Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: A History of the Mary Tyler Moore Show (19 page)

The network executives were now leaving the
Mary Tyler Moore Show
scripts alone as ratings climbed and Emmys piled up. At last, Brooks and Burns got to run their own show without interference. The production moved into a permanent home, Soundstage 2 at CBS Studio Center, the same stage that had housed the hit show
Gilligan’s Island
. This meant Brooks and Burns had to relinquish the office once used by Desi Arnaz, including the steam room, but it was worth giving up the chance to sauna with the ghosts of the greatest sitcom of all time for their show to have a real home. And they didn’t have much time for steam rooms anyway. They were soaking in the experience of running their
own
successful sitcom. Brooks considered the entire experience his version of college. He learned everything he’d ever wanted to know. Leachman taught him about theater, Harper about improv, Asner about drama, Knight about his own vaudevillian approach. They would all discuss craft between rehearsals, while Brooks took in every word.

Even Mike Dann, the prickly executive who’d originally buried the show in a terrible time slot on the network schedule, had to admit: “They were the classiest situation comedy to be developed, and everybody after that modeled themselves after it.”

If there was any doubt remaining that
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
had made it, two unmistakable signs of success proved the point: By the second year, Mary Richards’s popularity was secure enough that Moore could ditch her wig. No one was about to mistake Mary for Laura Petrie any longer. At the same time, Burns called Sonny Curtis
and asked him to record new lyrics to the theme song: “She’s obviously made it,” he told the musician, “so we’ve got to update it.” Now, instead of worrying about how Mary would make it on her own, the new lyrics asked, “Who can turn the world on with her smile? Who can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?”

Soon berets became a universal symbol of independence. Lou, Rhoda, Mary, Ted, Murray, and Phyllis all became recognizable personality types. Single women everywhere longed for a cozy, $130-a-month studio apartment like Mary’s, complete with their initials on the wall. Her home became so well known that the location, 2104 Kenwood Parkway in Minneapolis, turned into a popular tourist destination even though only her fictional address—119 North Weatherly—was ever mentioned on the air. The tourist traffic at the house got so bad that the owners put an “Impeach Nixon” sign in the window in hopes of preventing producers from filming the new 1973 opening-title sequence there. Given that Mary Richards admirers would still be visiting the house decades after the show aired, the effort’s ultimate goal—stifling gawkers—was futile.

As the show reached new heights, a 747 carrying Joe and Eddy Rainone from Rhode Island to California—their first flight ever—touched down in Los Angeles. The airsick boys stumbled into their Riverside Drive motel, weary and uncertain of what would happen to them in the coming week. Would the
Mary Tyler Moore
people even remember that they’d given the go-ahead for a set visit? Would they know who the Rainones were? At the check-in desk, their questions were answered: The clerk handed them a package from the
Mary Tyler Moore
staff. Inside was a script for the episode being shot that week, titled “Thoroughly Unmilitant Mary,” about a strike at WJM. With it was a stack of comic books, which Rainone had mentioned liking. A note signed from Lorenzo Music said the producer would pick them up at their hotel at nine the following morning.

As promised, their phone rang just before nine. Music’s laconic
voice was on the other end. “I’ll be there soon,” he told them, “driving a brown station wagon.”

Rainone couldn’t believe he was about to meet someone from MTM Enterprises! Who was driving an unassuming station wagon! His greatest dream was coming true. On the ten-minute drive to the lot, Music told the brothers that the producers had come to look forward to Joe’s letters because of their detailed critiques. Once, when Brooks was out of town, he even had Music photocopy that week’s letter and send it to him on the road.

Soon Joe found himself, wonder of wonders, plopped down in Allan Burns’s office, awed by the shelves full of bound
Room 222
and
He & She
scripts. He felt a jolt when a lanky, gorgeous brunette passed by: Mary Tyler Moore, right there! When she peeked into the office, though, he could see that it wasn’t the star: Instead, it was his first pen pal on the set, Mimi Kirk, who also worked as Moore’s double during lighting setups. Eddy and Joe met her, then went across the hall to meet production manager Lin Ephraim. When they were whisked back to Allan’s office, it had been transformed: A semicircle of chairs had materialized, filled with the cast members. Mary Tyler Moore, for real this time, along with Valerie Harper, Ed Asner, John Amos (who played WJM weatherman Gordy), Ted Knight, and Gavin MacLeod. Joe lost his footing when he caught sight of them, then recovered in time for Music to introduce him and his brother to everyone.

He took a seat and stared at his heroes. Harper barely looked like Rhoda, she was so luminous—like so many fans told her, he wouldn’t have recognized her out on the street. Moore glowed from the couch, tanned deeply, her endless legs crossed, her smile overwhelming. Then, something even more overwhelming: She spoke to him. She knew who he was. “When I heard you were coming,” she said, “I took your letters home with me over the weekend and I read them.” He had written nearly forty letters at that point.

After the read-through came lunch. The producers explained that
they’d deemed this “Joe Day” and had made a reservation for the cast and producers to eat with Joe and his brother at Tail o’ the Cock, a restaurant popular with Hollywood types and paneled with wood so dark it made the sunniest Los Angeles afternoon seem like last call inside. There Joe sat, sandwiched between Harper and Moore, chatting about whatever. He kept an eye on his brother on the opposite end of the table, who was talking with Amos and MacLeod. Joe was mortified to hear his brother detailing his own stomach problems, then relieved when the conversation turned to hockey instead.

Brooks and Burns, down on Joe’s side of the table, awed their fan with behind-the-scenes tales, including one about the final episode of the first season. Rainone hadn’t exactly loved it, and he told them so in his letter that week. It turned out the episode had been so problematic that the producers had kept rewriting and reshooting it in pieces throughout the first season’s production. First, they’d conceived it as a showcase for comedian Richard Libertini’s impression of a bird—they would dress him in a chicken suit, and he’d play a character at the station, maybe from a children’s show, called Big Chicken. But nothing they did with him worked right. Eventually, his scenes were edited down to just one, a gathering in Lou’s office, and a new story emerged: Lou nearly getting fired because at forty-five, he was now “too old” to connect with the youthful audience the station needed. Slim Pickens played the station owner in a performance that made Burns cringe—it wasn’t the actor’s fault, Burns just knew it wasn’t funny. But the season was coming to an end and
something
had to go on the air, so the producers stopped fussing with the episode and shipped it to the network. Every show has a worst episode, and this would be theirs.

Hilariously,
Los Angeles Times
critic Cecil Smith raved about it when it aired. He called it “
of singular value to connoisseurs of comedy, if only for the portrait wrought by Slim Pickens of a TV tycoon who was once a cowboy star and who conducted business in the living room of his home astride the stuffed carcass of the horse he rode
in movies.” Brooks and Burns got a far more accurate reading of the episode’s effectiveness when Joe’s letter arrived the next week. By this time, Joe had developed an intricate “rating” system that he used to evaluate every episode. In short, he counted what he called “jollies” (times he laughed out loud), grins (times he smiled at a joke), and sobs (any tears would do). It was a weighted system, with jollies receiving two points to every one instance. This episode barely rated at all. “You picked up on something Cecil Smith didn’t,” the producers said of Joe’s evaluation. “Here’s this guy who’s supposed to know TV, and you picked up that it was bad.”

Brooks proceeded to probe Joe on his writing habits and aspirations. Had he ever thought of being a television writer? Joe demurred, saying he didn’t think he had it in him to make up funny stuff like they did. He loved the idea of being able to work for his favorite show, of going to the set every day, but he didn’t think writing was his way in.

Halfway through lunch, Tinker strode in and kissed Moore hello. “What are you doing here?” his wife asked.

“I’m here to meet this young man,” he told the now-breathless Joe. “Before you guys leave this week,” he said to Rainone, “I want to sit down and have a talk with you.”

Tinker headed back to the office, Burns picked up the lunch check, and Rainone couldn’t believe a thing that was happening to him. The rest of the day floated by, impossible to grasp, Joe’s personal Land of Oz. He saw the set, Mary’s apartment and the WJM newsroom laid out before him, Lou’s office folded into the side. Right before him, his favorite cast rehearsed a scene in which a union representative bursts into the newsroom with word of a strike. And then Sandrich invited him, Joe Rainone, to step in and play the union representative. When he got tired of doing the scene over and over, and his delivery grew monotonous, Sandrich would have none of it. “What do you mean, coming onto my set and delivering that line like that?”

Joe Rainone put everything he had into that line for the rest of the afternoon.

The remainder of the week swooshed by: an interview with syndicated TV columnist Charles Whitbeck, the beach in Santa Monica, the Wednesday run-through, Disneyland. Friday, the night of the taping, Rainone arrived to find the staff hyped up. Brooks—looking like a cross between Jim Morrison and John Lennon in wire-rimmed glasses and a skin-tight, chest-baring, lace-up shirt—was wearing a pin reading “It’s a Girl!” His wife had just given birth to their first child. Rainone loved being there for such a significant event, chatting with Music near the cameras and posing for photos with Brooks, Moore, and Burns. Even better, Moore told him the producers wanted to let him be an extra in the episode’s crowd scene. Joe had his long-awaited chat with Grant Tinker, in which the executive quizzed him on his interests and background. Rainone briefly wondered if this was a job interview of some kind; it sure felt like it. But soon it was time for filming to get under way.

Further investigation revealed that union regulations would prohibit Joe’s appearance in the episode, but he was still happy to be there. After being ushered into the bleachers next to his brother with the rest of the studio audience, Rainone watched as the episode came together in its finished form. Music warmed up the audience, telling them about Brooks’s new daughter. Music glanced at the note in his hand: “Amy Lorraine Brooks weighs . . . sixty-eight pounds?” The audience laughed. “Oh, wait a minute, that’s six pounds, eight ounces.”

Then Music introduced Joe and Eddy Rainone, fans who’d come all the way from Rhode Island for the taping. Joe stood up and waved. Two older women sitting in front of him turned and looked at him, he says, “like I was their favorite son.” After the taping, Eddy and Joe stuck around as long as they could, watching the relatively boring process called “wild lines,” lines from previous scripts that needed to be re-recorded for clarity. But eventually, it was time to go home.

Before Eddy and Joe headed back to their motel that night, Music
told Joe, “There’s been some talk of finding you something to do around here.”

“Yeah, Mary told me about the crowd scene,” Joe replied.

“No,” Music said. “Something more permanent.”