bent. I call it just showing off, which was what I did from about 3 years of age on.
- We can each of us be a bit of an inspiration. That’s my joy in life whether it’s for people or animals.
- I believe animals were put here on Earth other than to provide food for us.
- One thing I’ve learned is that I’m not the center of the universe, not everything is my fault. I’m easier on myself now. I was really tough on myself. I think that’s why I was an achiever.
- In case there’s any doubt about the acute state of my alcoholism and the insanity it produced, I can recall with sickening clarity that on more than one occasion I played Russian roulette with my car. What’s more, some unwary, innocent people played with me.
- I’m fortunate to have had a front row seat to the evolution of working women on television.
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