Mary Tyler Moore, aka Laura Petrie and Mary Richards, Dies at 80

With the news of the death of Mary Tyler Moore Jan. 25 at the age of 80, you could find lots of images of the groundbreaking, pioneer television star, actress and producer. In almost all of them, she looked energetic, sparkly and loving, even a little knowing.

In almost all of the images, she looked happy — which is to say she looked like Laura Petrie, the wife of a TV comedy writer on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” and Mary Richards, the single assistant news producer at a Minneapolis television station, on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” in which Ed Asner played her curmudgeonly boss, Lou Grant.

The shows were capstones of sorts, memorable to a fault, which said a lot about what Moore brought to both: a bouncy and bounce-back energy, intelligence, the kind of beauty and sexy air that seemed a particularly fitting emotional wardrobe accessory.

The images — and the shows for that matter, excellent as they were — did not speak to the fullness of her life. It may be that they spoke to a Mary Tyler Moore that fans of the two shows — and I’m guessing they were some of the same fans, though the shows were separated by a few years — preferred to know and remember.

“The Dick Van Dyke” show ran from 1961 to 1966; “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” from 1970 to 1977. The difference was not in quality, but in content: Laura Petrie was a married homemaker and mom, but Mary Richards worked and lived by herself.

The first show arrived on the cusp of the 1960s, not yet the turbulent era of cultural change that was coming down the road. The second bounced up in the era’s aftermath, when all was said, but not yet done.

The two shows stick in the mind because, as far as situation comedies go, they were the best in the form in both decades. While she stuck out like a blazing comedic light with perfect timing, Moore was also surrounded by characters and character types played by some of the best actors around: the gangly Dick Van Dyke himself, Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie, then, for “Mary Tyler Moore,” not only Asner but Ted Knight as anchorman Ted Baxter, Cloris Leachman as Moore’s landlady and Valerie Harper as her friend Rhoda (which, like “Lou Grant,” became a spinoff). Moore won three Emmys for her performance as Mary Richards. She had come a long way from dancing on top of Hotpoint appliances in 1950s commercials.

From the 1970s through the 1990s, with her second husband, Grant Tinker, she was part of forces that created popular shows like “The Bob Newhart Show,” “WKRP in Cincinnati” and “Hill Street Blues.”

More had also starred in several films, notably the musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie” with Julie Andrews. A couple years after that she played a nun in the Elvis Presley vehicle “Change of Habit.” In 1980, she took on the role of Beth Jarrett, a mother faced with handling the death of her older son in the Robert Redford-directed “Ordinary People,” based on a novel by Judith Guest. The character was nowhere within miles of the people we were used to seeing Moore play; she was icy, cold, off-putting, struggling and failing to contain her anger and suffering, making family life miserable for her husband and younger son. Moore was nominated for an Oscar for the role.

It wasn’t an easy performance, but then Moore, she of the sunny disposition, knew something about what life could bring you in all of its facets. Professionally and personally, there was a more complex Mary Tyler Moore, complete with dark recesses and emphatically more troubles than she deserved. She was diagnosed in her thirties with diabetes; she was married three times and lost a son to an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound. Two of her marriages — including the one to Tinker — ended in divorce. She reportedly struggled with alcohol abuse.

For actors, life experience often informs performance and creativity. Moore, who — often simply by making an entrance, but also with a personality that was affirming of the best in us — made us laugh, smile and remember. In that, she made a gift of her talent to us all.