Tag: Mary Tyler Moore Show

September rambling: Tohubohu

a dangerous assault on democratic oversight

Word of the Day: Tohubohu – A state of chaos; utter confusion.

Threatening Vulnerable People Is No Way to Mourn Someone Who Was Murdered. Those who had nothing to do with the violence against Charlie Kirk are being menaced—just like always.

Big Tech Data Centers Compound Decades of Environmental Racism in the South

Scholars’ group cites mass civilian killings, starvation, and official incitement as evidence, while Israel and the United States reject the genocide label.

Pentagon press clampdown sparks First Amendment alarm. Journalists and free press advocates warn that new restrictions requiring pre-approval of even unclassified information represent a dangerous assault on democratic oversight.

Robert Reich on FOTUS’ Calamitous Crypto Corruption

Cartoon: The road to fascism

FOTUS to U.N.: ‘Your Countries Are Going to Hell.’ Read his full address at the U.N. General Assembly. 

Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez lays out what she found about the degree to which every New Yorker is being tracked, the harms that tracking is already inflicting, and the reasons to fear that things might get much worse, here and across the nation.

Modern dogs now occupy roles historically reserved for close human relationships and often receive greater moral concern than people.

RFK Jr., HHS secretary, “is correct that reported autism rates have exploded in the last 30 years — they’ve increased roughly 60-fold — but he is dead wrong about the causes,” the psychiatrist Allen Frances writes in The Times Opinion. “I should know, because I am partly responsible for the explosion in rates.”

FOTUS Has ‘Strong Feelings’ About Autism; the Issue Is Personal

Rural Health Clinics Begin to Fall Under Crushing Weight of Big, Ugly Bill

Nanoplastics are not just in seafood; a new study finds small plastic particles penetrate crops

Potential Trouble for Retirees: A Wealth Adviser’s Guide to the OBBB’s Impact on Retirement

History

In October, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine will reach an extraordinary milestone: 1 trillion webpages preserved. Record a video answering the question: “Why is the Wayback Machine important to you?”

The last look at American poverty? New data shows 41% of Americans are poor or low-income, revealing deep racial and regional disparities ahead of sweeping federal cuts.

Netanyahu: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver 

Thieves Steal and Destroy Solid Silver Statue of Abraham Lincoln Created by Mount Rushmore Sculptor Gutzon Borglum

American Hindenburg -“the worst air disaster you’ve never heard of”

Jordan Klepper’s The Daily Show interview of John Fugelsang talking about his book Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds. There is a lovely George Harrison reference as well. 

10 of the Oldest Cities in the U.S.

Why Romania Excels in International Olympiads

Internet Archive Designated as a Federal Depository Library

The Facebook Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation Settlement Administrator has sent me $38.36 USD. I’m RICH!

John Masius,  St. Elsewhere, Emmy-winning writer, and Touched By An Angel creator, dies at 75

‘Jeopardy!’ Contestant Ben Scripps Dies at 52 After Losing Battle With Cancer

Baseball’s Davey Johnson (1943-2025)

Now I Know: Why The Dot Got Dashed

Jimmy Kimmel

The Death of Free Speech – Legal Eagle

The FCC: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

He is Back!

HCR

Heather Cox Richardson, about the first of her Letters from an American newsletter six years ago: “In that first letter where I warned of rising authoritarianism, I wrote: ‘So what do those of us who love American democracy do? Make noise. Take up oxygen…

“If you are tired from the last six years, you have earned the right to be.

“And yet you are still here, reading, commenting, protesting, articulating a new future for the nation. And I am proud to be among you.

“I write these letters because I love America. I am staunchly committed to the principle of human self-determination for people of all races, genders, abilities, and ethnicities: the idea that we all have the right to work to become whatever we wish. I believe that American democracy has the potential to be the form of government that comes closest to bringing that principle to reality. And I know that achieving that equality depends on a government shaped by fact-based debate rather than by extremist ideology and false narratives.”

MUSIC

Freedom of Speech – Marsh Family parody of “Under the Sea” from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid”

Sonny Curtis, member of the Crickets who wrote the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” theme song, dies at 88; here he was on CBS Sunday Morning in 2022

Love Is All Around – Sonny Curtis; Mary Tyler Moore Show – Seasons 4-7 Intro & Theme

I Fought The Law – Bobby Fuller Four (1966), written by Sonny Curtis; I Fought The Law – the (post-Buddy Holly) Crickets (1959), featuring Curtis

Ouvertüre zum Lustspiel “Ein Morgen, ein Mittag, ein Abend in Wien” by Franz von Suppé

From – Bon Iver

Wuthering Heights score by Alfred Newman, composed for the 1939 film of the same book.

Makin’ Whoopee – Vince Giordano and The Nighthawks, September 9, 2025 – Radio Free Birdland #34

Need A Ride – Kathleen Edwards

Wuthering Heights suite from the 1939 film by Alfred Newman

Elegy by Mark Camphouse

Helter Skelter – The Beatles (Second Version, Take 17) [Anthology 2025]

K-Chuck Radio: Celebrating Earth, Wind & Fire Day

Ivonny Bonita – Karol G

Full Moon by Ludovico Einaudi

Sesame Street: Pentatonix Counts (and Sings) to Five 

Flash Gordon – Queen

Coverville 1549: Interview with Jeff Kanan of The Keep Recording and 1550: Cover Stories for Fee Waybill of The Tubes and B.B. King

J. Eric Smith’s Best Albums of 2025 (Third Quarter)

St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion) – John Parr

Protein Synthesis (1971)
Money For Nothing – Dire Straits

So THAT’S who Ed Asner was

This Has Gotta Stop

Ed Asner
“Voice Awards-2015

Apparently, I hadn’t raised my daughter correctly. When I told her that Ed Asner had died at the age of 91, there was no glint of recognition. She’s not familiar with WJM, the fictitious Twin Cities television station at the heart of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77).

Whereas I watched almost ALL of those MTM production shows, including the show’s spinoff, Lou Grant (1977-82).

But all was not lost. Apparently, in the online chat, folks were noting that Carl Fredericksen, Asner’s character in the Pixar animated film Up, was reunited with his beloved Ellie. My daughter has seen Up.

Then I asked her if she remembered the Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode from 2013 called Monster’s Legacy. Asner played sports coach Martin Schultz. “Was it rural?” Yeah, that was the one. Spoiler: he was the bad guy.

Interesting that, prior to 1970, he often played the “heavy.” I recognized him from a LOT of shows before MTMS. He played five different characters on Route 66, three on The Untouchables, and many more. On IMDB, he had more than 400 acting credits.

He won seven Emmys, more than any other male actor. Three were for The Mary Tyler Show, two for Lou Grant, and two for single performances in the television miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) and Roots (1977). I remember that his slave ship captain’s wig in Roots seemed ill-fitting.

Ed Asner was an unabashed political progressive. He was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) from 1981 through 1985. Fittingly, he achieved a posthumous legal victory as a judge formally denied SAG-AFTRA Health Plan’s motion to dismiss his lawsuit.

Slowhand

My daughter wanted to know if I knew who Eric Clapton was. Well, of course. I have LOTS of his music by Cream, Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominoes, and lots of solo work. So naturally, she pointed out his new protest song “This Has Gotta Stop.”

“Last year’s ‘anti-lockdown song’ with Van Morrison, ‘Stand and Deliver,’ suggested ‘that governments scrambling to keep their populations alive are somehow stealing from them.’ The announcement of that song also led to the resurfacing of racist comments Clapton made in 1976, which he apologized for.

I can forgive the old bigotry, though my daughter is less generous. But we share a disdain for the anti-vax stuff. One hates when your heroes turn out to be clods.

Mary Tyler Moore: “girl with the three names”

Danny Thomas thought Mary Tyler Moore had too small a nose to play HIS daughter on his sitcom

When I went to see the movie Ordinary People in 1980, I knew that, like the character Beth, Mary Tyler Moore, who died this week, had a son die tragically, and during the filming period. It’s impossible to ascertain how that event affected her acting. But it was a ferocious performance; one of my friends said, painfully, it reminded him of his growing up.

Mary was deservedly nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, though she lost to Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter. But it was clear, Beth was NOT “Our Mare!” that we knew from the show named after her, one of the most popular TV shows ever, which “helped define a new vision of womanhood.” Mary Richards is the cultural ancestor of Murphy Brown, Liz Lemon, Carrie Bradshaw, and so many others. There was initial talk of having Mary Richards be divorced, but that was nixed.

That theme, written and sung by Sonny Curtis, who wrote “I Fought the Law”, was changed after season 1. The iconic first line, “Who could turn the world on with her smile?” started in the second season after she actually moved, got her job, and made new friends after a romantic breakup. The theme song’s original first line was “How will you make it on your own?” The last line was also changed from “You just might make it after all,” to “You’re gonna make it after all.”

It’s well-repeated that shows such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, produced by MTM Enterprises, Mary’s company with second husband Grant Tinker, had people staying home on Saturday nights, and it was true. Here’s the fall CBS Saturday night schedule, with # indicating an MTM show:
1970: Mission: impossible (hr), My Three Sons, Arnie [no, I don’t remember it either], MTM#, Mannix (hr0 -[Mike Connors just died, too – watched that show regularly as well]
1971: All in the Family, Funny Face, New Dick Van Dyke Show, MTM#, M:I (hr)
1972: AITF, Bridget Loves Bernie, MTM#, Bob Newhart Show#, M:I (hr)
1973: AITF, MAS*H, MTM#, Bob Newhart#, Carol Burnett Show (hr) – THE classic lineup
1974: AITF, Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers#, MTM#, Bob Newhart#, Burnett (hr)
1975 and 1976: The Jeffersons, Doc#, MTM#, Bob Newhart#, Burnett (hr)

Watch
alt MTM opening
Love Is All Around – Joan Jett
Chuckles the Clown’s funeral

Read
John Amos on being on the MTM show

I watched all the spinoffs, Rhoda, Phyllis, and especially the hour-long drama Lou Grant. And those other MTM Enterprises shows were among my favorites: The Tony Randall Show (1976-1978), The White Shadow (1978-1981), WKRP in Cincinnati (1978-1982), Paris (1979-1980), Hill Street Blues (1981-1987), St. Elsewhere (1982-1988), and Newhart (1982-1990)


But it’s the original Dick Van Dyke Show where I learned about Mary Tyler Moore, the “girl with three names” who Danny Thomas thought had too small a nose to play HIS daughter on his sitcom, but who he recommended to play Laura Petrie to Dick’s Rob. And when I was eight and a half when the show started, I noted that she was pretty.

But there was something about the episode It May Look Like a Walnut, featuring Danny Thomas, a month shy of my 10th birthday. I couldn’t have identified it at the moment, but I later realized that Laura Petrie rolling out of a closet on a wave of walnuts was sexy as all get out.

Watch
DVD show opening
DVD/MTM song and dance
another DVD song and dance
I Am a Fine Musician
It May Look Like a Walnut – 5 minutes

Read
Growing Up with Mary Tyler Moore: The Dick Van Dyke Show’s Larry Mathews Shares Memories of His TV Mom
Mary Tyler Moore’s Greatest Quotes

I’ve watched Mary Tyler Moore in all sorts of projects, from Dick Van Dyke and the Other Woman Special, to at least four other series she starred in, to that not very good Mary Richards/Rhoda Morganstern reunion in 2000, to a 2013 appearance in Hot in Cleveland with Betty White and Georgia Engel. Before the Dick Van Dyke Show, I probably saw her in a bunch of shows, but I never watched a show hosted by Boris Karloff called Thriller

The Fatal Impulse (1960) – small role for MTM
Man of Mystery (1962) – a substantial role for MTM, though she doesn’t appear until 10 minutes in

Dream three-hour night of television

In my mind Frasier was just an odd continuation of Cheers.

Someone asked Ken Levine, who wrote for the TV sitcoms Cheers, Frasier, MASH, and several other shows: “What’s your dream three-hour night of television, including any shows from any decade, including now.” He explained: “I’m going to cheat. I’m just going to concentrate on comedies. Dramas take up two slots. So here are my all-time favorite sitcoms.”
8:00 THE HONEYMOONERS
8:30 THE BILKO SHOW
9:00 THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW
9:30 THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW
10:00 MASH
10:30 CHEERS

Keeping that in mind, I picked:
The Simpsons – OK I haven’t watched more than thrice in the last decade, but those first years are strong enough
The Dick van Dyke Show – compare and contrast the family dynamic of these first two shows
The Mary Tyler Moore Show – and back-to-back MTM
Barney Miller – one of those perennially underrated shows
MASH – even though it should have ended when Radar went home early in season 8, rather than dragging on a couple more years
Twilight Zone Hey, I have this (and Van Dyke) on DVD

But his respondents had some great cheats. One wrote: “My 10 o’clock hour would be a rotating mix like Four in One (1970-71) or its successor the NBC Mystery Movie, but would involve the hour-long MTM shows: Lou Grant, The White Shadow, Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, etc.” I rather like that, even that short-lived James Earl Jones show called Paris. And indeed, if I could do the same with the comedies, all the better; Mary Tyler Moore would share the slot with Newhart, WKRP in Cincinnati, even The Tony Randall Show, in which he played a judge.

Also, in my mind, Frasier was just an odd continuation of Cheers. With that cheat:

The Dick Van Dyke Show
The MTM sitcoms
Cheers/Frasier
Twilight Zone
The MTM dramas

What would YOU pick?
***
A production number from the 1986 Emmy Awards. “It’s a mess of TV stars singing snatches of — or merely walking on to — their shows’ theme songs.”

 

Book Review: After All by Mary Tyler Moore

Mary Tyler Moore’s her second marriage, to television producer Grant Tinker, seemed to epitomize the emotional distance both of them operated on when things were less than optimal.

 

As a television personality, there is probably no one I enjoyed more than Mary Tyler Moore. She appears on my Top Five favorite TV shows of all time, The Dick Van Dyke Show; her eponymous show is on my Top 20 list.

Looking forward to reading her autobiography, I was mystified by the fact that, for much of her professional life, she was a bundle of insecurities. Her success on her own show and Van Dyke’s she attributed to the talented performers, writers, and producers around her. Her failures, on other shows and on stage, are her fault. Such insecurity is odd, and not particularly appealing.

There is a certain arm’s length in her retelling of her growing up with a distant father and alcoholic mother, told in short chapters. A neighbor briefly molests her when she was six, and her mother refused to believe her; it’s told, as much of the book is, in this matter-of-fact manner. Later, the deaths of her younger sister and her son are likewise relayed.

Interestingly, her second marriage, to television producer Grant Tinker, who ran her production company, MTM, seemed to epitomize the emotional distance both of them operated on when things were less than optimal, though they appeared fine when things went well.

The book became so frustrating that, halfway through reading it, I actually blogged about it. Chris Honeywell nailed it: tanha, “a Buddhist idea which seems to correspond to ‘cravings, lusts, and focusing on self without introspection.'”

Then I started having second thoughts. I spoke to a friend of mine who has gone through therapy. The therapist has said to my friend, “Why aren’t you screaming” about the painful events being shared? Maybe when one has experienced enough emotional venting, one may come off as cavalier about the tough issues.

The most interesting chapter, and, at 12 pages, one of the longest, is when Mary finally gets sober. She went to the Betty Ford Clinic and was incensed by the tough treatment. “Then leave,” one nurse said.

After All, by the end, was a rather honest book. Not always pleasant, not what we might have expected from “our Mair,” but thorough.
***
Mary Tyler Moore nearly skipped the audition for “The Dick Van Dyke Show”.

Dick Van Dyke: “I’d go to work with terrible hangovers. Which if you’re dancing is hard.”

52 minutes of Carl Reiner talking about writing. He created The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Ramblin' with Roger
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