Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: A History of the Mary Tyler Moore Show (47 page)

When I was five years old, I loved to play Mary and Rhoda. Sometimes I was Mary, sometimes I was Rhoda, depending on my mood. If I wanted to indulge my love of office supplies, I was Mary, sharpening pencils like she did on her very first day on the job; if I wanted to tie a scarf around my head, that was Rhoda.

As I sat in my red paisley scarf with my legal pad and watched the women of
The Mary Tyler Moore Show,
I didn’t know that these icons of female independence would influence the rest of my life. I just liked the way they looked, the way they loved and supported each other, and the glamorous adult lives they led. To mention now that my “Mary and Rhoda” games supplanted the use of baby dolls and tiny lightbulb-powered ovens, that playing Mom and House gave direct way to pretending to be a single working woman or a bohemian creative spirit, feels a little too perfectly feminist, too women’s libby, too ERA era. But it is what happened to me in the late 1970s and early 1980s, during my formative years, as I watched endless reruns of the most respected sitcom of the previous decade. To mention that my mother bought a
giant wooden
J,
her own first initial, spray-painted it gold, and hung it on her bedroom wall just like Mary did with her
M,
well, that feels even more pat. But that happened just the same. My mother and I, two decades apart, embraced the props of the only enviable, unapologetic single women we knew in our insular suburban existence. We hoped to catch a little of that spirit in our own lives, even though we were both too young to realize what it meant.

The cast poses for a publicity shot early in the show’s run.
Getty Images

Cast photo taken as a joke to send to reviewers who didn’t like the show, then later dumped by secretary Pat Nardo when bad early reviews trickled in and the joke didn’t seem so funny anymore. Nardo swiped one copy for posterity. Top row: Harper, Asner, Leachman; bottom row: MacLeod, Moore, and Knight.
Courtesy of Pat Nardo.

Writer Treva Silverman at the typewriter where she perfected her scripts.
Courtesy of Treva Silverman.

Silverman’s more casual publicity shot.
Courtesy of Treva Silverman.

Writer Susan Silver.
Courtesy of Susan Silver.

Susan Silver, right, with then-husband, Arthur, at the 1972 Emmy Awards, where Ed Asner won a statue for his performance in the 1971 episode she wrote, “The Square-Shaped Room.”
Courtesy of Susan Silver.

Producer Lorenzo Music with fan Joe Rainone and his brother Eddy during their 1971 set visit.
Courtesy of Joe Rainone.

Producer David Davis, Mary Tyler Moore, producer Allan Burns, fan Joe Rainone, and producer James L. Brooks in 1971. Note Brooks’s “It’s a Girl” button: His daughter was born that night.
Courtesy of Joe Rainone.

Ed Asner’s note to Silver after the Emmys, where he thanked her in his speech for writing the episode for which he won: “It’s a pleasure mentioning your name, it’s a pleasure looking at you, and it’s a pleasure doing your words.”
Courtesy of Susan Silver.

Mary and Rhoda chat in Mary’s apartment.
Corbis Images