#than the quality of the movies and women nominated for lead actress in a musical/comedy 😭😭

[blush-and-books]

the way that there were so many unbelievable performances by women in film in 2024 that they had to put zendaya/challengers in the musical or comedy category just to nominate her .... meanwhile glen powell was nominated for hit man 😭😭😭

[tcm]

Doris Day Was Far More Than Virginal By Susan King

Oscar Levant once quipped: “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.”

The actor-composer-pianist-writer starred with Day in her first film, ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS (‘48), in which she played a bubbly singer. And it is true that she played 30-something-year-old virgins beginning with PILLOW TALK (‘59), the first film she made with Rock Hudson. But Levant’s comment diminishes the former band singer’s accomplishments as an actress and ignores the fact that her characters were quite modern and progressive. In fact, you could call her an early feminist.

During her “Golden Age,” which I define as between LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME (‘55) and SEND ME NO FLOWERS (‘64), she played successful career women at a time when there weren’t that many being portrayed on screen. In the George Abbott-Stanley Donen cotton candy-colored musical THE PAJAMA GAME (‘57), she’s a worker in a pajama factory, a member of the union leadership who doesn’t take any guff from her bosses. In the delightful romantic comedy TEACHER’S PET (‘58), she’s a successful journalist and college professor; in PILLOW TALK, a flourishing interior decorator; and two years later in LOVER COME BACK (‘61), she goes toe to toe with Hudson as a rival Madison Avenue ad executive. And, in the often-neglected comedy IT HAPPENED TO JANE (‘59), she’s a widowed mother of two who takes on the meaner-than-mean head of a railroad (Ernie Kovacs) when the company causes the death of 300 lobsters she was shipping.

Day’s characters were also incredibly feisty. In PILLOW TALK, the only film for which she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination, she learns that the man she’s fallen for, the shy handsome Texas Rex Stetson, is actually the womanizing composer she shares her party phone line with, so she redesigns his apartment into a gaudy mess reflecting his lothario ways. Speaking of lothario, Day’s leading men often played long-term bachelors-serial daters, like Clark Gable in TEACHER’S PET and Cary Grant in THAT TOUCH OF MINK (‘62). Her characters fall in love with them but won’t become their latest conquests. It’s actually the men who succumb to her charms and give up their womanizing ways when they fall in love with her.

Still, the virgin quote harmed her legacy. “People don’t take her seriously,” said former L.A. Times film critic Kenneth Turan in 2012. “It was a lifetime battle for Marilyn Monroe to be taken seriously; that was a battle she won. Audrey Hepburn was taken seriously. People are reluctant to take Doris Day seriously. It’s too bad.” Cari Beauchamp, a film historian and writer who specializes in the history of women in film, told me in 2012 that when she talks to people about Day “they tend to say she played the girl next door. And you look at her movies, particularly at the time of those films and she wasn’t the girl next door. She always had a backbone.”

Day was a popular singer with Les Brown and His Band of Renown, scoring her first No. 1 in 1945 with “Sentimental Journey.” Hollywood soon came knocking on her door, and she answered in the Warner Bros.’ Technicolor musical ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS, directed by Michael Curtiz, in which she introduced the Best Song Oscar nominee “It’s Magic.” Not only was she adorable and a breath of fresh air, Day seemed totally at ease in her big screen bow.

“I wanted to be in films,” she told me in 2012. “I wasn’t nervous. I just felt ‘I’m here. I am supposed to be doing this.’ I was so lucky to have such terrific actors and directors. Everything was different and everything to me was great.”

Her films at Warner Brothers were a mixed bag. She got to demonstrate her dramatic chops reuniting with Curtiz for YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN (‘50), starring Lauren Bacall and Kirk Douglas. And I also loved the Booth Tarkington-inspired musical comedies ON MOONLIGHT BAY (‘51) and BY THE LIGHT OF THE SILVERY MOON (‘53). Turan loves her musical-comedy CALAMITY JANE (‘53), in which she has a field day as the famed Wild West heroine, because “her energy is kind of irrepressible.” Day also introduced the Oscar-winning song, “Secret Love” in the freewheeling classic.

But she really came into her own when she went to MGM to do the musical drama LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME, in which she gave a tour de force performance as torch singer Ruth Etting, who has a particularly volatile marriage to a gangster (James Cagney). But she was totally ignored by the Academy and the Golden Globes. The film was nominated for six Oscars, winning for Best Motion Picture Story, with only Cagney, brilliant as Marty “the Gimp” Snyder, getting nominated for his performance.

Turan described LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME as a “provocative film. It almost defines a kind of thing that you would say: Doris Day would never do something like that. But when we say that we are thinking of the cliché Doris Day, not thinking of the actual actress who made interesting choices and interesting films.” Day also counted the hit, directed by Charles Vidor, as a career highlight. “I really loved working with Jim,” she said of Cagney, who had previously appeared with her in the disappointing THE WEST POINT STORY (‘50). “The wonderful thing is that when you have someone like him to play opposite, it’s very exciting. You just feel so much from a man like that.”

She didn’t do research into Etting’s life but went by the script and “just how I felt and what I listened to. You react. It was so well-written. It just comes out of you. I don’t know how to explain it.” But it probably wasn’t hard. Like Etting, who endured abuse at the hands of her husband, the four-time married Day was mercilessly beaten by her one husband, musician Al Jordan, the father of her only child, Terry Melcher.

Mastering drama and musicals, Day was also a fabulous comedian. Just look at her expression when Gable, as a seasoned newspaper editor, kisses her for the first time in TEACHER’S PET. She crosses her eyes and is literally weak in the knees. Or when she realizes in THAT TOUCH OF MINK that Grant wants her to share his bed when they go to a resort. It’s brilliant. And of course, she and Hudson had a chemistry few actors get to share on screen. Ironically, Day admitted she didn’t know who Hudson was when they were cast together in PILLOW TALK, even though he had been a major star for most of that decade and earned an Oscar nomination for GIANT (‘56). “Isn’t that amazing?,” she said laughing. “I thought he was just starting out. I didn’t know about the films he had made. I just loved working with him. We laughed and laughed.”

The quality of her films declined after SEND ME NO FLOWERS. Her third husband and manager, Marty Melcher, put her in poorly received comedies such as DO NOT DISTURB (‘65) and CAPRICE (‘67). He squandered her money and signed her up to do the CBS sitcom The Doris Day Show without her knowledge before his death in 1968. The series ran from 1968 to 1973.

After the series, Day went to Carmel, co-owned a pet friendly hotel there and concentrated on animal welfare. In 1985-86, she did the pet-forward TV talk show Doris Day and Friends, best remembered for guest Rock Hudson, who was suffering from AIDS. She admitted Hollywood never lured her out of retirement. “No one really said that – ‘Oh, come back.’ I was just here.’”

[alwaysmarilynmonroe]

Today is a very special day, it’s Marilyn’s Birthday! Can you believe that if she were still alive,  Marilyn would have been turning 94 years old today – just two months younger than the Queen herself! With each year I always try and write a special post about this amazing woman, who has helped me so much and achieved more than anyone could have imagined in her 36 years. Therefore, I decided to write 94 facts about the Birthday Girl – some you may know, some you may not, all in the hope that genuine things will be learnt and the real Marilyn will be more understood and appreciated.

Gladys and baby Norma Jeane spend some quality time together on the beach in 1929.

Little Norma Jeane, aged seven, in 1933.

Norma Jeane photographed by David Conover whilst working at the Radio Plane Munitions Factory in either the Fall of 1944 or Spring of 1945.

Norma Jeane by Andre de Dienes in late 1945.

Marilyn by Richard Miller in 1946.

Marilyn on Tobey Beach by Andre de Dienes on July 23rd 1949.

Marilyn by Ed Clark in Griffith Park in August 1950.

Marilyn attends a Party in Ray Anthony’s home, organized by 20th Century Fox on August 3rd 1952.

Marilyn filming The Seven Year Itch on location in New York City by Sam Shaw on September 13th 1954.

Marilyn by Milton Greene on January 28th 1955.

Marilyn by Cecil Beaton on February 22nd 1956. This was her favourite photo of herself.

Marilyn attending the Premiere of The Prince In The Showgirl at the Radio City Music Hall on June 13th 1957.

Marilyn by Carl Perutz on June 16th 1958.

Marilyn by Philippe Halsman for LIFE Magazine in October 1959.

Marilyn attends a Benefit for The Actors Studio at the Roseland Dance City on March 13th 1961.

Marilyn on Santa Monica Beach for Cosmopolitan Magazine by George Barris on July 1st 1962.

______________________________________________________________________________

1.  Stood at a height of 5’5½”

2.  Born in the charity ward of the Los Angeles County Hospital at 9:30 AM on June 1st 1926.

3.  Married three times;

– Jim Dougherty: (June 19th 1942 – September 13th 1946) – Joe Dimaggio: (January 14th 1954 – 31st October 1955) (Temporary divorce granted on October 27th 1954) – Arthur Miller: (June 29th 1956 – January 20th 1961).

4. Suffered two confirmed miscarriages; an ectopic pregnancy on August 1st 1957 and miscarriage in December 16th 1958.

5. Suffered with endometriosis very badly, so much so that she had a clause in her contract which stated she would be unable to work whilst menstruating.

6. Starred in 30 films – her last being uncompleted.

7. Favourite of her own performances was as Angela Phinlay in The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

8. Winner of three Golden Globes; two for World Film Favourite – Female in 1954 and 1962 and one for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical for her performance as Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot (1959) in 1960.

9. Her idol was the first Platinum Blonde Bombshell, Jean Harlow.

10. Amassed a collection of over 400 books in her library, ranging from Russian Literature to Psychology.

11. Favourite perfume was Chanel No.5

12. Had two half siblings; Robert “Jackie” Baker (1918 – 1933) and Bernice Miracle (1919) – the former she would never have the chance to meet and Bernice was not informed about Marilyn until she was 19 years old.

13. Former Actor and 20th Century Fox Studio Executive, Ben Lyon created the name Marilyn Monroe in December 1946 – Marilyn after fellow Actress, Marilyn Miller and Monroe after Marilyn’s mother’s maiden name. Ironically enough, Ben starred with Jean Harlow, in her breakout movie, Hell’s Angels (1930).

14. Legally changed her name to Marilyn Monroe ten years later, on February 23rd 1956.

15. Attended The Actors Studio.

16. Third woman to start her own Film Production Company – the first being Lois Weber in 1917 and the second being Mary Pickford in 1919.

17. First had her hair bleached in January 1946 at the Frank & Joseph Salon by Beautician Sylvia Barnhart, originally intended for a Shampoo Advert.

18. Contrary to popular belief, she was technically a natural blonde, not a redhead or brunette. She was born with platinum hair and was very fair until just before her teen years. Her sister described her with having dark blonde hair upon their first meeting in 1944.

19. Another myth debunked – she had blue eyes, not brown.

20. Was one of the few women in the 1950s to use weights when exercising.

21. Wore jeans before it was considered acceptable for women.

22. Her famous mole was real – albeit skin coloured, so she emphasized it using a brown eye pencil.

23. Was a Step-Mother in two of her three marriages to three children – Joe Dimaggio Jr. and Bobby and Jane Miller.

24. Found out she landed the lead role in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) on her 26th Birthday.

25. Another huge myth dispelled – only actually met President Kennedy four times from 1961 – 1962. Three of them were at public events, with the last being her performance at Madison Square Garden. One of them was at Bing Crosby’s Palm Spring house with various people, so at most (which again, is very unlikely) they had a one night stand – nothing more and nothing less.

26. Was the first Playboy Cover Girl, although she did not actually pose for them, nor give permission for them to be used. Hugh Hefner bought the photograph from a Chicago Calendar Company for $500 and the two never met.

27. Speaking of Playboy, the photo was taken by Photographer Tom Kelley on May 27th 1951 and Marilyn made a total of $50 for the photo shoot. The most famous photo then went on to cause a national sensation after being sold to the Calendar Baumgarth Company and became known as, “Golden Dreams“.

28. In 1955 it was estimated that over four million copies of the Calendar had been sold.

29. Favourite singers were Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. 

30. Attended the Academy Awards Ceremony only once on March 29th 1951 and presented the award for “Best Sound Recording” to Thomas Moulton for All About Eve (1951) which she also starred in.

31. Performed ten shows over four days to over 100,000 soldiers and marines in Korea in February 1954 – she actually ended up catching pneumonia because it was so cold.

32. Was one of the few Stars who had Director Approval in their Contracts. Some of the names included were, John Huston, Elia Kazan, Alfred Hitchcock, George Stevens, William Wyler, Joshua Logan and Sir Carol Reed.

33. Was pregnant during the filming of Some Like It Hot (1959) – filming finished on November 7th 1958 and she miscarried the following month on December 16th.

34. Featured on the cover of LIFE Magazine seven times during her lifetime;

– April 7th 1952 – May 25th 1953 – July 8th 1957 (International Edition) – April 20th 1959 – November 9th 1959 – August 15th 1960 – June 22nd 1962

35. Favourite bevarage was Dom Perignon 1953 Champagne.

36. By the time of her death, her films had grossed over $200 million, when adjusted for inflation that is the equivalent of $2 billion in 2019.

37. Designer, William Travilla dressed Marilyn for seven of her films, two (*) of them received Oscar Nominations in, “Best Costume/Design, Color“;

– Monkey Business (1952) – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) – How To Marry A Millionaire (1953) * – River Of No Return (1954) – There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954) * – The Seven Year Itch (1955) – Bus Stop (1956)

38. Spent 21 months of her childhood at the Los Angeles Orphanage, from September 13th 1935 until June 7th 1937.

39. Was one of the first Stars to speak out about child abuse, with her story appearing in movie magazines as early as 1954.

40. Fostered by her grandmother’s neighbours, Ida and Albert Bolender, for the first seven years of her life.

41. Lived in England for four months, during the period of filming for The Prince and The Showgirl (1957) from July 14th 1956 – November 20th 1956.

42. Her Production Company, Marilyn Monroe Productions produced only one film, The Prince and The Showgirl (1957) based on Terrance Rattigan’s play, The Sleeping Prince.

43. Was photographed by Earl Theisen in October 1952 wearing a potato sack dress after being criticized by the press for her outfit choice at The Henrietta Awards in January 1952. A journalist wrote that Marilyn was “insignificant and vulgar“and “even in a potato bag, it would have been more elegant.“

44. Was a huge supporter of LGBT+ rights, saying the following quote about fellow actor and friend, Montgomery Clift to journalist W.J. Weatherby in 1960,

“I was remembering Monty Clift. People who aren’t fit to open the door for him sneer at his homosexuality. What do they know about it? Labels–people love putting labels on each other. Then they feel safe. People tried to make me into a lesbian. I laughed. No sex is wrong if there’s love in it.”

45. Her measurements were listed as the following by her Dressmakers; 35-22-35 and 36-24-24 by The Blue Book  Modelling Agency. For the majority of her life she weighed between 117-120 pounds, with her weight fluctuating around 15 pounds, during and after her pregnancies (1957-1960), although her waist never ventured past 28.5 inches and her dress size today would be a UK Size 6-8 and a US Size 2-4 as she was a vintage Size 12.

46. Her famous white halter dress from The Seven Year Itch (1955) sold for $4.6 million ($5.6 million including auction fees) on June 18th 2011, which was owned by Debbie Reynolds. The “Happy Birthday Mr. President Dress” originally held the record for the most expensive dress, when it was sold on October 27th 1999 for $1.26 million. It then went on to be resold for $4.8 million on November 17th 2016, thus regaining it’s original achievement.

47. Was discovered by Photographer, David Conover, whilst working in The Radio Plane Munitions Factory in the Fall of 1944 or Spring of 1945, depending on sources.

48. Now known as the, “Me Too” movement, Marilyn was one of the first Stars to speak out on the, “Hollywood Wolves” in a 1953 article for Motion Picture Magazine entitled, “Wolves I Have Known”. The most famous incident being with the Head of Columbia Studios, Harry Cohn, who requested Marilyn join him on his yacht for a weekend away in Catalina Island. Marilyn asked if his wife would be joining them, which, as you can imagine – did not go down well and her contract was not renewed with the Studio. Marilyn made only one film with Columbia during her six month contract, this being Ladies Of The Chorus (1948) which was shot in just ten days!

49. Loved animals dearly and adopted a variety of pets over the years. These included a basset hound called Hugo and parakeets, Clyde, Bobo and Butch with Husband Arthur Miller.  A number of cats including a persian breed called Mitsou in 1955 and Sugar Finney in 1959. Her most famous pet was gifted to her in March or April of 1961 by friend, Frank Sinatra, a little white maltese named Maf. His full name was Mafia Honey, as a humorous reference to Sinatra’s alleged connections to the Mob. After Marilyn’s death, Maf went to live with Frank Sinatra’s secretary, Gloria Lovell.

50. The book she was reading at the time of her death was Harper Lee’s, To Kill A Mocking Bird.

51. One of the movies she starred in was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and won, this being All About Eve (1950) at The 23rd Academy Awards on March 29th 1951. It ended up being nominated for 14 Oscars, a record at the time and has only been matched by Titanic (1997) and La La Land (2016).

52. Her first magazine cover was photographed by Andre de Dienes in December 1945 for Family Circle, released on April 26th 1946.

53. Joined The William Morris Agency on December 7th 1948.

54. Was right handed, not left as often believed.

55. Third Husband Arthur Miller wrote the screenplay for Marilyn’s last completed film, The Misfits (1961) which was originally written as a short story for Esquire Magazine in 1957. After the tragic ectopic pregnancy Marilyn endured in August of 1957, friend and Photographer, Sam Shaw suggested to Miller he alter his short story specifically for her. Ironically the making of this film culminated in their divorce and Marilyn stating,

“He could have written me anything and he comes up with this. If that’s what he thinks of me then I’m not for him and he’s not for me.” 56. Was Author, Truman Capote’s original choice for the role of Holly Golightly in Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961) however, she was advised to turn it down by her Acting Coach, Paula Strasberg, who did not think the role of a prostitute would be good for her image. Writer George Axelrod, who wrote the Screenplay for Bus Stop (1956) and the play, The Seven Year Itch, ironically ended up being the Screenwriter for this movie.

Capote said this regarding Marilyn,

“I had seen her in a film and thought she would be perfect for the part. Holly had to have something touching about her . . . unfinished. Marilyn had that.”

57. Second Husband Joe Dimaggio had The Parisian Florists deliver red roses on Marilyn’s grave twice a week, for twenty years, from August 1962 until September 1982. Marilyn had told him how William Powell used to do this for Jean Harlow after her death and he reportedly vowed to do the same after their Wedding Ceremony. After the 20 years he then donated to a children’s charity, as he thought it would be a nice way to honour her memory. They also created the flower arrangements for her casket at her funeral.

58. The following five Directors directed Marilyn in more than one movie;

– John Huston; The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and The Misfits (1961) – Richard Sale;  A Ticket To Tomahawk (1950) and Let’s Make It Legal (1951) – Howard Hawks; Monkey Business (1952) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) – Billy Wilder; The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959) – George Cukor; Let’s Make Love (1960) and Something’s Got To Give (1962)

59. Was an illegitimate child, which unfortunately was attached with a lot of stigma in the 1920s. Her mother, Gladys, listed her then husband Edward Mortenson on the Birth Certificate, although it is commonly accepted that her real father was Charles Stanley Gifford, as Gladys left Edward on May 26th 1925. Gladys had an affair with him, which ended when she announced her pregnancy and he never acknowledged or met Marilyn, although she tried multiple times over the years to speak with him. 

60. Stayed in a number of foster homes during her childhood,

– George and Emma Atkinson; February 1934 – September 1934 – Enid and Sam Knebelcamp; Fall of 1934 – Harvey and Elsie Giffen; January 1935 – March 1935 – Grace and “Doc” Goddard; April 1935 – September 1935 and June 1937 – November 1937 and end of 1940 – February 1942 – Ida Martin; November 1937 – August 1938 – “Aunt Ana” Lower; August 1938  – End of 1940 and February 1942 

61. Had her hand and footprints immortalized in cement at Graumans Chinese Theatre on June 26th 1953, with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) co-star, Jane Russell. Marilyn would place a rhinestone in the dot of the letter “i” as a reference to her character, “Lorelei Lee” but it was sadly stolen. This was an incredibly special moment for her, as she often talked about placing her hands and feet in the many prints there, when she spent her weekends at the Theatre as a child, especially in 1933 and 1934.

“When I was younger, I used to go to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and try to fit my foot in the prints in the cement there. And I’d say “Oh, oh, my foots too big. I guess that’s out.” I did have a funny feeling later when I finally put my foot down into that wet cement, I sure knew what it really meant to me, anything’s possible, almost.”

62. The famous gold lamé dress worn in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and designed by William Travilla, was deemed too risqu�� by the censors. Unfortunately for fans, this meant that the musical number, “Down Boy” was cut from the film and we only glimpse a few seconds of the dress from behind, on screen.

63. Due to the censors, the original, “Diamond’s Are A Girl’s Best Friend” costume was changed to the now iconic pink dress with black bow. Originally it was to be a diamond encrusted two piece, which was extremely daring for the then Motion Picture Hays Code.

64. Loved Erno Lazlo Skin Cream, Vaseline and Nivea Moisturizer.

65. Had she completed Something’s Got To Give (1962), Marilyn would have been the first Star in a major Motion Picture to appear nude on film. As she passed before it was completed the achievement went to fellow Blonde Bombshell, Jayne Mansfield in, Promises! Promises (1963).

66. Met Queen Elizabeth II in England at the Empire Theater in Leicester Square whilst attending the Premiere of, “The Battle Of The River Plate“ on October 29th 1956.

67. The Misfits (1961) was both Marilyn and Clark Gable’s last completed films. Clark died 12 days after filming finished, on November 16th 1960. The film was released on Clark’s would be 60th Birthday, February 1st 1961 and Marilyn passed 18 months later.

68. As Marilyn died before the completion of Something’s Got To Give (1962) it ended up being remade with Doris Day and James Garner, entitled, Move Over Darling! (1963). The film was originally intended to be a remake of, My Favourite Wife (1940) which starred Cary Grant.

69. Signed a recording contract with RCA Records on September 1st 1953. One of her songs from River of No Return (1954) entitled, “File My Claim” sold 75,000 copies in its first three weeks of release.

70. Was admitted to the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic on February 10th 1961 by her then Psychiatrist, Marianne Kris. Originally thought to be for rest and rehabilitation, following her divorce from Arthur Miller and the strain of filming The Misfits. However, Marilyn was placed on the security ring and held against her will. Thankfully, she was able to contact ex Husband, Joe Dimaggio, who stated he would, “Take the hospital apart brick by brick” if she was not released and after three days of emotional trauma, she left.

71. Visited the following Countries;

– Canada – (July – August 1953) – Japan (February 1954) – Korea (Feburary 1954) – England (July – November 1956) – Jamaica (January 1957) – Mexico (February 1962)

72. Purchased her only home, 12305 Fifth Helena Drive on February 8th 1962, where she would tragically pass just under 6 months later.

73. The home had the following tile located on the front paving entrance saying, “cursum perficio” meaning, “my journey ends here.” The title is still there to this day.

74. Her final interview was published in LIFE Magazine on August 3rd 1962 and was written by Richard Meryman.

75. Aside from her millions of fans, had a staunch group of supporters affectionately known as, “The Monroe Six” who followed Marilyn around New York during her time there. Their nickname for Marilyn was, “Mazzie” and they became so acquainted that Marilyn actually once invited them for a picnic at her home.

76. First married at just sixteen years old, this was to avoid returning to the Orphanage she had spent almost two years in as a child.

77. Supported numerous charity events, most famously riding a pink elephant in Madison Square Garden, to support the Arthritis and Rheumatic Affections Association on March 30th 1955.

78. Left 25% of her Estate to her then Psychiatrist, Marianne Kris and 75% to mentor and friend, Lee Strasberg. For reference, her Will was last updated on January 1961 – a month before she entered the Payne Whitney Hospital on the advice of Marianne Kris.

79. At the time of it’s release, The Misfits (1961) turned out to be the most expensive black and white movie ever made, costing a budget of $4 million dollars.

80. The Premiere of The Seven Year Itch was held on her 29th Birthday, on June 1st 1955, she attended with ex Husband, Joe Dimaggio.

81. Laid to rest at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery on August 8th 1962 at 1:00 PM, with friend and mentor Lee Strasberg delivering the Eulogy. 

82. Although so often associated with diamonds, actually wasn’t that fond of jewellery stating, “People always ask me if I believe diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Frankly, I don’t.” 

83. Spent her 36th Birthday filming Something’s Got To Give (1962) and then attending a Charity Event for muscular dystrophy at the Chavez Ravin Dodger Stadium, which also happened to be her last public appearance.

84. Whilst recovering in hospital from an appendectomy in April 1952, Marilyn asked long time Makeup Artist and friend, Allan “Whitey” Snyder to do her makeup, should she pass before him. She gave him a gold money clip with the inscription, “Whitey Dear, while I’m still warm, Marilyn” and he did fulfill this promise to her.

85. Converted to Judaism for third husband, Arthur Miller on July 1st 1956.

86. Despite appearing in 30 films, she only actually dies in one, that being her breakout movie, Niagara (1953) where her character Rose Loomis, is strangled by her Husband George, played by Joseph Cotten.

87. Moved to New York City in 1955 and attended The Actors Studio, after breaking her Film Contract with 20th Century Fox. This was for a number of reasons, mainly years of low pay, unsatisfactory scripts and lack of creative control. A new contract would finally be reinstated on December 31st.

88. Repurchased a white Baby Grand Piano that her mother, Gladys, owned during their time living together in 1933. After Marilyn passed it would then be sold at the Christies Auction of her Estate in 1999 to none other than, Mariah Carey for $632,500.

89. Wore long hair pieces in River of No Return (1954) and a medium length wig in The Misfits (1961). The first I can only assume was due to the time period and setting of a Western and the second was due to the bleach damage her hair had suffered. After the filming in 1960, she wore the wig a couple of times in public events and then reverted back to her normal hair.

90. Like all students, it was tradition to perform in front of each other in The Actors Studio and on February 17th 1955, Marilyn acted out a scene from “Anna Christie” with Maureen Stapleton. Although it was an unwritten rule that students were not meant to applaud one another, an eruption of cheers and clapping happened after Marilyn had finished.

“Everybody who saw that says that it was not only the best work Marilyn ever did, it was some of the best work ever seen at Studio, and certainly the best interpretation of Anna Christie anybody ever saw. She achieved real greatness in that scene.”

– Actor Ellen Burstyn, on recalling Marilyn’s performance.

91. Used the pseudonym, “Zelda Zonk“, when trying to remain incognito.

92. Marilyn’s mother, Gladys Baker, suffered from Paranoid Schizophrenia and after various stays in institutions, was declared insane on January 15th 1935, when Marilyn was just 8 years old. After 10 years she was released and managed to retain various cleaning jobs and had developed an intense interest in Christian Science. However, by 1951 she was back in various institutions and would stay in the Rockhaven Sanitarium until 1967. Even after death, Marilyn continued to cover her mother’s care payments and Gladys would go on to outlive her for 22 years.

93. Favourite photograph of herself was taken by Cecil Beaton on February 22nd 1956.

94. Last professional photos were taken by Bert Stern, famously known as “The Last Sitting” for Vogue Magazine on June 23rd, July 10th and 12th 1962. Allan Grant took the LIFE Magazine interview pictures in her home, on July 4th and 9th 1962. Whilst George Barris took his photos for Cosmopolitan Magazine, the previous weekend on the 29th and 30th of June, until July 1st 1962. ______________________________________________________________________________

To those of you who took the time to read through all 3000+ words, thank you! It truly means more to me than you know and I really hope it’s shed some light on the truly special person Marilyn was and made you hold a good thought for her on her big day.

Follow me at;

BLOGLOVIN

INSTAGRAM

TUMBLR

TWITTER

YOUTUBE

For inquiries or collaborations contact me at;

meganmonroes@icloud.com

Happy 94th Birthday Marilyn! Today is a very special day, it's Marilyn's Birthday! Can you believe that if she were still alive,  Marilyn would have been turning 94 years old today - just two months younger than the Queen herself!

[dweemeister]

The Coward (1965, India)

With the Apu trilogy (1955-1959), Satyajit Ray became a darling of cinema academics and critics with his portrayal of one young man’s coming-of-age. By the mid-1960s after Charulata (1964), international attention to Ray’s films waned. Not that his movies declined in quality, but Ray appeared to be moving away from characters, settings, and narratives that might be considered “exotic” by Westerners. The situations, as in any film by Satyajit Ray, remain timeless. The Coward – also known by its original Bengali title, Kapurush – features a suffering artist character often found in 1950s and ‘60s Ray films. But in an interesting development, the artist’s creative soul is not what propels The Coward – instead, it is a litany of decisions rooted in the past, the temptations of the present.

Amitabha Roy’s (Soumitra Chatterjee) car has broken down somewhere in the Indian countryside, in or around Darjeeling. Amitabha, a screenwriter has been traveling across the country to gather material for a developing screenplay. Also at the mechanic’s garage is a tea plantation owner, Bimal Gupta (Haradhan Bandopadhyay), who offers a room to Amitabha for a night. The two men arrive at the estate, where Bimal introduces his wife, Karuna (Madhabi Mukherjee), to his visitor. Amitabha is stunned into silence – the woman only a few feet away from him is his ex-girlfriend. Introductions are warranted, pleasantries are exchanged, a meal is offered. During this time, Amitabha and Karuna’s respective body language suppose they are in an old lover’s daze – he has never resolved his feelings for Karuna; Karuna’s feelings are best not spoiled – yet they never tip Bimal off to their prior history. She was willing to disrespect her parents’ wishes to be with him; familial pressure and fear of commitment resulted in the breakup. When together, Bimal and Karuna seem bored, as if having little new or anything of interest to say to each other.

As usual, Ray is also the film’s writer, adapting The Coward from author Premendra Mitra’s story Janaiko Kapuruser Kahini. “The coward” of this film is Amitabha; the act of cowardice informing the film’s title is Amitabha’s inability to surrender to his heart’s desire when he and Karuna were lovers, rather than run from the familial, material, and social consequences that might have occurred by marrying her – so the conventional thinking goes. That act of cowardice – some readers might think the film’s title and that designation to be harsh on Amitabha, but opinions have varied wildly – underlines all of the conflict appearing here. Perhaps it is a character trait in Amitabha’s behavior over the time they have been together; there simply is not enough information or a conclusive flashback to confirm all of this speculation.

Will Amitabha and Karuna rekindle their feelings for each other after a few or several years? When he has the chance to speak to her individually, is Amitabha being inappropriate and is she even caring to listen to him? Is Bimal – written by Ray as bored, boring, and fond of alcohol – going to eavesdrop or arrive at the worst possible time, setting up the most awkward situation imaginable?

The answers to all of these questions might surprise first-time viewers, as Karuna displays a peculiar aloofness the moment she is alone with Amitabha for the first time. Those who have not finished the film should skip this paragraph, the quote in between, and the paragraph after that. More questions – this time asked by Amitabha himself – perhaps inspire that distance. He asks if she is happy, if she still has feelings for him. Coming from Amitabha, these inquiry reveals his insecurity and willingness to start again. Karuna does respond about whether or not she is happy many hours after that first encounter – in broad daylight, with Amitabha listening on the opposite side of a dirt road where a convoy of trucks is about to pass. She warns him about judging a person after only knowing them for less than a day. Absolutely. She claims to have changed over time. No complaints there.

Perhaps I didn’t want to be happy.

What? Is Karuna deflecting Amitabha’s question to the cacophony of the incoming trucks? Or is she referencing Amitabha’s conception of happiness between the two of them, having long rejected his definition, and has pursued a “happiness” that is hers and no one else’s? Of all of her responses, this is the one that has been bedeviling me since completing The Coward (consider: Karuna’s stated dependence on sleeping pills and her reason for her presence in the film’s closing seconds). Either way – or if I have missed the point of that moment completely – Karuna has pursued happiness for herself and not to be confined by her family or Amitabha. Though her reasons are written too abstrusely for my tastes (or maybe this is because my experience with love is not sufficient to understand this film), this is a progressive female character for cinema – something transcending when this film was released and where it comes from.

With all this talk of cowardice, it might be enlightening to read Ray’s own words about The Coward. The film, he writes, glimpses into, “a certain type of cowardice and a certain selfishness, which seem to be concomitants of modern middle-class sophistication. The stress of modern living, and the uncertainty of getting a foothold and retaining it, are important causes of these complexes.“ Amitabha, a screenwriter, probably lives on a deadline-heavy schedule – forcing him to interpret large amounts of information and human interaction and translating those experiences on paper. Successes are temporary in show business, with another deadline and more bills to pay always on the horizon. It makes me wonder how Ray felt about the character of Amitabha – did he identify with him or pity him? The Coward, to me, does not feel like a condemnation but I’m not discounting the fact that someone could articulate a compelling case for that interpretation.

Regarding Karuna, she is the final character in an unofficial Satyajit Ray trilogy featuring women staking their own claims of self-assertion despite the disapproval of traditional families and other men. That trilogy includes: The Big City (1963), Charulata (1964), and The Coward (1965). Madhabi Mukherjee is the actress playing all of the female leads in that unofficial trilogy. More emotionally distant than the eponymous Charulata (as of the writing of this piece, I have not seen The Big City), Mukherjee’s Karuna is more understated than that previous role but – for reasons having to do with the maddeningly loose ends that Ray leaves this film with – her subtle expressions sometimes seem to be contradicting the tone of voice she or someone else is using. Also starring opposite her from Charulata is co-star Soumitra Chatterjee who – like Mukherjee – can modulate the film’s tone with the slightest change in facial language and bodily posture. This film does not contain his best performance either. These are two damned talented actors, but outside of the flashback scenes, I did not feel for either until the closing minutes of the film’s brief seventy-four-minute runtime.

Cinematographer Soumendu Roy (an assistant cameraperson to cinematographer Subrata Mitra on 1955′s Pather Panchali; Roy became Satyajit Ray’s go-to cinematographer after Mitra developed eye problems in the early-mid 1960s) has a fascinating opening tracking shot, but little else of interest afterwards outside of the scenes where Amitabha, Karuna, and Bimal are taking a break from driving a car into the countryside. The Coward, from a compositional standpoint, is more pedestrian in its imagery than most Ray works.

Outside of its debut at the 1965 Venice International Film Festival (nominated for the Golden Lion), The Coward never registered anywhere else. It does not appear to have been given a North American theatrical release (distribution rights appear to be with Janus Films/the Criterion Collection, but the film has never been released on home media in the region); two European theatrical releases are listed on IMDb (France in 1994, Portugal in 2014). In India, The Coward represented the first half of a double bill with Ray’s comedy The Holy Man (1965). Legal prints – let alone illegal versions with subtitles – might be difficult to come by (The Coward made its North American television premiere on Turner Classic Movies in the early hours of September 11, 2017).

As part of its initiative to help restore Satyajit Ray films for future generations, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) have collaborated to preserve films like The Coward – itself restored in 2005. Ray’s remaining unrestored films are housed at UCSC and will they will be re-presented to cinephiles when those prints are ready. I myself am just getting started on Ray’s filmography, having also seen his Apu trilogy, The Music Room (1958), Charulata, and Nayak (1966). If The Coward is any indication, the wisdom and humanity found in Ray’s direction and writing matters not on the setting or the specificity of his characters’ lives before we are introduced to them. Instead, it is his willingness to explore human emptiness and an individual’s desire to evaluate and rectify the past.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[newyorktheater]

As the theater awards season enters the home stretch – what’s left: Drama Desk Awards, Theatre World Awards, the Tonys – the question arises once again:How does one determine, or even define, excellence in theater?

“I’ve become increasingly convinced that as a field we do not have a cohesive definition of excellence,” Chad Bauman,  the managing director of Milwaukee Repertory Theater, wrote last year in American Theatre.

So he asked his colleagues across the country, and got some 50 responses – but the question he asked was about excellence in a theater as a whole (regional theaters in particular), not about individual shows. So the answers about excellence in individual shows didn’t get much more specific than “artistic quality.” All did agree that courage counts – such as not being afraid to play with form.

Five years ago, in an article titled Divining Artistic Excellence ,  theater artist and historian Lynne Connor pointed out that, while the concept of excellence can refer to something semi-tangible such as “the sophistication of a play’s dramatic arc,” more often people conflate excellence with taste, “something far less tangible and thus far less quantifiable.” And what determines taste? “Personal taste in everything from beer to Shakespeare comes about through a combination of biology, past experience, cultural norms, and individual predilections.”

She concludes: “We need to find productive ways to invite audiences of all tastes (and all economic and ethnic backgrounds) to join in the conversation about (the struggle over) meaning and value.”

Week in New York Theater Awards

Obie Awards

The 64th Annual Obie Awards, celebrating Off and Off-Off-Broadway Theater, was a New York Theatre Workshop lovefest, with Obies going to NYTW playwrights Heidi Schreck, Madeleine George, Marcus Gardley, and lighting designer Isabella Byrd, as well as a lifetime achievement Obie to NYTW’s artistic director James Nicola. It was also a tribute to the many women working in the theater in New York. But Obies like to spread the wealth, literally — Four theaters received grants.

Full list

  Terrence McNally was made an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts at New York University’s Commencement. NYU Prof (and playwright) Kristoffer Diaz read the citation:”  Terrence McNally, one of theatre’s greatest contemporary playwrights, you have created over the past half-century an eclectic and prolific body of work—literally scores of plays, musicals, opera libretti, and scripts for film and television. Your razor wit and complexities of character largely explain how you created theatre that functions as family, launched the careers of great actors, and helped audiences cope with the AIDS crisis that engulfed them. You placed your unique stamp on American drama by probing the urgent need for connection that resonates at the core of human experience. From an expansive mind and generous spirit, you have created masterful and enduring art and in the process have celebrated and uplifted humankind.”

The latest is a revival of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, which opens May 30th at Broadway’s Broadhurst Theater.

  Madeline Michel from Monticello High School in Charlottesville, VA was the winner of the 2019 Excellence in Theatre Education Award from the Tony Awards and Carnegie Mellon

After the white supremacist rally in their city, Michel’s students wrote and performed original theater to address racial inequality, helping to elevated the conversation for a wounded community.

Some 2019 Outer Critics Circle Award winners accept their awards at a celebratory luncheon at Sardi’s

elia Keenan-Bolger, featured actress in a play, To Kill a Mockingbird

Amber Gray, featured actress in a musical, Hadestown

Andre De Shields, featured actor in a musical, Hadestown

Benjamin Walker, featured actor in a play, All My Sons

Bryan Cranston, lead actor in a play, Network

Stephanie J. Block, lead actress in a musical, The Cher Show

Santino Fontana, lead actor in a musical, Tootsie

  The Week in New York Theater Reviews and Previews

Brian d’Arcy James (Quinn Carney) and Holley Fain (Caitlin Carney

The Ferryman on Broadway with American cast

The Ferryman, a feast of Irish storytelling in a breathtaking mix of genres, opened on Broadway seven months ago, and since then it’s gotten nine Tony nominations, best play awards from the New York Drama Critics Circle, the Outer Critics Circle, AND the Drama League…and an almost entirely new cast, the original British and Irish actors replaced by Americans. Even Laura Donnelly has been replaced. She is the Belfast-born actress whose uncle’s disappearance, and the subsequent discovery years later of his murdered corpse, inspired playwright Jez Butterworth to write the play in the first place. Donnelly’s character Caitin Carney is now being portrayed by Holley Fain, an actress born in Kansas.

…Does this matter? It might in one way to those of us who saw the original cast. But to those theatergoers who have not yet had the pleasure of experiencing The Ferryman (which they have only until July 7th to do), the play is still a rich, sweeping entertainment — epic, tragic….and cinematic.

Lunch Bunch at Clubbed Thumb

n the first play of Clubbed Thumb’s 24thannual  Summerworks festival at the Wild Project – the first summer theater festival of the season — the cast faces us a la A Chorus Line, except instead of singing “I hope I get it,”they recite “Veggie enchiladas with Clementine” and “Rice, steamed kale, spiced tofu.”

It’s only after several such culinary recitations that we’re told these people are members of a lunch group, each member having agreed to make lunch for everybody else once a week.  It takes a little longer to figure out that they are lawyers in a public defender’s office, that it’s a taxing job – “Greg’s resilient,” says Tuttle (Keilly McQuail), “He never cries in the coat closet” – and that obsessing on food is what helps keep them going.

Loveville High

Two things distinguish Loveville High, a new musical that takes place on prom night in a high school in Loveville, Ohio. First: The cast of 13 is comprised of some of the most talented young theater stars in New York, several of them also currently performing on Broadway — Ali Stroker (Tony nominee for Oklahoma!), Kathryn Allison (Aladdin), Andrew Durand (Ink), Gizel Jiménez (Wicked), and Ryann Redmond (Frozen)  — and they sing the hell out of the lively, often witty songs  by David Zellnik (Yank!) and Eric Svejcar (Disney’s Peter Pan Jr.) How is it possible to be in two shows at the same time?  That’s the second aspect of this musical that’s unusual: It has no choreographer, no set designer…no stage. It’s a podcast.

Úna Clancy and Maryann Plunkett

  Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy

Sean O’Casey was 43 years old and had worked his whole life as a laborer, when he finally had a play accepted in 1922 by the founders of Dublin’s famed Abbey Theater, the dramatist Lady Gregory and the poet W.B. Yeats. That play, The Shadow of A Gunman, was set during the 1920 Irish War of Independence, and is the first play of what came to be called O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy, a chronicle of Ireland’s violent struggle for independence from the British, set from 1916 to 1922.

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, the Irish Rep is mounting all three plays in repertory,

  The Week in New York Theater News

Goodbye, Avenue Q

Marisa Tomei will play Serafina Delle Rose in the third Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ 1951 play “The Rose Tattoo,” opening October 15, 2019 on Broadway at Roundabout’s American Airlines Theater. .

Mary-Louise Parker as Bella Baird in “The Sound Inside” at Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Mary-Louise Parker will star in the Broadway premiere of “The Sound Inside”, written by Adam Rapp (Red Light Winter), directed by David Cromer Opens October 17, 2019 at Studio 54 Play debuted last year at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. “A tenured professor. A talented student. A troubling favor.”

Cast announced for @Alanis ‘s @jaggedmusical, opening at Broadway’s Broadhurst Dec 5: Elizabeth Stanley, @PattenLauren, @DerekKlena, Kathryn Gallagher, @SeanAllanKrill, & @celia_gooding

“The Healys appear to be a picture-perfect suburban family — but looks can be deceiving.” pic.twitter.com/0izIBUOWd7

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) May 23, 2019

.@RattlestickNY has a busy and exciting June, starting with #AlumniJam June 3, in which 5 playwrights offer sneak previews of their new plays — clockwise from top left @OhYeaDiana ,Jesse Eisenberg, @HalleyFeiffer , Ren Santiago, @SamuelDHunterhttps://t.co/jHtc8ihYKn pic.twitter.com/gF1RElEOyC

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) May 21, 2019

Immersive powerhouse Third Rail Projects will  stage “Midsummer A Banquet,” culinary version of Shakespeare’s comedy w/ a tasting menu July 15- Sept 8, a co-production with Food of Love Productions at Cafe Fae in Union Square

Third season of #NextDooratNYTW will offer 10 plays from The Penal Colony by @miranda__haymon, adapted from Kafka short story, July 2019 to “Raisins Not Virgins” by @sharbarizohra in June 2020 Also @michiMigdalia @missmillythomas @andybragen more!https://t.co/KomdhI7hAK pic.twitter.com/XPoTLOWaMc

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) May 20, 2019

  The real Lunt and Fontanne

After Fosse Verdon, What’s Next?

  EXTRAS NEEDED! Do u live in Washington Heights? Do u want to be in a movie?! How about a movie MUSICAL?!!!! We are doing an open call for Extras for our #InTheHeights shooting very very soon! Check out attached flyers 4details on how to submit. @Lin_Manuel @quiarahudes pic.twitter.com/j7oFk9wYIw

— Jon M. Chu (@jonmchu) May 25, 2019

.@LPTWomen‘s 7th Annual Women Stage the World March, June 11th, Times Square The march is “designed to educate the public about the role women play in creating theatre and the gender barriers they face as men continue to outnumber women by 4 to 1.” https://t.co/56VVv938kO pic.twitter.com/wQzOEmkAHh

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) May 23, 2019

Nik Wallenda and Lijanda Wallenda, seventh generation daredevils, will walk 25 stories above street level between 1 Times Square & 2 Times Square. Time Square is not for the faint-hearted, as anybody who’s tried to navigated around the Elmos and tourists can tell you

I’m so excited to announce that I’m returning to the highwire with my sister Lijana for a never before attempted walk across New York City’s iconic Times Square! Join me LIVE Sunday, June 23 on ABC. #HighwireLIVE pic.twitter.com/yVi9hqVHB2

— Nik Wallenda (@NikWallenda) May 23, 2019

Billboard above the Empire Diner in Chelsea:

A Mount Rushmore of avant-garde art. But isn’t that a contradiction?

Excellence in Theater…or Taste? Marisa Tomei, Mary-Louise Parker Back on Broadway. Third Rail’s New Immersive Shakespeare! #Stageworthy News of the Week As the theater awards season enters the home stretch – what’s left: Drama Desk Awards, Theatre World Awards, the Tonys – the question arises once again:How does one determine, or even define, excellence in theater?

[fashiontrendin-blog]

Cher's Fabulous Journey From Camp Diva To Serious Actress And Back Again

http://fashion-trendin.com/chers-fabulous-journey-from-camp-diva-to-serious-actress-and-back-again/

Cher's Fabulous Journey From Camp Diva To Serious Actress And Back Again

Of all the pop stars who have attempted to act, Cher’s track record is arguably the best. “Silkwood.” “Mask.” “The Witches of Eastwick.” “Moonstruck.” “Mermaids.” “If These Walls Could Talk.”

As her post-Sonny & Cher solo career waxed and waned in the ’80s and early ’90s, Cher’s movie career flourished ― a true achievement, given the ostentatious displays that had made her a walking glitter bomb since the mid-’60s. Shedding her eccentricities in a way that many pop stars cannot, Cher was able to transform onscreen time and again, so much so that she won an Oscar after uttering one of the most quotable lines in cinema history. 

But when Cher out-glittered herself in 1998 with her mammoth “Believe” comeback, her acting career atrophied. At 52, her diva status had become mythological, even a bit comical. She was too decadent to disappear into the same down-home movie roles, and Hollywood no longer saw her as a profitable actress. Cher played along with the joke, though, portraying exaggerated versions of herself (see: “The Player,” “Will & Grace,” “Stuck on You”) even when she wasn’t actually playing herself (see: “Burlesque”). 

That tradition continues today. Cher is the grande dame of the new “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” making a flamboyant eleventh-hour entrance that only someone of her renown could pull off. (She plays Ruby, a famous singer who has a thorny relationship with her daughter Donna, portrayed by Meryl Streep.)

But as we relish Cher’s septuagenarian divadom, it’s easy to forget how we got here. We got here because Cher commanded maximum respect at a critical time in her career, challenging anyone who assumed her pop panache would prevent her from becoming a great actress capable of playing everyday women experiencing everyday struggles.

So let’s revisit just how Cher became the greatest pop-actor of them all, and why she maintains that superlative even if she’s graduated from Hollywood’s leading-lady graces.

Getty/Alamy

The Beginning

“Chastity” (1969)

To trace Cher’s acting ambitions, we have to go back to 1967, when Sonny & Cher’s musical comedy “Good Times” flopped. Wanting to prove the “I Got You Babe” duo could cut it in the film world, Sonny Bono wrote her first solo lead: the title role in “Chastity,” an 83-minute oddity about a free-spirited drifter who talks to herself in public and manipulates men’s weaknesses to get ahead.

This was Sonny & Cher’s bid to appeal to young counterculture audiences who had deemed the duo square after Bono bemoaned the era’s sex and drugs. “Chastity,” released in June 1969, tried to be a gritty derivative of the French New Wave, packing big ideas ― Bono apparently said it was about society’s sudden “lack of manhood” and “the independence women have acquired but don’t necessarily want” ― into a whiplash-inducing downer involving a lesbian romance and childhood molestation.

It was another flop — an especially embarrassing one for Cher, because she alone was the face of the project. But bad movies can be testaments to good actors’ skills. Cher is at ease in front of the camera, never letting her fame announce itself before she opens her mouth. The same qualities accenting all her best film work — a scrappy confidence that reads as a proverbial middle finger to anyone who crosses her — become the highlight of “Chastity.”

Too bad the experience drew her away from movies for 13 years, during which Cher released 11 solo albums and divorced the controlling Bono, finally escaping the Sonny & Cher brand.

“Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” (1982)

In 1981, with her music career sputtering and her split from Bono six years in the rearview mirror, Cher trekked to New York to study acting with renowned teacher Lee Strasberg. Robert Altman, the celebrated director best known for “M*A*S*H” and “Nashville,” was casting the Broadway debut of Ed Graczyk’s play “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.” Altman gave Cher the part of Sissy, a wisecracking libertine employed at a diner in small-town Texas. 

When Altman rehired the Broadway cast for his big-screen adaptation of “Jimmy Dean,” Cher’s movie career was reborn. The scope of the film, released in November 1982, mirrors that of the play, with a single set and overly theatrical dialogue. But Cher has one of the meatier roles, nailing a teary monologue about Sissy’s failed marriage that Altman shoots in revealing close-ups. Sissy is a vixen who uses her sultry appeal to mask self-doubt ― something Cher related to after her split from Bono. She crimps Sissy’s smile, revealing an impressive vulnerability as the character laughs through her pain.

“Jimmy Dean” wasn’t a smash, but it provided a vote of confidence at a murky time for Cher, yielding her first Golden Globe nomination. 

“Silkwood” (1983)

Cher’s next role was make or break: Can the queen of glamour become the fledgling of frump? For “Silkwood,” she was again working with one of Hollywood’s most gifted directors, Mike Nichols (“The Graduate,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”), playing a dowdy lesbian working at a nuclear power plant where employees are exposed to life-threatening levels of radiation.

It remains one of Cher’s best performances, even though she almost didn’t take the job because she was intimidated to act opposite Meryl Streep. (���When we did ‘Silkwood,’ I didn’t even know what a close-up was,” she told The New York Times.) Here, Cher achieved a stripped-down everydayness that defied the anthemic pop-rock for which she was known. Near the movie’s bittersweet end, Cher sits slumped in Streep’s arms, her outstretched legs growing more lax as her tears multiply.  

“Silkwood” opened in December 1983, earning Cher’s first Oscar nomination and winning her a Golden Globe. In her acceptance speech at the Globes, she jabbed the “Hollywood moguls” who wouldn’t give her a chance before Altman came calling ― evidence that, no matter the doubts Cher had in accepting “Silkwood,” she knew how to trumpet her own worth.

“Mask” (1985)

If “Silkwood” proved Cher could transcend her “Half Breed” fantasia, “Mask” proved her acting was bankable. Taking a hiatus from music after the 1982 album “I Paralyze” failed to deliver a hit single, she paired up with another great director, Peter Bogdanovich (“The Last Picture Show,” “Paper Moon”), to portray Rusty Dennis, the real-life mother of a charming teenager (Eric Stoltz) with a cranial deformity.

Her third consecutive film to include a tear-stained breakdown, “Mask” was perfect for Cher. Rusty is a biker groupie with a penchant for drugs but an unwavering dedication to her son, letting Cher convey a contentment that softens the reality of Rusty’s strained life. As she would again in 1990′s “Mermaids,” Cher was playing a single mom who lives by her own rules (e.g., trying to get her son laid by picking up a girl at a bar). The role earned her a third Golden Globe nomination and the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious best-actress prize, but she was snubbed by the Oscars.

No matter: “Mask” stormed the box office, and Cher joined the ranks of Streep and Jane Fonda as one of Hollywood’s most sought-after actresses. At the Academy Awards, she donned her infamous midriff-bearing Bob Mackie getup, complete with a cape and a spiky headdress. The look was more punk rock than Tinseltown elegance ― an oversized fuck-you to the fusty Academy and an ebullient reminder that she wouldn’t tidy up her image to appeal to Reagan-era conservatism. 

Getty/Alamy

The Gold

“The Witches of Eastwick” (1987)

Coming off of “Mask,” some studio executives were still questioning Cher’s ability to attract audiences who knew her as an outrageous pop doyenne who hadn’t had a hit single in several years. Her credibility was put to the test each time ― and each time, she passed.

In 1987, at the critical age of 41, Cher landed a troika of commercial hits in which she was the centerpiece, starting with the delicious lark “The Witches of Eastwick,” her first comedy since her variety show a decade earlier. Then came the overwrought legal thriller “Suspect,” which required her to pull off boxy suits as a strapped D.C. attorney spouting verbose monologues. And following that was the snappy romance “Moonstruck,” which demanded a thick accent that was Italian by way of Brooklyn. In each, Cher captured a quotidian version of American life ― and what’s more transformative than Cher pretending to be quotidian?

Playing another single mom in “Eastwick” (directed by “Mad Max” maestro George Miller), she held her own against Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jack Nicholson. Cher clearly relished the role. During a tart takedown of Nicholson’s lothario, she trades the maximalist energy that many actresses would bring to the scene for a soft smirk, savoring every word as she calls him “physically repulsive, intellectually retarded, morally reprehensible, vulgar, insensitive, selfish [and] stupid.” 

“Suspect” (1987)

For “Suspect” and “Moonstruck,” Cher was the directors’ first choice, netting a salary of more than $1 million apiece ― an impressive figure in the mid-’80s, though notably less than what men like Bruce Willis and Robert Redford commanded.

“Suspect” let Cher check off a requisite movie-star box, as it was all but decreed in the ’80s and ’90s that every serious actor make at least one blandly entertaining legal thriller. Like the best of them, Cher’s was a courtroom drama with an ethically dubious love story nestled into the center. (Young Dennis Quaid was irresistible.) It might be the least Cher-y of any Cher performance ― can you imagine her sporting a no-frills power suit today? ― and yet she is comfortably forceful in the role. Amazingly, the woman whose assless one-piece would soon get her banned by MTV looks cozy amid mounds of paperwork.

“Moonstruck” (1987)

“Suspect” was a modest box-office hit in October, but it was largely forgotten by December, when Cher turned in her career-defining performance in “Moonstruck.” Playing a widowed bookkeeper who falls for her fiancé’s unruly younger brother (Nicolas Cage), Cher cycled through a wider range of emotions than any movie to date had asked of her, lending realism to what is ultimately a Cinderella fairy tale. That she does so with the same physical charisma is a wonder, especially considering she didn’t think Cage was a generous scene partner. (She must have savored that slap.)

“Moonstruck” became the fifth highest-grossing release of 1987 and attracted Cher’s warmest reviews. The following April, she won the Oscar for Best Actress. Wearing another audacious Bob Mackie gown, Cher delivered an earnest speech that was more movie-star sleek than pop-star chic. 

“I don’t think this means I am someone, but I guess I’m on my way,” she said in a rare moment of modesty. Every now and then, even Cher plays along.

Getty/Alamy

The Wobble

“Mermaids” (1990)

As if emboldened by the respect her film career had garnered, Cher signed a new record contract with her friend David Geffen’s label. “Cher,” released in 1987 after five years away from music, produced a couple of mild hits (“I Found Someone,” “We All Sleep Alone”) and paved the way for 1990′s “Heart of Stone,” a rock record with enough big-haired power pop (namely “If I Could Turn Back Time”) to place her in the same league as Madonna, Paula Abdul and Whitney Houston.

She’d set up a production company with Tri-Star Pictures and bagged her next film role, “Mermaids,” a 1960s-set dramedy about an image-conscious firebrand raising two very different daughters (Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci). The role perfectly married Cher’s pop image and film image. Her character was progressive about sex in a way that most mildewy mom roles weren’t, but with enough working-class gumption to make her more than a head-in-the-clouds prima donna. Cher, a child of divorce who grew up without much money, nails that paradox.

But “Mermaids” was also a turning point. Having launched a lengthy world tour in summer 1989, Cher was exhausted to the point of illness, and she found herself sparring with director Lasse Hallström (“My Life as a Dog”). Production shut down so Cher could rest, during which time Frank Oz (“Little Shop of Horrors”) replaced Hallström. Cher didn’t get along with Oz any better ― “she emotionally beat the shit out of him,” a source reportedly told Vanity Fair ― and he left the project. (“Look, I’m only difficult if you’re an idiot,” Cher said.) Richard Benjamin (“The Money Pit”) came aboard and steered the movie to completion.

This backstage drama was splashed across the press, cementing the cantankerous reputation that most divas achieve at some point or another. “Mermaids” made OK money ― far less than it should have, since it’s such a delight ― and Cher mused that her acting days were probably numbered, partly because she was well past the age of 40, at which point Hollywood women become biddies.

“The Player” (1992) and “Ready to Wear” (1994)

After the “Mermaids” theatrics, Cher’s agent tried to push her to take more film roles, namely one of the leads in “Thelma & Louise.” But she needed a break. (Cher had also turned down Danny DeVito’s “The War of the Roses.”) Instead, she released the album “Love Hurts” in 1991 ― but it’s biggest single, “Love and Understanding,” stalled at No. 17. She then embarked on another tour and did hair and skin care infomercials that turned her into something of a punch line. 

But instead of fading away, she did the Cher-iest thing of all: She played herself, in ultimate diva form, twice. The first time was in old friend Robert Altman’s 1992 Hollywood satire “The Player.” The second was in old friend Robert Altman’s 1994 fashion satire “Ready to Wear.” Both movies saw her walking red carpets as a VIP at industry events. 

Waltzing into “The Player,” Cher glides down a gala red carpet as a TV announcer says, “Well, leave it to Cher to wear fire-engine red when the impossible-to-come-by invitations call for black and white only, please.” In playing along with Altman’s joke, she shattered a wall between person and persona. She’d accrued the sort of diva caliber that can feel mythological, the kind that doesn’t have to abide by the industry’s rules — and she wanted us to know it.

During an interview with a TV journalist in “Ready to Wear” who balks at how good she looks, Cher replies, “Well, yeah.” The cameos were brassy ways of asserting the stature she’s accrued after three decades in the business. Also essential: They let Cher poke fun at her own attention-seeking iconoclasm.

For as much as “The Player” verified Cher’s stardom, it did little to vault her back into Hollywood’s top tier. An Entertainment Weekly article from 1993 — written by a young Ryan Murphy — quoted an anonymous Hollywood producer who said casting Cher was now a “risk.” Her bankability had waned. “I’m not sure if I want to continue to be Cher,” she admitted in 1994. 

“Faithful” (1996)

But Cher pressed on, attempting to mount “Tabloid,” about an actress and a tabloid editor, with her “Witches of Eastwick” pal Michelle Pfeiffer. She also wanted to remake the 1945 fantasy “The Enchanted Cottage” as a musical (with the encouragement of Francis Ford Coppola), but she lost the rights and the project never came to fruition. (She would continue to discuss it well into the 2010s.)

1995 and early ’96 were especially rough for Cher commercially. Her Southern rock-inflected album “It’s a Man’s World” flopped, as did her first lead role in six years, “Faithful,” which opened April 19, 1996. Cher is, unsurprisingly, the most compelling thing about “Faithful,” portraying a vulnerable housewife whose philandering husband (Ryan O’Neal) hires a hitman (Chazz Palminteri) to murder her. But the script, written by Palminteri, isn’t funny or tense enough. It was the first time her reputation preceded a character: We never believe Cher’s life is in danger, possibly because she’s too famous to be killed off.

“Faithful” earned a piddly $2.1 million, but Cher shrugged off its reception: “It was no loss. At least the reviews said it was nice to see me acting again.” 

Cher’s movie career could have perished altogether, as most established pop stars can’t afford to flounder that hard. A bad single comes and goes, but a bad movie has millions of dollars riding on it.

“If These Walls Could Talk” (1996)

Cher has never been a quitter, though. Toward the close of 1996, she returned with a project so intrepid no Hollywood studio would touch it. Demi Moore had spent five years producing “If These Walls Could Talk,” seeking a home for it on a television network willing to back an unapologetically pro-choice triptych about women ― one in 1952 (Moore), one in 1974 (Sissy Spacek) and one in 1996 (Anne Heche) ― seeking abortions. That home turned out to be HBO.

Nearing 50 and recognizing that meaty roles were growing rare, Cher saw “If These Walls Could Talk” as a chance to advocate for reproductive rights (she’d had two legal abortions, and her mother and grandmother both nearly died from illegal abortions when they were younger). She also seized the opportunity to direct, something she’d talked about doing for years. So she took a small role and helmed the movie’s third segment, playing a self-possessed doctor co-existing with a protest mob outside her Chicago abortion clinic. It was a different role for her —  more austere — and Cher pulls off an appropriate blend of fatigue and perseverance. 

When “Walls” premiered on Oct. 13, 1996, it became the highest-rated movie in HBO’s 24-year history. Cher earned a supporting-actress nomination at the Golden Globes ― an inadvertent fuck-you pitched at anyone who said her movie pilgrimage had ended. 

Getty/Alamy/Universal Pictures

The Redemption

“Tea with Mussolini” (1999)

Cher took a breather in 1997, paving the way for what would become one of the glitziest comebacks in pop history. She was 52 when “Believe” became her first No. 1 single since 1974. Producers had urged her to embrace her gay fanbase via a dance jubilee, and suddenly she was competing with younger artists like Britney Spears, TLC and Mariah Carey. By the end of 1999, it was the year’s most popular song. Her divadom flew off the charts, far more than it had with the caricature of “The Player.”

“Believe” is also the song that made autotune a phenomenon. That someone who wasn’t known as a remarkable singer would distort her voice in such an unconventional way read as an act of rebellion, a boldfaced “look at what I can do.” Cher’s record company insisted the effects be removed, to which she said, “Over my dead body!” 

Around that time, Cher co-headlined VH1′s all-star concert “Divas Live ’99” and launched a massive world tour so grandiose it was almost comical. Furthermore, she had divas who were once considered her peers (Cyndi Lauper, Belinda Carlisle) opening for her. 

Cher was bigger and bolder than ever when “Tea with Mussolini” opened in theaters on May 14, 1999. On the Italian set the previous summer, she was the only actor to arrive with her own makeup artist, hairdresser and personal secretary ― which didn’t stop her from feeling intimidated by Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Lily Tomlin. Director Franco Zeffirelli (“Romeo and Juliet”) based the World War II-set ensemble dramedy on a chapter of his autobiography, centering the story on a colony of English women living in Florence in the 1930s.

Smith is the movie’s MVP, but Cher saunters in as a rich American widow possessing a caustic but wacky regality. It makes sense that the height of Cher’s bedazzled pop career coincided with a movie in which she flits around in gaudy costumes. Her persona no longer fit the rural threads of “Silkwood” or the juridical garb of “Suspect” ― and it never would again.

“Tea with Mussolini” made a stolid $14.4 million domestically. Moreover, it was tossed aside during Oscar season despite being prototypical awards bait. That’s not necessarily her fault, but it does lead to an interesting takeaway: What people wanted, post-“Believe,” was to see Cher simply be Cher.

In late 2000, she was working to get that “Enchanted Cottage” musical off the ground, imagining the lead character to be a composite of “me and Tina Turner and Madonna.” But nothing ever came of it, and Cher didn’t take another lead role until 2010′s “Burlesque.” She mounted a so-called farewell tour and leaned hard into the Cher Plays Herself trademark. It worked to her benefit.

“Will & Grace” (2000, 2002) and “Stuck on You” (2003)

In 2000 and 2002, she appeared as a sassy Cher on “Will & Grace.” In a beloved 2000 episode titled “Gypsies, Tramps and Weed,” a twist on Cher’s thundering 1971 song “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves,” Jack (Sean Hayes) is obsessed with a Barbie-sized Cher doll. Who else would walk in on his infatuation but Cher herself? Except Jack believes she’s a drag queen ― a tongue-in-cheek crack about Cher’s campy image. They have a sing-off in which Jack, convinced his impression is superior, greatly exaggerates her husky warble and dramatic hair toss in a way that essentially mocks Cher to her face. Amused, she gets the last laugh, slapping him and administering that quotable classic: “Snap out of it.”

There’s no movie-star move more powerful than playing yourself with an ironic wink, and “Will & Grace,” like “The Player” before it, let Cher poke fun at herself in a refreshing way. She is treated as an empire, at once pointedly self-aware and deliciously aloof ― a perfect way to master her own narrative without being beholden to it.

In 2003, she appeared as a sassier Cher in the one-joke farce “Stuck on You,” starring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as conjoined twins who move to Hollywood when one decides to launch a movie career. Stomping around in a fitted leather jacket and a spiky thatch of jet-black hair that resembles David Bowie’s in “Labyrinth,” Cher yelled at her agent (Jackie Flynn) about the state of her acting career: “Why am I doing this lame-ass TV show when I should be doing movies?” she says before reminding him that she has an Oscar.

Cher’s “Will & Grace” appearances were hardly lame, yet one can’t help but wonder whether Cher was bitter about her acting career’s ebbs. Further complicating matters, Hollywood was drifting away from idiosyncratic character dramas and toward inflated action spectacles. Between 2004 and 2009, she didn’t appear onscreen at all. And so began the Vegas residency phase, which continues today.

“Burlesque” (2010)

When Cher returned with “Burlesque” in 2010, the punch lines wrote themselves. A hammy musical about an aspiring actress (Christina Aguilera) who coaxes her way into the tutelage of a nightclub matron (Cher), the movie went through major script rewrites (by “Juno” scribe Diablo Cody, “Erin Brockovich” scribe Susannah Grant and “Moonstruck” scribe John Patrick Shanley, no less) but still felt like a collection of rhinestone-studded music videos. Cher seems bored by the whole affair, which makes sense: David Geffen, who once dated “Burlesque” director Steve Antin, had to talk her into doing it. Cher is miscast ― would someone with her magnetism really be running a beggared cabaret? ― but she still manages to bring a sense of pride to the character. 

“Look, I have a very narrow range,” she said in 2010. “I’ve never tried anything more than playing who I am. If you look at my characters, they’re all me.”

The thing is, she’s wrong. Cher is no Cate Blanchett, but she’s far more transformative ― or at least more instinctive ― than she gives herself credit for. Regardless, her big statement in “Burlesque” reverberated loud and clear during a ballad written specifically for her: “I’ll be back / Back on my feet / This is far from over / You haven’t seen the last of me.” 

It also makes sense that Cher ended up viewing the movie as a reflection of her legacy: “I’m in a strange place right now,” she said in 2013. “I’m too old to be young and I’m too young to be old, so I have to be used creatively. In ‘Burlesque,’ which was horrible, I had no love interest, I was running this [troupe], that’s who I was. It could have been a much better film. […] Terrible director! Really terrible director. And really terrible script. I remember him saying to me, I don’t care about what you say, I just want to shoot the dance numbers. Had it been shorter, it would have squeaked by and been a really good popcorn movie.”

“Zookeeper” (2011) “Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh” (2017) and “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” (2018)

In the same breath, Cher vowed to keep acting. But other than voicing a lion in the Kevin James comedy “Zookeeper” and voicing a self-referential alien who “knows how to make an entrance” in Netflix’s “Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh,” no other projects had materialized until now.

“Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” like “Burlesque” before it, finds Cher playing Cher, insofar as her snazzy attire and snappy dialogue herald her diva bona fides. Oh, and because she is the sequel’s show-stopping main event, of course.

She shows up in the final 15 minutes, helicoptering into the Greek hotel now run by Sophie (Amanda Seyfried). You know it’s Cher the second the chopper appears. In dramatic fashion, we see Cher’s pant leg touch down before we ever glimpse her wrinkle-free face. It’s a moment that practically begs audiences to cheer.

“Mes enfants, je suis arrivé; let the party commence,” she announces after emerging from the plane. When she sings ABBA’s “Fernando” with Andy Garcia, fireworks explode across the sky. 

In almost no time, Cher steals the movie, snapping and shimmying as if onstage at one of her concerts ― the ultimate marriage of her 55-year-old career’s many tentacles. If it’s possible for Cher to outdo Cher, “Mamma Mia!” is it. But “Mamma Mia!” also crystallizes what we’ve long assumed about Cher: Even at 72, she is still in on the joke that was christened in “The Player” and confirmed on “Will & Grace.”

She’ll probably never spawn another Top 40 hit ― see: her 2013 album “Closer to the Truth” and her recently announced collection of ABBA covers ― but she can still capitalize on the Cher brand to electrify audiences familiar with her diva cachet. Today, her biggest transformation is wearing a bleach-blond wig. Maybe that’s all the transformation we really want from Cher anyway, even though “Mamma Mia!” doesn’t quite know what to do with her, plot-wise.

If pop stars are meant to be mythological and actors are meant to be aspirational, Cher has mastered both domains. She did so by never shying away from how the world metabolized her iconography, and by forever laughing at the absurdity of fame. That sense of humor is now her lifeblood. No matter what happens in the years to come, we haven’t seen the last of her. 

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/01/26/la-times-mary-tyler-moore-beloved-tv-icon-who-symbolized-the-independent-career-woman-dies-at-80-20/

La Times: Mary Tyler Moore, beloved TV icon who symbolized the independent career woman, dies at 80

Comfortably single and unafraid to stand up to her gruff newsroom boss, Mary Richards splashed onto television screens at a time when feminism was still putting down roots in America, a woman who charged through the working day with equal parts humor and raw independence.

Mary Tyler Moore’s character charmed TV watchers, earned the actress Emmy nominations and became a potent symbol of womanhood in the 1970s. The actress and her television character became so entwined that Moore became a role model for women who sought to challenge the conventions of marriage and family.

“She wasn’t married. She wasn’t looking to get married. At no point did the series end in a happy ending with her finding a husband — which seemed to be the course you had to take as a woman,” former First Lady Michelle Obama said in an interview in August. As a young girl, Obama said, she drew inspiration from the character.

Moore died Wednesday in Greenwich, Conn. from cardiopulmonary arrest after being hospitalized with pneumonia. She was 80.

In a career that began as Happy Hotpoint, the dancing and singing 3-inch pixie in Hotpoint appliance commercials on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” in 1955 when she was 18, Moore went on to star in television and films and on Broadway.

In 1981, she received an Academy Award nomination for best actress for her portrayal of the emotionally cold mother in “Ordinary People,” the Robert Redford-directed drama about an upper-middle-class family dealing with the death of a teen-age son in a boating accident and the attempted suicide of their surviving son.

In a statement Wednesday, Redford said he admired Moore for taking such a role.

“The courage she displayed in taking on a role darker than anything she had ever done was brave and enormously powerful,” he said.

The unsympathetic, nearly-bloodless role was a departure for Moore, who remains best-known for her light and sunny touch in two classic situation comedies that together earned her six Emmy Awards.

Moore was still largely unknown when she was cast as Laura Petrie, the suburban housewife and mother of a young son opposite Dick Van Dyke’s TV comedy writer husband Rob on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

The acclaimed sitcom, which aired on CBS from 1961 to 1966, earned Moore her first two Emmys and made her a star.

Her Capri-pants-wearing Laura brought something new to the traditional sitcom role of wife and mother: youthful sex appeal.

As Carl Reiner, the series’ creator, said of Rob and Laura in a 2004 TV Guide interview: “These were two people who really liked each other.”

Moore agreed, saying: “We brought romance to comedy, and, yes, Rob and Laura had sex!”

Van Dyke often praised Moore’s abilities as a comedic actress — one who has been credited with turning crying into a comedic art form and memorably got her toe stuck in a hotel room bathtub faucet in one episode.

“She was one of the few who could maintain her femininity and be funny at the same time,” Van Dyke said in a 1998 interview with the Archive of American Television. “You have to go as far back as Carole Lombard or Myrna Loy to find someone who could play it that well and still be tremendously appealing as a woman.”

After the Van Dyke show ended in 1966, Moore starred as Holly Golightly in a problem-plagued Broadway musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” that producer David Merrick closed after four previews in New York.

Moore also played Julie Andrews’ roommate in the hit flapper-era comedy-musical movie “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in 1967. But her budding film career, which included playing a nun opposite Elvis Presley’s ghetto doctor in “Change of Habit,” was less than stellar.

She was reunited with Van Dyke in a 1969 musical-variety TV special, a critical and ratings success that spurred CBS to offer her a commitment to do her own half-hour comedy series.

Moore and her second husband, TV executive Grant Tinker, created MTM Enterprises, their own independent TV production company, whose logo — in a takeoff on MGM’s roaring lion — was a meowing orange kitten.

Tinker hired writers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns to create and produce “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” which debuted on CBS in 1970 and made TV history.

The series, featuring Moore as Mary Richards, a single woman in her 30s who lands a job as an associate producer in a Minneapolis TV newsroom, won 29 Emmys during its seven-year run.

Four of those Emmys went to Moore, whose character became a symbol of the independent 1970s career woman.

As Ed Asner’s lovably gruff and rumpled Lou Grant tells her when she applies for a job in the newsroom at WJM-TV: “You know what? You’ve got spunk. I hate spunk.”

 Ellen DeGeneres, who later invited Moore to play herself in several episodes of the sitcom “Ellen,” said she was an admirer of both Moore and her alter ego. “Mary Tyler Moore changed the world for all women,” she tweeted after Moore’s death became public.

In the wake of the success of  “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the MTM empire grew to include series such as “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Rhoda,” “Lou Grant,” “Remington Steele,” “WKRP in Cincinnati,” “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere.”

After “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” left the air in 1977, Moore failed with two TV comedy variety shows within the next two years.

But she scored on Broadway, winning a special Tony Award in 1980 for her performance as the quadriplegic lead character in the Broadway revival of “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” — a part originally written for a man.

In 1993, Moore won her seventh Emmy, for her supporting role as the ruthless owner of a 1940s Tennessee adoption agency in the Lifetime cable drama “Stolen Babies.”

Her two returns to the sitcom format in the mid- and late ’80s — “Mary” and “Annie McGuire” — were short-lived, as was the 1995 newspaper drama “New York News,” on which she played the autocratic editor of a tabloid newspaper.

In the years after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” she dealt with a series of personal problems and tragedies.

In 1978, her younger sister, Elizabeth, died of a drug overdose. In 1980, Richie, her 24-year-old son from her first marriage, fatally shot himself in what was ruled an accident. And in 1992, Moore’s brother John, a recovering alcoholic, died after a long battle with kidney cancer.

In the mid-’80s, Moore checked into the Betty Ford Center to seek treatment for alcoholism.

In a 1986 interview with Maclean’s magazine, Moore said: “I am glad I was able to be a kind of role model for other women who identified with my ladylike qualities, who were then able to say, ‘Well, if Mary can admit she had a problem with alcohol, then maybe I can too.’ ”

Asner said he treasured the years he worked alongside Moore.

“I will never be able to repay her for the blessings that she gave me,” he said in a tweet.

Moore was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on Dec. 29, 1936. Her father was a clerk for Consolidated Edison who worked at the Southern California Gas Co. after the family moved to Los Angeles in 1945.

Moore began taking dance classes while in grade school and appeared in recitals. She continued to take dance lessons and perform through her years at Immaculate Heart High School, where she dreamed of dancing her way to stardom.

In her autobiography, Moore described her strict Catholic father as “undemonstrative” and her more fun-loving mother as an alcoholic. As a result, Moore spent half the time living with her parents and the other half living with her aunt and grandmother.

“It was not an ideal home life,” she said in a 1999 interview with the Ottawa Citizen, noting that, even if her mom and dad “weren’t the best of parents,” they had the best sense of humor.

“Thank God, I was not abused in any way, but I was seeking approval of some sort, in many different ways,” she said. “For me, it turned out to be a pat on the back for entertaining people.”

She was 18 and five months from graduating from high school in 1955 when she met 27-year-old Dick Meeker, an Ocean Spray cranberry products salesman, who had moved into a small apartment in the house next door to her parents’ home.

They were married two months after she graduated, and their son Richie was born the following year.

As a working mother, Moore found jobs dancing in the chorus of “The Eddie Fisher Show” and other TV variety shows, and appeared in commercials.

Her first regular acting role came in 1959 when she played Sam, the sultry-voiced telephone operator on the David Janssen TV series “Richard Diamond, Private Detective” — an uncredited role in which no more than her legs or an extreme close-up of her mouth were seen on screen.

Publicity for the show played up the mysterious Sam. But, Moore wrote in her book, when she asked for more money, she was replaced by another anonymous actress after 13 episodes.

After her stint as Sam, Moore played small parts in TV series such as “77 Sunset Strip,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Bourbon Street Beat” and “Riverboat.”

She auditioned to replace Sherry Jackson as Danny Thomas’ grown-up daughter on his popular sitcom, but missed landing the part by a nose: her own.

“Here’s the reason you didn’t get the part,” she later recalled the famously large-nosed Thomas telling her: “With a nose like yours, no one would believe you’re my daughter.”

Two years later, when Thomas, executive producer Sheldon Leonard and Reiner were looking for someone to play the wife in Van Dyke’s new TV series, Thomas said: “Who was the kid we liked so much last year, the one with the three names and the funny nose?”

Moore, whose first marriage ended in divorce in 1961, married Tinker in 1962. They were divorced in 1981. In 1983,  she married Dr. Robert Levine, a Manhattan cardiologist.

 She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1969 and later served as the international chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

In 2012, she received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

McLellan is a former Times staff writer.

news.obits@latimes.com

ALSO:

‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ is back on CBS in living color

Butch Trucks, Allman Brothers Band co-founder, dies at 69

Howard Kaufman, manager for the Eagles, Aerosmith and Stevie Nicks, dies at 79

Miguel Ferrer, star of ‘RoboCop,’ ‘NCIS: Los Angeles’ and ‘Twin Peaks,’ dies at 61

  UPDATES:

3:45 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction to Moore’s death. 

12:50 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details and background.

This article was originally published at 11:40 a.m.

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[dweemeister]

Funny Face (1957)

In stories that evoke Pygmalion, I almost always find that I prefer the subject of the Pygmalion-like makeover as they were before the makeover occurred. Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1938) is far more interesting as a frumpy Soviet agent than a converted, jovial Westerner; so too for Audrey Hepburn’s Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady (1964) as she turns from flower-selling guttersnipe to mistakenly being identified as distantly-related to Hungarian royalty. So it probably should be no surprise that I preferred Audrey Hepburn, seven years before My Fair Lady, before her transformation in Stanley Donen’s Funny Face. Funny Face is based on an unproduced musical by screenwriter Leonard Gershe and borrows its title and some of the songs from a 1927 George and Ira Gershwin musical of the same name. However, Donen’s Funny Face has a completely different plot, with only four songs from the Gershwin musical included. Nonsensical and foolish as it might seem in love, fashion, and happiness, Funny Face is a stylish musical without many peers.

In New York City, Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson) is the editor of Quality – a fashion magazine. Maggie confides in her staffers and photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) in a directional change for Quality. With Dick’s advice, Maggie begins looking for a model that can embody, “character, spirit, and intelligence.” Maggie and Dick will find Jo Stockton (Hepburn), a soft-spoken bookstore employee versed in modern philosophy, especially in Emile Flostre’s (Michel Auclair) “empathicalism”, as their unwitting model for the next cover of Quality. Jo – who disdains the fashion industry – longs to travel to Paris to meet Professor Flostre, and (after some convincing by Dick) accepts a modeling opportunity in Paris just to realize that dream. While in Paris, Jo, Dick, and Maggie find themselves in a variety of shenanigans that are appropriate for a musical romantic comedy.

Movie musicals that are not sung through demand that the actors involved provide robust performances and that they can carry a tune unlike Russell Crowe or Clint Eastwood (yes, Clint Eastwood once sang in a movie). With Hepburn, Astaire, and Thompson, those baseline standards are exceeded. Hepburn is the weakest singer of the three central actors (unlike in My Fair Lady, her singing here is entirely in her voice), but she – twenty-seven years old upon Funny Face’s initial release date – always embodied glamor and elegance. Even though less fashionable roles like in The Nun’s Story (1959) and Wait Until Dark (1967) were on the horizon, this is her first lead role in which she doesn’t play a sort of princess or socialite. Yet that, “character, spirit, and intelligence” irrespective of life station shines through in her performance before and after her character becomes a Quality model. Having loved Fred Astaire’s movies during her childhood, she leaped at the chance to work with him. Astaire, being the perfectionist he always was, put Hepburn at ease instantly, and that joy in their acting, dancing, and singing together radiates from the confines of the screen.

Despite the age difference between Astaire and Hepburn (thirty years; not the most sizable gap in an early career where Hepburn was often paired up with much older men – your tolerance will certainly vary), Astaire maintains a charm that he never lost when starring opposite so many actresses. His character of Dick expresses said charm when noting how much he loves Jo’s “Funny Face”. Gershe’s screenplay is aware of how Astaire best operates as an actor – keep it light, keep dialogue simple and concise within the bounds of the characters’ personalities – and allows the actor to succeed. Yet the film’s greatest delight is Kay Thompson as Maggie. Before the devil wore Prada, Kay Thompson urged her coworkers to, “Think pink!” It is through Thompson – better known as a composer an author of the Eloise children’s book series than as an actress – that the film funnels much of its soft-punching satire towards the shallowness of the high fashion world. Thompson is up for the challenge, nailing her humor like a master handyperson.

Thompson is gifted with a damned powerful set of pipes, as evidenced in the opening “Think Pink!” number (music by Roger Edens, lyrics by Gershe). “Think Pink!” – with its abstract art direction by Hal Pereira, George W. Davis, Sam Comer, and Ray Moyer in addition to Ray June’s cinematography and Frank Bracht’s editing – might be dismissed by those unfamiliar with the habits of musical movies of Old Hollywood, but the surrealism involved is among the most stunning in Stanley Donen’s filmography. More than most genres, musicals lend themselves to some degree of surrealism – if you’re suspending your disbelief for minutes at a time as characters are singing about things spontaneously, That surrealism is less apparent in the preexisting songs that appear in Funny Face (those who have listened to enough of the Gershwin brothers’ songs will recognize some of these titles): “He Loves and She Loves”, “How Long Has This Been Going On?” (an excellent showcase of Hepburn’s solid singing voice), and “’S Wonderful” (serving as the finale).

Along with “Think Pink!”, the second notable original song involves all three central actors as they say, “Bonjour, Paris!” (music by Edens, lyrics by Gershe) In just over five minutes, the viewers are treated to a musical montage of 1950s Paris as Hepburn, Astaire, and Thompson sightsee as much of the city as they can soon after touching down at Orly Airport (Charles de Gaulle Airport would not be opened until 1974) – each of their characters, taking separate taxis because it appears that Quality has money to burn, claim that they are too fatigued for sightseeing, but actually just want to have some alone time before settling down to business. It is not a song I would recommend for viewers attempting to suppress a rampant wanderlust, nor does it build character. It is purely a showboating musical number interested in displaying the beauty of the city and establishing setting. With less accomplished performers and handled by a less talented director, editor, and team of songwriters (overlapping lyrics while the three take Eiffel Tower elevator relieves the song of any semblance of monotony), “Bonjour, Paris!” would otherwise be superfluous padding. Instead, it is an entertaining romp through the City of Light, with infectious smiles melting away the characters’ anxieties and worries if just for a few minutes.

Away from the onscreen glow of the lead actors, Funny Face is supported by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) figures, specifically those working under producer-lyricist Arthur Freed (whose musical credits are jaw-dropping, but include, among numerous other works, 1951′s An American in Paris, 1952′s Singin’ in the Rain, and 1953′s The Band Wagon). In the days of old Hollywood Studio System, Paramount – which produced Funny Face – was known for historical epics, not its musicals. Musicals were the specialty of MGM, and it was Freed himself who purchased the rights to produce the film initially. Freed wanted Hepburn to feature, but Paramount was not about to loan its brightest star anytime soon. Thus, Freed allowed his friend, composer Roger Edens to transfer the production to Paramount. Among the MGM contractees working on this Paramount production included:

Kay Thompson

Stanley Donen (director; 1949′s On the Town, Singin’ in the Rain)

Ray June (cinematographer; 1936′s The Great Ziegfeld) 

Adolph Deutsch (musical director; The Band Wagon, 1954′s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers)

Conrad Salinger (arranger; 1944′s Meet Me in St. Louis, 1950′s Annie Get Your Gun)

Eugene Loring (choreographer; 1945′s Ziegfeld Follies)

The newly independent Fred Astaire had just been released by his contract from MGM, but owed Paramount a movie. As is self-evident, Funny Face had no shortage of musical expertise working behind the camera. And for an era in Hollywood where en masse loans of contractees never happened, this temporary exporting of talent was remarkable. After its release, Hollywood insiders mockingly labeled Funny Face as Paramount’s first MGM musical.

But that MGM talent did not extend to the costume design, which included Paramount’s legendary Edith Head – who, in a fifty-four-year career, still holds the record for Academy Awards for Best Costume Design (eight wins from a record thirty-five nominations). Head would be joined by French fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy for Funny Face. Where the latter handled Audrey Hepburn’s impeccable wardrobe (de Givenchy was also Hepburn’s personal fashion designer), Head designed costumes for all other cast members and extras. The costumes in Funny Face are an explosion of Technicolor – realizing, to the fullest extent, the incredible range of aesthetics, atmosphere, moods, and invention that the Technicolor dyeing process (within widescreen VistaVision) could allow.

As is the case with musicals, the non-musical writing and themes involved are suspect. Romantic and enjoyable though it is, Audrey Hepburn’s transformation from bookish clerk rejecting the superficiality of the fashion world to professional model is not terribly convincing. Elements of New York City-based Jo flicker when she is in Paris, yet are largely – not entirely – extinguished by the film’s ending. Though rooted in feminine concerns and viewpoints, Funny Face is anything but a thoughtful piece of feminism. But that is offset by the fact that Funny Face’s satirical targets include anyone appearing on-screen: fashion executives and their subordinates, photographers seeking the perfect shot, bookish women, pretentious philosophers that make sense to a handful of the film’s characters, but never to the audience.

Funny Face is an experience brimming with amusement, glee. With Fred Astaire midway through his career and Audrey Hepburn near the beginning of hers, the film benefits from their mutual adoration of the other – putting the other actors, and the audience, in a state of dreamy enchantment, perhaps dreaming up of an unannounced vacation as these true movie stars walk the streets of Paris.

My rating: 9/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/01/26/la-times-mary-tyler-moore-beloved-tv-icon-who-symbolized-the-independent-career-woman-dies-at-80-19/

La Times: Mary Tyler Moore, beloved TV icon who symbolized the independent career woman, dies at 80

Comfortably single and unafraid to stand up to her gruff newsroom boss, Mary Richards splashed onto television screens at a time when feminism was still putting down roots in America, a woman who charged through the working day with equal parts humor and raw independence.

Mary Tyler Moore’s character charmed TV watchers, earned the actress Emmy nominations and became a potent symbol of womanhood in the 1970s. The actress and her television character became so entwined that Moore became a role model for women who sought to challenge the conventions of marriage and family.

“She wasn’t married. She wasn’t looking to get married. At no point did the series end in a happy ending with her finding a husband — which seemed to be the course you had to take as a woman,” former First Lady Michelle Obama said in an interview in August. As a young girl, Obama said, she drew inspiration from the character.

Moore died Wednesday in Greenwich, Conn. from cardiopulmonary arrest after being hospitalized with pneumonia. She was 80.

In a career that began as Happy Hotpoint, the dancing and singing 3-inch pixie in Hotpoint appliance commercials on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” in 1955 when she was 18, Moore went on to star in television and films and on Broadway.

In 1981, she received an Academy Award nomination for best actress for her portrayal of the emotionally cold mother in “Ordinary People,” the Robert Redford-directed drama about an upper-middle-class family dealing with the death of a teen-age son in a boating accident and the attempted suicide of their surviving son.

In a statement Wednesday, Redford said he admired Moore for taking such a role.

“The courage she displayed in taking on a role darker than anything she had ever done was brave and enormously powerful,” he said.

The unsympathetic, nearly-bloodless role was a departure for Moore, who remains best-known for her light and sunny touch in two classic situation comedies that together earned her six Emmy Awards.

Moore was still largely unknown when she was cast as Laura Petrie, the suburban housewife and mother of a young son opposite Dick Van Dyke’s TV comedy writer husband Rob on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

The acclaimed sitcom, which aired on CBS from 1961 to 1966, earned Moore her first two Emmys and made her a star.

Her Capri-pants-wearing Laura brought something new to the traditional sitcom role of wife and mother: youthful sex appeal.

As Carl Reiner, the series’ creator, said of Rob and Laura in a 2004 TV Guide interview: “These were two people who really liked each other.”

Moore agreed, saying: “We brought romance to comedy, and, yes, Rob and Laura had sex!”

Van Dyke often praised Moore’s abilities as a comedic actress — one who has been credited with turning crying into a comedic art form and memorably got her toe stuck in a hotel room bathtub faucet in one episode.

“She was one of the few who could maintain her femininity and be funny at the same time,” Van Dyke said in a 1998 interview with the Archive of American Television. “You have to go as far back as Carole Lombard or Myrna Loy to find someone who could play it that well and still be tremendously appealing as a woman.”

After the Van Dyke show ended in 1966, Moore starred as Holly Golightly in a problem-plagued Broadway musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” that producer David Merrick closed after four previews in New York.

Moore also played Julie Andrews’ roommate in the hit flapper-era comedy-musical movie “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in 1967. But her budding film career, which included playing a nun opposite Elvis Presley’s ghetto doctor in “Change of Habit,” was less than stellar.

She was reunited with Van Dyke in a 1969 musical-variety TV special, a critical and ratings success that spurred CBS to offer her a commitment to do her own half-hour comedy series.

Moore and her second husband, TV executive Grant Tinker, created MTM Enterprises, their own independent TV production company, whose logo — in a takeoff on MGM’s roaring lion — was a meowing orange kitten.

Tinker hired writers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns to create and produce “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” which debuted on CBS in 1970 and made TV history.

The series, featuring Moore as Mary Richards, a single woman in her 30s who lands a job as an associate producer in a Minneapolis TV newsroom, won 29 Emmys during its seven-year run.

Four of those Emmys went to Moore, whose character became a symbol of the independent 1970s career woman.

As Ed Asner’s lovably gruff and rumpled Lou Grant tells her when she applies for a job in the newsroom at WJM-TV: “You know what? You’ve got spunk. I hate spunk.”

 Ellen DeGeneres, who later invited Moore to play herself in several episodes of the sitcom “Ellen,” said she was an admirer of both Moore and her alter ego. “Mary Tyler Moore changed the world for all women,” she tweeted after Moore’s death became public.

In the wake of the success of  “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the MTM empire grew to include series such as “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Rhoda,” “Lou Grant,” “Remington Steele,” “WKRP in Cincinnati,” “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere.”

After “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” left the air in 1977, Moore failed with two TV comedy variety shows within the next two years.

But she scored on Broadway, winning a special Tony Award in 1980 for her performance as the quadriplegic lead character in the Broadway revival of “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” — a part originally written for a man.

In 1993, Moore won her seventh Emmy, for her supporting role as the ruthless owner of a 1940s Tennessee adoption agency in the Lifetime cable drama “Stolen Babies.”

Her two returns to the sitcom format in the mid- and late ’80s — “Mary” and “Annie McGuire” — were short-lived, as was the 1995 newspaper drama “New York News,” on which she played the autocratic editor of a tabloid newspaper.

In the years after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” she dealt with a series of personal problems and tragedies.

In 1978, her younger sister, Elizabeth, died of a drug overdose. In 1980, Richie, her 24-year-old son from her first marriage, fatally shot himself in what was ruled an accident. And in 1992, Moore’s brother John, a recovering alcoholic, died after a long battle with kidney cancer.

In the mid-’80s, Moore checked into the Betty Ford Center to seek treatment for alcoholism.

In a 1986 interview with Maclean’s magazine, Moore said: “I am glad I was able to be a kind of role model for other women who identified with my ladylike qualities, who were then able to say, ‘Well, if Mary can admit she had a problem with alcohol, then maybe I can too.’ ”

Asner said he treasured the years he worked alongside Moore.

“I will never be able to repay her for the blessings that she gave me,” he said in a tweet.

Moore was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on Dec. 29, 1936. Her father was a clerk for Consolidated Edison who worked at the Southern California Gas Co. after the family moved to Los Angeles in 1945.

Moore began taking dance classes while in grade school and appeared in recitals. She continued to take dance lessons and perform through her years at Immaculate Heart High School, where she dreamed of dancing her way to stardom.

In her autobiography, Moore described her strict Catholic father as “undemonstrative” and her more fun-loving mother as an alcoholic. As a result, Moore spent half the time living with her parents and the other half living with her aunt and grandmother.

“It was not an ideal home life,” she said in a 1999 interview with the Ottawa Citizen, noting that, even if her mom and dad “weren’t the best of parents,” they had the best sense of humor.

“Thank God, I was not abused in any way, but I was seeking approval of some sort, in many different ways,” she said. “For me, it turned out to be a pat on the back for entertaining people.”

She was 18 and five months from graduating from high school in 1955 when she met 27-year-old Dick Meeker, an Ocean Spray cranberry products salesman, who had moved into a small apartment in the house next door to her parents’ home.

They were married two months after she graduated, and their son Richie was born the following year.

As a working mother, Moore found jobs dancing in the chorus of “The Eddie Fisher Show” and other TV variety shows, and appeared in commercials.

Her first regular acting role came in 1959 when she played Sam, the sultry-voiced telephone operator on the David Janssen TV series “Richard Diamond, Private Detective” — an uncredited role in which no more than her legs or an extreme close-up of her mouth were seen on screen.

Publicity for the show played up the mysterious Sam. But, Moore wrote in her book, when she asked for more money, she was replaced by another anonymous actress after 13 episodes.

After her stint as Sam, Moore played small parts in TV series such as “77 Sunset Strip,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Bourbon Street Beat” and “Riverboat.”

She auditioned to replace Sherry Jackson as Danny Thomas’ grown-up daughter on his popular sitcom, but missed landing the part by a nose: her own.

“Here’s the reason you didn’t get the part,” she later recalled the famously large-nosed Thomas telling her: “With a nose like yours, no one would believe you’re my daughter.”

Two years later, when Thomas, executive producer Sheldon Leonard and Reiner were looking for someone to play the wife in Van Dyke’s new TV series, Thomas said: “Who was the kid we liked so much last year, the one with the three names and the funny nose?”

Moore, whose first marriage ended in divorce in 1961, married Tinker in 1962. They were divorced in 1981. In 1983,  she married Dr. Robert Levine, a Manhattan cardiologist.

 She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1969 and later served as the international chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

In 2012, she received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

McLellan is a former Times staff writer.

news.obits@latimes.com

ALSO:

‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ is back on CBS in living color

Butch Trucks, Allman Brothers Band co-founder, dies at 69

Howard Kaufman, manager for the Eagles, Aerosmith and Stevie Nicks, dies at 79

Miguel Ferrer, star of ‘RoboCop,’ ‘NCIS: Los Angeles’ and ‘Twin Peaks,’ dies at 61

  UPDATES:

3:45 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction to Moore’s death. 

12:50 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details and background.

This article was originally published at 11:40 a.m.

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/01/26/la-times-mary-tyler-moore-beloved-tv-icon-who-symbolized-the-independent-career-woman-dies-at-80-18/

La Times: Mary Tyler Moore, beloved TV icon who symbolized the independent career woman, dies at 80

Comfortably single and unafraid to stand up to her gruff newsroom boss, Mary Richards splashed onto television screens at a time when feminism was still putting down roots in America, a woman who charged through the working day with equal parts humor and raw independence.

Mary Tyler Moore’s character charmed TV watchers, earned the actress Emmy nominations and became a potent symbol of womanhood in the 1970s. The actress and her television character became so entwined that Moore became a role model for women who sought to challenge the conventions of marriage and family.

“She wasn’t married. She wasn’t looking to get married. At no point did the series end in a happy ending with her finding a husband — which seemed to be the course you had to take as a woman,” former First Lady Michelle Obama said in an interview in August. As a young girl, Obama said, she drew inspiration from the character.

Moore died Wednesday in Greenwich, Conn. from cardiopulmonary arrest after being hospitalized with pneumonia. She was 80.

In a career that began as Happy Hotpoint, the dancing and singing 3-inch pixie in Hotpoint appliance commercials on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” in 1955 when she was 18, Moore went on to star in television and films and on Broadway.

In 1981, she received an Academy Award nomination for best actress for her portrayal of the emotionally cold mother in “Ordinary People,” the Robert Redford-directed drama about an upper-middle-class family dealing with the death of a teen-age son in a boating accident and the attempted suicide of their surviving son.

In a statement Wednesday, Redford said he admired Moore for taking such a role.

“The courage she displayed in taking on a role darker than anything she had ever done was brave and enormously powerful,” he said.

The unsympathetic, nearly-bloodless role was a departure for Moore, who remains best-known for her light and sunny touch in two classic situation comedies that together earned her six Emmy Awards.

Moore was still largely unknown when she was cast as Laura Petrie, the suburban housewife and mother of a young son opposite Dick Van Dyke’s TV comedy writer husband Rob on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

The acclaimed sitcom, which aired on CBS from 1961 to 1966, earned Moore her first two Emmys and made her a star.

Her Capri-pants-wearing Laura brought something new to the traditional sitcom role of wife and mother: youthful sex appeal.

As Carl Reiner, the series’ creator, said of Rob and Laura in a 2004 TV Guide interview: “These were two people who really liked each other.”

Moore agreed, saying: “We brought romance to comedy, and, yes, Rob and Laura had sex!”

Van Dyke often praised Moore’s abilities as a comedic actress — one who has been credited with turning crying into a comedic art form and memorably got her toe stuck in a hotel room bathtub faucet in one episode.

“She was one of the few who could maintain her femininity and be funny at the same time,” Van Dyke said in a 1998 interview with the Archive of American Television. “You have to go as far back as Carole Lombard or Myrna Loy to find someone who could play it that well and still be tremendously appealing as a woman.”

After the Van Dyke show ended in 1966, Moore starred as Holly Golightly in a problem-plagued Broadway musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” that producer David Merrick closed after four previews in New York.

Moore also played Julie Andrews’ roommate in the hit flapper-era comedy-musical movie “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in 1967. But her budding film career, which included playing a nun opposite Elvis Presley’s ghetto doctor in “Change of Habit,” was less than stellar.

She was reunited with Van Dyke in a 1969 musical-variety TV special, a critical and ratings success that spurred CBS to offer her a commitment to do her own half-hour comedy series.

Moore and her second husband, TV executive Grant Tinker, created MTM Enterprises, their own independent TV production company, whose logo — in a takeoff on MGM’s roaring lion — was a meowing orange kitten.

Tinker hired writers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns to create and produce “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” which debuted on CBS in 1970 and made TV history.

The series, featuring Moore as Mary Richards, a single woman in her 30s who lands a job as an associate producer in a Minneapolis TV newsroom, won 29 Emmys during its seven-year run.

Four of those Emmys went to Moore, whose character became a symbol of the independent 1970s career woman.

As Ed Asner’s lovably gruff and rumpled Lou Grant tells her when she applies for a job in the newsroom at WJM-TV: “You know what? You’ve got spunk. I hate spunk.”

 Ellen DeGeneres, who later invited Moore to play herself in several episodes of the sitcom “Ellen,” said she was an admirer of both Moore and her alter ego. “Mary Tyler Moore changed the world for all women,” she tweeted after Moore’s death became public.

In the wake of the success of  “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the MTM empire grew to include series such as “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Rhoda,” “Lou Grant,” “Remington Steele,” “WKRP in Cincinnati,” “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere.”

After “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” left the air in 1977, Moore failed with two TV comedy variety shows within the next two years.

But she scored on Broadway, winning a special Tony Award in 1980 for her performance as the quadriplegic lead character in the Broadway revival of “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” — a part originally written for a man.

In 1993, Moore won her seventh Emmy, for her supporting role as the ruthless owner of a 1940s Tennessee adoption agency in the Lifetime cable drama “Stolen Babies.”

Her two returns to the sitcom format in the mid- and late ’80s — “Mary” and “Annie McGuire” — were short-lived, as was the 1995 newspaper drama “New York News,” on which she played the autocratic editor of a tabloid newspaper.

In the years after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” she dealt with a series of personal problems and tragedies.

In 1978, her younger sister, Elizabeth, died of a drug overdose. In 1980, Richie, her 24-year-old son from her first marriage, fatally shot himself in what was ruled an accident. And in 1992, Moore’s brother John, a recovering alcoholic, died after a long battle with kidney cancer.

In the mid-’80s, Moore checked into the Betty Ford Center to seek treatment for alcoholism.

In a 1986 interview with Maclean’s magazine, Moore said: “I am glad I was able to be a kind of role model for other women who identified with my ladylike qualities, who were then able to say, ‘Well, if Mary can admit she had a problem with alcohol, then maybe I can too.’ ”

Asner said he treasured the years he worked alongside Moore.

“I will never be able to repay her for the blessings that she gave me,” he said in a tweet.

Moore was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on Dec. 29, 1936. Her father was a clerk for Consolidated Edison who worked at the Southern California Gas Co. after the family moved to Los Angeles in 1945.

Moore began taking dance classes while in grade school and appeared in recitals. She continued to take dance lessons and perform through her years at Immaculate Heart High School, where she dreamed of dancing her way to stardom.

In her autobiography, Moore described her strict Catholic father as “undemonstrative” and her more fun-loving mother as an alcoholic. As a result, Moore spent half the time living with her parents and the other half living with her aunt and grandmother.

“It was not an ideal home life,” she said in a 1999 interview with the Ottawa Citizen, noting that, even if her mom and dad “weren’t the best of parents,” they had the best sense of humor.

“Thank God, I was not abused in any way, but I was seeking approval of some sort, in many different ways,” she said. “For me, it turned out to be a pat on the back for entertaining people.”

She was 18 and five months from graduating from high school in 1955 when she met 27-year-old Dick Meeker, an Ocean Spray cranberry products salesman, who had moved into a small apartment in the house next door to her parents’ home.

They were married two months after she graduated, and their son Richie was born the following year.

As a working mother, Moore found jobs dancing in the chorus of “The Eddie Fisher Show” and other TV variety shows, and appeared in commercials.

Her first regular acting role came in 1959 when she played Sam, the sultry-voiced telephone operator on the David Janssen TV series “Richard Diamond, Private Detective” — an uncredited role in which no more than her legs or an extreme close-up of her mouth were seen on screen.

Publicity for the show played up the mysterious Sam. But, Moore wrote in her book, when she asked for more money, she was replaced by another anonymous actress after 13 episodes.

After her stint as Sam, Moore played small parts in TV series such as “77 Sunset Strip,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Bourbon Street Beat” and “Riverboat.”

She auditioned to replace Sherry Jackson as Danny Thomas’ grown-up daughter on his popular sitcom, but missed landing the part by a nose: her own.

“Here’s the reason you didn’t get the part,” she later recalled the famously large-nosed Thomas telling her: “With a nose like yours, no one would believe you’re my daughter.”

Two years later, when Thomas, executive producer Sheldon Leonard and Reiner were looking for someone to play the wife in Van Dyke’s new TV series, Thomas said: “Who was the kid we liked so much last year, the one with the three names and the funny nose?”

Moore, whose first marriage ended in divorce in 1961, married Tinker in 1962. They were divorced in 1981. In 1983,  she married Dr. Robert Levine, a Manhattan cardiologist.

 She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1969 and later served as the international chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

In 2012, she received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

McLellan is a former Times staff writer.

news.obits@latimes.com

ALSO:

‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ is back on CBS in living color

Butch Trucks, Allman Brothers Band co-founder, dies at 69

Howard Kaufman, manager for the Eagles, Aerosmith and Stevie Nicks, dies at 79

Miguel Ferrer, star of ‘RoboCop,’ ‘NCIS: Los Angeles’ and ‘Twin Peaks,’ dies at 61

  UPDATES:

3:45 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction to Moore’s death. 

12:50 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details and background.

This article was originally published at 11:40 a.m.

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/01/26/la-times-mary-tyler-moore-beloved-tv-icon-who-symbolized-the-independent-career-woman-dies-at-80-17/

La Times: Mary Tyler Moore, beloved TV icon who symbolized the independent career woman, dies at 80

Comfortably single and unafraid to stand up to her gruff newsroom boss, Mary Richards splashed onto television screens at a time when feminism was still putting down roots in America, a woman who charged through the working day with equal parts humor and raw independence.

Mary Tyler Moore’s character charmed TV watchers, earned the actress Emmy nominations and became a potent symbol of womanhood in the 1970s. The actress and her television character became so entwined that Moore became a role model for women who sought to challenge the conventions of marriage and family.

“She wasn’t married. She wasn’t looking to get married. At no point did the series end in a happy ending with her finding a husband — which seemed to be the course you had to take as a woman,” former First Lady Michelle Obama said in an interview in August. As a young girl, Obama said, she drew inspiration from the character.

Moore died Wednesday in Greenwich, Conn. from cardiopulmonary arrest after being hospitalized with pneumonia. She was 80.

In a career that began as Happy Hotpoint, the dancing and singing 3-inch pixie in Hotpoint appliance commercials on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” in 1955 when she was 18, Moore went on to star in television and films and on Broadway.

In 1981, she received an Academy Award nomination for best actress for her portrayal of the emotionally cold mother in “Ordinary People,” the Robert Redford-directed drama about an upper-middle-class family dealing with the death of a teen-age son in a boating accident and the attempted suicide of their surviving son.

In a statement Wednesday, Redford said he admired Moore for taking such a role.

“The courage she displayed in taking on a role darker than anything she had ever done was brave and enormously powerful,” he said.

The unsympathetic, nearly-bloodless role was a departure for Moore, who remains best-known for her light and sunny touch in two classic situation comedies that together earned her six Emmy Awards.

Moore was still largely unknown when she was cast as Laura Petrie, the suburban housewife and mother of a young son opposite Dick Van Dyke’s TV comedy writer husband Rob on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

The acclaimed sitcom, which aired on CBS from 1961 to 1966, earned Moore her first two Emmys and made her a star.

Her Capri-pants-wearing Laura brought something new to the traditional sitcom role of wife and mother: youthful sex appeal.

As Carl Reiner, the series’ creator, said of Rob and Laura in a 2004 TV Guide interview: “These were two people who really liked each other.”

Moore agreed, saying: “We brought romance to comedy, and, yes, Rob and Laura had sex!”

Van Dyke often praised Moore’s abilities as a comedic actress — one who has been credited with turning crying into a comedic art form and memorably got her toe stuck in a hotel room bathtub faucet in one episode.

“She was one of the few who could maintain her femininity and be funny at the same time,” Van Dyke said in a 1998 interview with the Archive of American Television. “You have to go as far back as Carole Lombard or Myrna Loy to find someone who could play it that well and still be tremendously appealing as a woman.”

After the Van Dyke show ended in 1966, Moore starred as Holly Golightly in a problem-plagued Broadway musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” that producer David Merrick closed after four previews in New York.

Moore also played Julie Andrews’ roommate in the hit flapper-era comedy-musical movie “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in 1967. But her budding film career, which included playing a nun opposite Elvis Presley’s ghetto doctor in “Change of Habit,” was less than stellar.

She was reunited with Van Dyke in a 1969 musical-variety TV special, a critical and ratings success that spurred CBS to offer her a commitment to do her own half-hour comedy series.

Moore and her second husband, TV executive Grant Tinker, created MTM Enterprises, their own independent TV production company, whose logo — in a takeoff on MGM’s roaring lion — was a meowing orange kitten.

Tinker hired writers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns to create and produce “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” which debuted on CBS in 1970 and made TV history.

The series, featuring Moore as Mary Richards, a single woman in her 30s who lands a job as an associate producer in a Minneapolis TV newsroom, won 29 Emmys during its seven-year run.

Four of those Emmys went to Moore, whose character became a symbol of the independent 1970s career woman.

As Ed Asner’s lovably gruff and rumpled Lou Grant tells her when she applies for a job in the newsroom at WJM-TV: “You know what? You’ve got spunk. I hate spunk.”

 Ellen DeGeneres, who later invited Moore to play herself in several episodes of the sitcom “Ellen,” said she was an admirer of both Moore and her alter ego. “Mary Tyler Moore changed the world for all women,” she tweeted after Moore’s death became public.

In the wake of the success of  “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the MTM empire grew to include series such as “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Rhoda,” “Lou Grant,” “Remington Steele,” “WKRP in Cincinnati,” “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere.”

After “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” left the air in 1977, Moore failed with two TV comedy variety shows within the next two years.

But she scored on Broadway, winning a special Tony Award in 1980 for her performance as the quadriplegic lead character in the Broadway revival of “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” — a part originally written for a man.

In 1993, Moore won her seventh Emmy, for her supporting role as the ruthless owner of a 1940s Tennessee adoption agency in the Lifetime cable drama “Stolen Babies.”

Her two returns to the sitcom format in the mid- and late ’80s — “Mary” and “Annie McGuire” — were short-lived, as was the 1995 newspaper drama “New York News,” on which she played the autocratic editor of a tabloid newspaper.

In the years after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” she dealt with a series of personal problems and tragedies.

In 1978, her younger sister, Elizabeth, died of a drug overdose. In 1980, Richie, her 24-year-old son from her first marriage, fatally shot himself in what was ruled an accident. And in 1992, Moore’s brother John, a recovering alcoholic, died after a long battle with kidney cancer.

In the mid-’80s, Moore checked into the Betty Ford Center to seek treatment for alcoholism.

In a 1986 interview with Maclean’s magazine, Moore said: “I am glad I was able to be a kind of role model for other women who identified with my ladylike qualities, who were then able to say, ‘Well, if Mary can admit she had a problem with alcohol, then maybe I can too.’ ”

Asner said he treasured the years he worked alongside Moore.

“I will never be able to repay her for the blessings that she gave me,” he said in a tweet.

Moore was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on Dec. 29, 1936. Her father was a clerk for Consolidated Edison who worked at the Southern California Gas Co. after the family moved to Los Angeles in 1945.

Moore began taking dance classes while in grade school and appeared in recitals. She continued to take dance lessons and perform through her years at Immaculate Heart High School, where she dreamed of dancing her way to stardom.

In her autobiography, Moore described her strict Catholic father as “undemonstrative” and her more fun-loving mother as an alcoholic. As a result, Moore spent half the time living with her parents and the other half living with her aunt and grandmother.

“It was not an ideal home life,” she said in a 1999 interview with the Ottawa Citizen, noting that, even if her mom and dad “weren’t the best of parents,” they had the best sense of humor.

“Thank God, I was not abused in any way, but I was seeking approval of some sort, in many different ways,” she said. “For me, it turned out to be a pat on the back for entertaining people.”

She was 18 and five months from graduating from high school in 1955 when she met 27-year-old Dick Meeker, an Ocean Spray cranberry products salesman, who had moved into a small apartment in the house next door to her parents’ home.

They were married two months after she graduated, and their son Richie was born the following year.

As a working mother, Moore found jobs dancing in the chorus of “The Eddie Fisher Show” and other TV variety shows, and appeared in commercials.

Her first regular acting role came in 1959 when she played Sam, the sultry-voiced telephone operator on the David Janssen TV series “Richard Diamond, Private Detective” — an uncredited role in which no more than her legs or an extreme close-up of her mouth were seen on screen.

Publicity for the show played up the mysterious Sam. But, Moore wrote in her book, when she asked for more money, she was replaced by another anonymous actress after 13 episodes.

After her stint as Sam, Moore played small parts in TV series such as “77 Sunset Strip,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Bourbon Street Beat” and “Riverboat.”

She auditioned to replace Sherry Jackson as Danny Thomas’ grown-up daughter on his popular sitcom, but missed landing the part by a nose: her own.

“Here’s the reason you didn’t get the part,” she later recalled the famously large-nosed Thomas telling her: “With a nose like yours, no one would believe you’re my daughter.”

Two years later, when Thomas, executive producer Sheldon Leonard and Reiner were looking for someone to play the wife in Van Dyke’s new TV series, Thomas said: “Who was the kid we liked so much last year, the one with the three names and the funny nose?”

Moore, whose first marriage ended in divorce in 1961, married Tinker in 1962. They were divorced in 1981. In 1983,  she married Dr. Robert Levine, a Manhattan cardiologist.

 She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1969 and later served as the international chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

In 2012, she received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

McLellan is a former Times staff writer.

news.obits@latimes.com

ALSO:

‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ is back on CBS in living color

Butch Trucks, Allman Brothers Band co-founder, dies at 69

Howard Kaufman, manager for the Eagles, Aerosmith and Stevie Nicks, dies at 79

Miguel Ferrer, star of ‘RoboCop,’ ‘NCIS: Los Angeles’ and ‘Twin Peaks,’ dies at 61

UPDATES:

3:45 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction to Moore’s death. 

12:50 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details and background.

This article was originally published at 11:40 a.m.

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/01/26/la-times-mary-tyler-moore-beloved-tv-icon-who-symbolized-the-independent-career-woman-dies-at-80-16/

La Times: Mary Tyler Moore, beloved TV icon who symbolized the independent career woman, dies at 80

Comfortably single and unafraid to stand up to her gruff newsroom boss, Mary Richards splashed onto television screens at a time when feminism was still putting down roots in America, a woman who charged through the working day with equal parts humor and raw independence.

Mary Tyler Moore’s character charmed TV watchers, earned the actress Emmy nominations and became a potent symbol of womanhood in the 1970s. The actress and her television character became so entwined that Moore became a role model for women who sought to challenge the conventions of marriage and family.

“She wasn’t married. She wasn’t looking to get married. At no point did the series end in a happy ending with her finding a husband — which seemed to be the course you had to take as a woman,” former First Lady Michelle Obama said in an interview in August. As a young girl, Obama said, she drew inspiration from the character.

Moore died Wednesday in Greenwich, Conn. from cardiopulmonary arrest after being hospitalized with pneumonia. She was 80.

In a career that began as Happy Hotpoint, the dancing and singing 3-inch pixie in Hotpoint appliance commercials on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” in 1955 when she was 18, Moore went on to star in television and films and on Broadway.

In 1981, she received an Academy Award nomination for best actress for her portrayal of the emotionally cold mother in “Ordinary People,” the Robert Redford-directed drama about an upper-middle-class family dealing with the death of a teen-age son in a boating accident and the attempted suicide of their surviving son.

In a statement Wednesday, Redford said he admired Moore for taking such a role.

“The courage she displayed in taking on a role darker than anything she had ever done was brave and enormously powerful,” he said.

The unsympathetic, nearly-bloodless role was a departure for Moore, who remains best-known for her light and sunny touch in two classic situation comedies that together earned her six Emmy Awards.

Moore was still largely unknown when she was cast as Laura Petrie, the suburban housewife and mother of a young son opposite Dick Van Dyke’s TV comedy writer husband Rob on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

The acclaimed sitcom, which aired on CBS from 1961 to 1966, earned Moore her first two Emmys and made her a star.

Her Capri-pants-wearing Laura brought something new to the traditional sitcom role of wife and mother: youthful sex appeal.

As Carl Reiner, the series’ creator, said of Rob and Laura in a 2004 TV Guide interview: “These were two people who really liked each other.”

Moore agreed, saying: “We brought romance to comedy, and, yes, Rob and Laura had sex!”

Van Dyke often praised Moore’s abilities as a comedic actress — one who has been credited with turning crying into a comedic art form and memorably got her toe stuck in a hotel room bathtub faucet in one episode.

“She was one of the few who could maintain her femininity and be funny at the same time,” Van Dyke said in a 1998 interview with the Archive of American Television. “You have to go as far back as Carole Lombard or Myrna Loy to find someone who could play it that well and still be tremendously appealing as a woman.”

After the Van Dyke show ended in 1966, Moore starred as Holly Golightly in a problem-plagued Broadway musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” that producer David Merrick closed after four previews in New York.

Moore also played Julie Andrews’ roommate in the hit flapper-era comedy-musical movie “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in 1967. But her budding film career, which included playing a nun opposite Elvis Presley’s ghetto doctor in “Change of Habit,” was less than stellar.

She was reunited with Van Dyke in a 1969 musical-variety TV special, a critical and ratings success that spurred CBS to offer her a commitment to do her own half-hour comedy series.

Moore and her second husband, TV executive Grant Tinker, created MTM Enterprises, their own independent TV production company, whose logo — in a takeoff on MGM’s roaring lion — was a meowing orange kitten.

Tinker hired writers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns to create and produce “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” which debuted on CBS in 1970 and made TV history.

The series, featuring Moore as Mary Richards, a single woman in her 30s who lands a job as an associate producer in a Minneapolis TV newsroom, won 29 Emmys during its seven-year run.

Four of those Emmys went to Moore, whose character became a symbol of the independent 1970s career woman.

As Ed Asner’s lovably gruff and rumpled Lou Grant tells her when she applies for a job in the newsroom at WJM-TV: “You know what? You’ve got spunk. I hate spunk.”

 Ellen DeGeneres, who later invited Moore to play herself in several episodes of the sitcom “Ellen,” said she was an admirer of both Moore and her alter ego. “Mary Tyler Moore changed the world for all women,” she tweeted after Moore’s death became public.

In the wake of the success of  “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the MTM empire grew to include series such as “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Rhoda,” “Lou Grant,” “Remington Steele,” “WKRP in Cincinnati,” “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere.”

After “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” left the air in 1977, Moore failed with two TV comedy variety shows within the next two years.

But she scored on Broadway, winning a special Tony Award in 1980 for her performance as the quadriplegic lead character in the Broadway revival of “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” — a part originally written for a man.

In 1993, Moore won her seventh Emmy, for her supporting role as the ruthless owner of a 1940s Tennessee adoption agency in the Lifetime cable drama “Stolen Babies.”

Her two returns to the sitcom format in the mid- and late ’80s — “Mary” and “Annie McGuire” — were short-lived, as was the 1995 newspaper drama “New York News,” on which she played the autocratic editor of a tabloid newspaper.

In the years after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” she dealt with a series of personal problems and tragedies.

In 1978, her younger sister, Elizabeth, died of a drug overdose. In 1980, Richie, her 24-year-old son from her first marriage, fatally shot himself in what was ruled an accident. And in 1992, Moore’s brother John, a recovering alcoholic, died after a long battle with kidney cancer.

In the mid-’80s, Moore checked into the Betty Ford Center to seek treatment for alcoholism.

In a 1986 interview with Maclean’s magazine, Moore said: “I am glad I was able to be a kind of role model for other women who identified with my ladylike qualities, who were then able to say, ‘Well, if Mary can admit she had a problem with alcohol, then maybe I can too.’ ”

Asner said he treasured the years he worked alongside Moore.

“I will never be able to repay her for the blessings that she gave me,” he said in a tweet.

Moore was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on Dec. 29, 1936. Her father was a clerk for Consolidated Edison who worked at the Southern California Gas Co. after the family moved to Los Angeles in 1945.

Moore began taking dance classes while in grade school and appeared in recitals. She continued to take dance lessons and perform through her years at Immaculate Heart High School, where she dreamed of dancing her way to stardom.

In her autobiography, Moore described her strict Catholic father as “undemonstrative” and her more fun-loving mother as an alcoholic. As a result, Moore spent half the time living with her parents and the other half living with her aunt and grandmother.

“It was not an ideal home life,” she said in a 1999 interview with the Ottawa Citizen, noting that, even if her mom and dad “weren’t the best of parents,” they had the best sense of humor.

“Thank God, I was not abused in any way, but I was seeking approval of some sort, in many different ways,” she said. “For me, it turned out to be a pat on the back for entertaining people.”

She was 18 and five months from graduating from high school in 1955 when she met 27-year-old Dick Meeker, an Ocean Spray cranberry products salesman, who had moved into a small apartment in the house next door to her parents’ home.

They were married two months after she graduated, and their son Richie was born the following year.

As a working mother, Moore found jobs dancing in the chorus of “The Eddie Fisher Show” and other TV variety shows, and appeared in commercials.

Her first regular acting role came in 1959 when she played Sam, the sultry-voiced telephone operator on the David Janssen TV series “Richard Diamond, Private Detective” — an uncredited role in which no more than her legs or an extreme close-up of her mouth were seen on screen.

Publicity for the show played up the mysterious Sam. But, Moore wrote in her book, when she asked for more money, she was replaced by another anonymous actress after 13 episodes.

After her stint as Sam, Moore played small parts in TV series such as “77 Sunset Strip,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Bourbon Street Beat” and “Riverboat.”

She auditioned to replace Sherry Jackson as Danny Thomas’ grown-up daughter on his popular sitcom, but missed landing the part by a nose: her own.

“Here’s the reason you didn’t get the part,” she later recalled the famously large-nosed Thomas telling her: “With a nose like yours, no one would believe you’re my daughter.”

Two years later, when Thomas, executive producer Sheldon Leonard and Reiner were looking for someone to play the wife in Van Dyke’s new TV series, Thomas said: “Who was the kid we liked so much last year, the one with the three names and the funny nose?”

Moore, whose first marriage ended in divorce in 1961, married Tinker in 1962. They were divorced in 1981. In 1983,  she married Dr. Robert Levine, a Manhattan cardiologist.

 She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1969 and later served as the international chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

In 2012, she received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

McLellan is a former Times staff writer.

news.obits@latimes.com

ALSO:

‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ is back on CBS in living color

Butch Trucks, Allman Brothers Band co-founder, dies at 69

Howard Kaufman, manager for the Eagles, Aerosmith and Stevie Nicks, dies at 79

Miguel Ferrer, star of ‘RoboCop,’ ‘NCIS: Los Angeles’ and ‘Twin Peaks,’ dies at 61

UPDATES:

3:45 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction to Moore’s death. 

12:50 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details and background.

This article was originally published at 11:40 a.m.

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/01/26/la-times-mary-tyler-moore-beloved-tv-icon-who-symbolized-the-independent-career-woman-dies-at-80-15/

La Times: Mary Tyler Moore, beloved TV icon who symbolized the independent career woman, dies at 80

Comfortably single and unafraid to stand up to her gruff newsroom boss, Mary Richards splashed onto television screens at a time when feminism was still putting down roots in America, a woman who charged through the working day with equal parts humor and raw independence.

Mary Tyler Moore’s character charmed TV watchers, earned the actress Emmy nominations and became a potent symbol of womanhood in the 1970s. The actress and her television character became so entwined that Moore became a role model for women who sought to challenge the conventions of marriage and family.

“She wasn’t married. She wasn’t looking to get married. At no point did the series end in a happy ending with her finding a husband — which seemed to be the course you had to take as a woman,” former First Lady Michelle Obama said in an interview in August. As a young girl, Obama said, she drew inspiration from the character.

Moore died Wednesday in Greenwich, Conn. from cardiopulmonary arrest after being hospitalized with pneumonia. She was 80.

In a career that began as Happy Hotpoint, the dancing and singing 3-inch pixie in Hotpoint appliance commercials on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” in 1955 when she was 18, Moore went on to star in television and films and on Broadway.

In 1981, she received an Academy Award nomination for best actress for her portrayal of the emotionally cold mother in “Ordinary People,” the Robert Redford-directed drama about an upper-middle-class family dealing with the death of a teen-age son in a boating accident and the attempted suicide of their surviving son.

In a statement Wednesday, Redford said he admired Moore for taking such a role.

“The courage she displayed in taking on a role darker than anything she had ever done was brave and enormously powerful,” he said.

The unsympathetic, nearly-bloodless role was a departure for Moore, who remains best-known for her light and sunny touch in two classic situation comedies that together earned her six Emmy Awards.

Moore was still largely unknown when she was cast as Laura Petrie, the suburban housewife and mother of a young son opposite Dick Van Dyke’s TV comedy writer husband Rob on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

The acclaimed sitcom, which aired on CBS from 1961 to 1966, earned Moore her first two Emmys and made her a star.

Her Capri-pants-wearing Laura brought something new to the traditional sitcom role of wife and mother: youthful sex appeal.

As Carl Reiner, the series’ creator, said of Rob and Laura in a 2004 TV Guide interview: “These were two people who really liked each other.”

Moore agreed, saying: “We brought romance to comedy, and, yes, Rob and Laura had sex!”

Van Dyke often praised Moore’s abilities as a comedic actress — one who has been credited with turning crying into a comedic art form and memorably got her toe stuck in a hotel room bathtub faucet in one episode.

“She was one of the few who could maintain her femininity and be funny at the same time,” Van Dyke said in a 1998 interview with the Archive of American Television. “You have to go as far back as Carole Lombard or Myrna Loy to find someone who could play it that well and still be tremendously appealing as a woman.”

After the Van Dyke show ended in 1966, Moore starred as Holly Golightly in a problem-plagued Broadway musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” that producer David Merrick closed after four previews in New York.

Moore also played Julie Andrews’ roommate in the hit flapper-era comedy-musical movie “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in 1967. But her budding film career, which included playing a nun opposite Elvis Presley’s ghetto doctor in “Change of Habit,” was less than stellar.

She was reunited with Van Dyke in a 1969 musical-variety TV special, a critical and ratings success that spurred CBS to offer her a commitment to do her own half-hour comedy series.

Moore and her second husband, TV executive Grant Tinker, created MTM Enterprises, their own independent TV production company, whose logo — in a takeoff on MGM’s roaring lion — was a meowing orange kitten.

Tinker hired writers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns to create and produce “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” which debuted on CBS in 1970 and made TV history.

The series, featuring Moore as Mary Richards, a single woman in her 30s who lands a job as an associate producer in a Minneapolis TV newsroom, won 29 Emmys during its seven-year run.

Four of those Emmys went to Moore, whose character became a symbol of the independent 1970s career woman.

As Ed Asner’s lovably gruff and rumpled Lou Grant tells her when she applies for a job in the newsroom at WJM-TV: “You know what? You’ve got spunk. I hate spunk.”

 Ellen DeGeneres, who later invited Moore to play herself in several episodes of the sitcom “Ellen,” said she was an admirer of both Moore and her alter ego. “Mary Tyler Moore changed the world for all women,” she tweeted after Moore’s death became public.

In the wake of the success of  “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the MTM empire grew to include series such as “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Rhoda,” “Lou Grant,” “Remington Steele,” “WKRP in Cincinnati,” “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere.”

After “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” left the air in 1977, Moore failed with two TV comedy variety shows within the next two years.

But she scored on Broadway, winning a special Tony Award in 1980 for her performance as the quadriplegic lead character in the Broadway revival of “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” — a part originally written for a man.

In 1993, Moore won her seventh Emmy, for her supporting role as the ruthless owner of a 1940s Tennessee adoption agency in the Lifetime cable drama “Stolen Babies.”

Her two returns to the sitcom format in the mid- and late ’80s — “Mary” and “Annie McGuire” — were short-lived, as was the 1995 newspaper drama “New York News,” on which she played the autocratic editor of a tabloid newspaper.

In the years after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” she dealt with a series of personal problems and tragedies.

In 1978, her younger sister, Elizabeth, died of a drug overdose. In 1980, Richie, her 24-year-old son from her first marriage, fatally shot himself in what was ruled an accident. And in 1992, Moore’s brother John, a recovering alcoholic, died after a long battle with kidney cancer.

In the mid-’80s, Moore checked into the Betty Ford Center to seek treatment for alcoholism.

In a 1986 interview with Maclean’s magazine, Moore said: “I am glad I was able to be a kind of role model for other women who identified with my ladylike qualities, who were then able to say, ‘Well, if Mary can admit she had a problem with alcohol, then maybe I can too.’ ”

Asner said he treasured the years he worked alongside Moore.

“I will never be able to repay her for the blessings that she gave me,” he said in a tweet.

Moore was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on Dec. 29, 1936. Her father was a clerk for Consolidated Edison who worked at the Southern California Gas Co. after the family moved to Los Angeles in 1945.

Moore began taking dance classes while in grade school and appeared in recitals. She continued to take dance lessons and perform through her years at Immaculate Heart High School, where she dreamed of dancing her way to stardom.

In her autobiography, Moore described her strict Catholic father as “undemonstrative” and her more fun-loving mother as an alcoholic. As a result, Moore spent half the time living with her parents and the other half living with her aunt and grandmother.

“It was not an ideal home life,” she said in a 1999 interview with the Ottawa Citizen, noting that, even if her mom and dad “weren’t the best of parents,” they had the best sense of humor.

“Thank God, I was not abused in any way, but I was seeking approval of some sort, in many different ways,” she said. “For me, it turned out to be a pat on the back for entertaining people.”

She was 18 and five months from graduating from high school in 1955 when she met 27-year-old Dick Meeker, an Ocean Spray cranberry products salesman, who had moved into a small apartment in the house next door to her parents’ home.

They were married two months after she graduated, and their son Richie was born the following year.

As a working mother, Moore found jobs dancing in the chorus of “The Eddie Fisher Show” and other TV variety shows, and appeared in commercials.

Her first regular acting role came in 1959 when she played Sam, the sultry-voiced telephone operator on the David Janssen TV series “Richard Diamond, Private Detective” — an uncredited role in which no more than her legs or an extreme close-up of her mouth were seen on screen.

Publicity for the show played up the mysterious Sam. But, Moore wrote in her book, when she asked for more money, she was replaced by another anonymous actress after 13 episodes.

After her stint as Sam, Moore played small parts in TV series such as “77 Sunset Strip,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Bourbon Street Beat” and “Riverboat.”

She auditioned to replace Sherry Jackson as Danny Thomas’ grown-up daughter on his popular sitcom, but missed landing the part by a nose: her own.

“Here’s the reason you didn’t get the part,” she later recalled the famously large-nosed Thomas telling her: “With a nose like yours, no one would believe you’re my daughter.”

Two years later, when Thomas, executive producer Sheldon Leonard and Reiner were looking for someone to play the wife in Van Dyke’s new TV series, Thomas said: “Who was the kid we liked so much last year, the one with the three names and the funny nose?”

Moore, whose first marriage ended in divorce in 1961, married Tinker in 1962. They were divorced in 1981. In 1983,  she married Dr. Robert Levine, a Manhattan cardiologist.

 She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1969 and later served as the international chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

In 2012, she received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

McLellan is a former Times staff writer.

news.obits@latimes.com

ALSO:

‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ is back on CBS in living color

Butch Trucks, Allman Brothers Band co-founder, dies at 69

Howard Kaufman, manager for the Eagles, Aerosmith and Stevie Nicks, dies at 79

Miguel Ferrer, star of ‘RoboCop,’ ‘NCIS: Los Angeles’ and ‘Twin Peaks,’ dies at 61

UPDATES:

3:45 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction to Moore’s death. 

12:50 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details and background.

This article was originally published at 11:40 a.m.

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/01/26/la-times-mary-tyler-moore-beloved-tv-icon-who-symbolized-the-independent-career-woman-dies-at-80-14/

La Times: Mary Tyler Moore, beloved TV icon who symbolized the independent career woman, dies at 80

Comfortably single and unafraid to stand up to her gruff newsroom boss, Mary Richards splashed onto television screens at a time when feminism was still putting down roots in America, a woman who charged through the working day with equal parts humor and raw independence.

Mary Tyler Moore’s character charmed TV watchers, earned the actress Emmy nominations and became a potent symbol of womanhood in the 1970s. The actress and her television character became so entwined that Moore became a role model for women who sought to challenge the conventions of marriage and family.

“She wasn’t married. She wasn’t looking to get married. At no point did the series end in a happy ending with her finding a husband — which seemed to be the course you had to take as a woman,” former First Lady Michelle Obama said in an interview in August. As a young girl, Obama said, she drew inspiration from the character.

Moore died Wednesday in Greenwich, Conn. from cardiopulmonary arrest after being hospitalized with pneumonia. She was 80.

In a career that began as Happy Hotpoint, the dancing and singing 3-inch pixie in Hotpoint appliance commercials on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” in 1955 when she was 18, Moore went on to star in television and films and on Broadway.

In 1981, she received an Academy Award nomination for best actress for her portrayal of the emotionally cold mother in “Ordinary People,” the Robert Redford-directed drama about an upper-middle-class family dealing with the death of a teen-age son in a boating accident and the attempted suicide of their surviving son.

In a statement Wednesday, Redford said he admired Moore for taking such a role.

“The courage she displayed in taking on a role darker than anything she had ever done was brave and enormously powerful,” he said.

The unsympathetic, nearly-bloodless role was a departure for Moore, who remains best-known for her light and sunny touch in two classic situation comedies that together earned her six Emmy Awards.

Moore was still largely unknown when she was cast as Laura Petrie, the suburban housewife and mother of a young son opposite Dick Van Dyke’s TV comedy writer husband Rob on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

The acclaimed sitcom, which aired on CBS from 1961 to 1966, earned Moore her first two Emmys and made her a star.

Her Capri-pants-wearing Laura brought something new to the traditional sitcom role of wife and mother: youthful sex appeal.

As Carl Reiner, the series’ creator, said of Rob and Laura in a 2004 TV Guide interview: “These were two people who really liked each other.”

Moore agreed, saying: “We brought romance to comedy, and, yes, Rob and Laura had sex!”

Van Dyke often praised Moore’s abilities as a comedic actress — one who has been credited with turning crying into a comedic art form and memorably got her toe stuck in a hotel room bathtub faucet in one episode.

“She was one of the few who could maintain her femininity and be funny at the same time,” Van Dyke said in a 1998 interview with the Archive of American Television. “You have to go as far back as Carole Lombard or Myrna Loy to find someone who could play it that well and still be tremendously appealing as a woman.”

After the Van Dyke show ended in 1966, Moore starred as Holly Golightly in a problem-plagued Broadway musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” that producer David Merrick closed after four previews in New York.

Moore also played Julie Andrews’ roommate in the hit flapper-era comedy-musical movie “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in 1967. But her budding film career, which included playing a nun opposite Elvis Presley’s ghetto doctor in “Change of Habit,” was less than stellar.

She was reunited with Van Dyke in a 1969 musical-variety TV special, a critical and ratings success that spurred CBS to offer her a commitment to do her own half-hour comedy series.

Moore and her second husband, TV executive Grant Tinker, created MTM Enterprises, their own independent TV production company, whose logo — in a takeoff on MGM’s roaring lion — was a meowing orange kitten.

Tinker hired writers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns to create and produce “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” which debuted on CBS in 1970 and made TV history.

The series, featuring Moore as Mary Richards, a single woman in her 30s who lands a job as an associate producer in a Minneapolis TV newsroom, won 29 Emmys during its seven-year run.

Four of those Emmys went to Moore, whose character became a symbol of the independent 1970s career woman.

As Ed Asner’s lovably gruff and rumpled Lou Grant tells her when she applies for a job in the newsroom at WJM-TV: “You know what? You’ve got spunk. I hate spunk.”

 Ellen DeGeneres, who later invited Moore to play herself in several episodes of the sitcom “Ellen,” said she was an admirer of both Moore and her alter ego. “Mary Tyler Moore changed the world for all women,” she tweeted after Moore’s death became public.

In the wake of the success of  “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the MTM empire grew to include series such as “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Rhoda,” “Lou Grant,” “Remington Steele,” “WKRP in Cincinnati,” “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere.”

After “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” left the air in 1977, Moore failed with two TV comedy variety shows within the next two years.

But she scored on Broadway, winning a special Tony Award in 1980 for her performance as the quadriplegic lead character in the Broadway revival of “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” — a part originally written for a man.

In 1993, Moore won her seventh Emmy, for her supporting role as the ruthless owner of a 1940s Tennessee adoption agency in the Lifetime cable drama “Stolen Babies.”

Her two returns to the sitcom format in the mid- and late ’80s — “Mary” and “Annie McGuire” — were short-lived, as was the 1995 newspaper drama “New York News,” on which she played the autocratic editor of a tabloid newspaper.

In the years after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” she dealt with a series of personal problems and tragedies.

In 1978, her younger sister, Elizabeth, died of a drug overdose. In 1980, Richie, her 24-year-old son from her first marriage, fatally shot himself in what was ruled an accident. And in 1992, Moore’s brother John, a recovering alcoholic, died after a long battle with kidney cancer.

In the mid-’80s, Moore checked into the Betty Ford Center to seek treatment for alcoholism.

In a 1986 interview with Maclean’s magazine, Moore said: “I am glad I was able to be a kind of role model for other women who identified with my ladylike qualities, who were then able to say, ‘Well, if Mary can admit she had a problem with alcohol, then maybe I can too.’ ”

Asner said he treasured the years he worked alongside Moore.

“I will never be able to repay her for the blessings that she gave me,” he said in a tweet.

Moore was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on Dec. 29, 1936. Her father was a clerk for Consolidated Edison who worked at the Southern California Gas Co. after the family moved to Los Angeles in 1945.

Moore began taking dance classes while in grade school and appeared in recitals. She continued to take dance lessons and perform through her years at Immaculate Heart High School, where she dreamed of dancing her way to stardom.

In her autobiography, Moore described her strict Catholic father as “undemonstrative” and her more fun-loving mother as an alcoholic. As a result, Moore spent half the time living with her parents and the other half living with her aunt and grandmother.

“It was not an ideal home life,” she said in a 1999 interview with the Ottawa Citizen, noting that, even if her mom and dad “weren’t the best of parents,” they had the best sense of humor.

“Thank God, I was not abused in any way, but I was seeking approval of some sort, in many different ways,” she said. “For me, it turned out to be a pat on the back for entertaining people.”

She was 18 and five months from graduating from high school in 1955 when she met 27-year-old Dick Meeker, an Ocean Spray cranberry products salesman, who had moved into a small apartment in the house next door to her parents’ home.

They were married two months after she graduated, and their son Richie was born the following year.

As a working mother, Moore found jobs dancing in the chorus of “The Eddie Fisher Show” and other TV variety shows, and appeared in commercials.

Her first regular acting role came in 1959 when she played Sam, the sultry-voiced telephone operator on the David Janssen TV series “Richard Diamond, Private Detective” — an uncredited role in which no more than her legs or an extreme close-up of her mouth were seen on screen.

Publicity for the show played up the mysterious Sam. But, Moore wrote in her book, when she asked for more money, she was replaced by another anonymous actress after 13 episodes.

After her stint as Sam, Moore played small parts in TV series such as “77 Sunset Strip,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Bourbon Street Beat” and “Riverboat.”

She auditioned to replace Sherry Jackson as Danny Thomas’ grown-up daughter on his popular sitcom, but missed landing the part by a nose: her own.

“Here’s the reason you didn’t get the part,” she later recalled the famously large-nosed Thomas telling her: “With a nose like yours, no one would believe you’re my daughter.”

Two years later, when Thomas, executive producer Sheldon Leonard and Reiner were looking for someone to play the wife in Van Dyke’s new TV series, Thomas said: “Who was the kid we liked so much last year, the one with the three names and the funny nose?”

Moore, whose first marriage ended in divorce in 1961, married Tinker in 1962. They were divorced in 1981. In 1983,  she married Dr. Robert Levine, a Manhattan cardiologist.

 She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1969 and later served as the international chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

In 2012, she received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

McLellan is a former Times staff writer.

news.obits@latimes.com

ALSO:

‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ is back on CBS in living color

Butch Trucks, Allman Brothers Band co-founder, dies at 69

Howard Kaufman, manager for the Eagles, Aerosmith and Stevie Nicks, dies at 79

Miguel Ferrer, star of ‘RoboCop,’ ‘NCIS: Los Angeles’ and ‘Twin Peaks,’ dies at 61

UPDATES:

3:45 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction to Moore’s death. 

12:50 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details and background.

This article was originally published at 11:40 a.m.

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/01/26/la-times-mary-tyler-moore-beloved-tv-icon-who-symbolized-the-independent-career-woman-dies-at-80-13/

La Times: Mary Tyler Moore, beloved TV icon who symbolized the independent career woman, dies at 80

Comfortably single and unafraid to stand up to her gruff newsroom boss, Mary Richards splashed onto television screens at a time when feminism was still putting down roots in America, a woman who charged through the working day with equal parts humor and raw independence.

Mary Tyler Moore’s character charmed TV watchers, earned the actress Emmy nominations and became a potent symbol of womanhood in the 1970s. The actress and her television character became so entwined that Moore became a role model for women who sought to challenge the conventions of marriage and family.

“She wasn’t married. She wasn’t looking to get married. At no point did the series end in a happy ending with her finding a husband — which seemed to be the course you had to take as a woman,” former First Lady Michelle Obama said in an interview in August. As a young girl, Obama said, she drew inspiration from the character.

Moore died Wednesday in Greenwich, Conn. from cardiopulmonary arrest after being hospitalized with pneumonia. She was 80.

In a career that began as Happy Hotpoint, the dancing and singing 3-inch pixie in Hotpoint appliance commercials on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” in 1955 when she was 18, Moore went on to star in television and films and on Broadway.

In 1981, she received an Academy Award nomination for best actress for her portrayal of the emotionally cold mother in “Ordinary People,” the Robert Redford-directed drama about an upper-middle-class family dealing with the death of a teen-age son in a boating accident and the attempted suicide of their surviving son.

In a statement Wednesday, Redford said he admired Moore for taking such a role.

“The courage she displayed in taking on a role darker than anything she had ever done was brave and enormously powerful,” he said.

The unsympathetic, nearly-bloodless role was a departure for Moore, who remains best-known for her light and sunny touch in two classic situation comedies that together earned her six Emmy Awards.

Moore was still largely unknown when she was cast as Laura Petrie, the suburban housewife and mother of a young son opposite Dick Van Dyke’s TV comedy writer husband Rob on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

The acclaimed sitcom, which aired on CBS from 1961 to 1966, earned Moore her first two Emmys and made her a star.

Her Capri-pants-wearing Laura brought something new to the traditional sitcom role of wife and mother: youthful sex appeal.

As Carl Reiner, the series’ creator, said of Rob and Laura in a 2004 TV Guide interview: “These were two people who really liked each other.”

Moore agreed, saying: “We brought romance to comedy, and, yes, Rob and Laura had sex!”

Van Dyke often praised Moore’s abilities as a comedic actress — one who has been credited with turning crying into a comedic art form and memorably got her toe stuck in a hotel room bathtub faucet in one episode.

“She was one of the few who could maintain her femininity and be funny at the same time,” Van Dyke said in a 1998 interview with the Archive of American Television. “You have to go as far back as Carole Lombard or Myrna Loy to find someone who could play it that well and still be tremendously appealing as a woman.”

After the Van Dyke show ended in 1966, Moore starred as Holly Golightly in a problem-plagued Broadway musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” that producer David Merrick closed after four previews in New York.

Moore also played Julie Andrews’ roommate in the hit flapper-era comedy-musical movie “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in 1967. But her budding film career, which included playing a nun opposite Elvis Presley’s ghetto doctor in “Change of Habit,” was less than stellar.

She was reunited with Van Dyke in a 1969 musical-variety TV special, a critical and ratings success that spurred CBS to offer her a commitment to do her own half-hour comedy series.

Moore and her second husband, TV executive Grant Tinker, created MTM Enterprises, their own independent TV production company, whose logo — in a takeoff on MGM’s roaring lion — was a meowing orange kitten.

Tinker hired writers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns to create and produce “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” which debuted on CBS in 1970 and made TV history.

The series, featuring Moore as Mary Richards, a single woman in her 30s who lands a job as an associate producer in a Minneapolis TV newsroom, won 29 Emmys during its seven-year run.

Four of those Emmys went to Moore, whose character became a symbol of the independent 1970s career woman.

As Ed Asner’s lovably gruff and rumpled Lou Grant tells her when she applies for a job in the newsroom at WJM-TV: “You know what? You’ve got spunk. I hate spunk.”

 Ellen DeGeneres, who later invited Moore to play herself in several episodes of the sitcom “Ellen,” said she was an admirer of both Moore and her alter ego. “Mary Tyler Moore changed the world for all women,” she tweeted after Moore’s death became public.

In the wake of the success of  “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the MTM empire grew to include series such as “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Rhoda,” “Lou Grant,” “Remington Steele,” “WKRP in Cincinnati,” “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere.”

After “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” left the air in 1977, Moore failed with two TV comedy variety shows within the next two years.

But she scored on Broadway, winning a special Tony Award in 1980 for her performance as the quadriplegic lead character in the Broadway revival of “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” — a part originally written for a man.

In 1993, Moore won her seventh Emmy, for her supporting role as the ruthless owner of a 1940s Tennessee adoption agency in the Lifetime cable drama “Stolen Babies.”

Her two returns to the sitcom format in the mid- and late ’80s — “Mary” and “Annie McGuire” — were short-lived, as was the 1995 newspaper drama “New York News,” on which she played the autocratic editor of a tabloid newspaper.

In the years after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” she dealt with a series of personal problems and tragedies.

In 1978, her younger sister, Elizabeth, died of a drug overdose. In 1980, Richie, her 24-year-old son from her first marriage, fatally shot himself in what was ruled an accident. And in 1992, Moore’s brother John, a recovering alcoholic, died after a long battle with kidney cancer.

In the mid-’80s, Moore checked into the Betty Ford Center to seek treatment for alcoholism.

In a 1986 interview with Maclean’s magazine, Moore said: “I am glad I was able to be a kind of role model for other women who identified with my ladylike qualities, who were then able to say, ‘Well, if Mary can admit she had a problem with alcohol, then maybe I can too.’ ”

Asner said he treasured the years he worked alongside Moore.

“I will never be able to repay her for the blessings that she gave me,” he said in a tweet.

Moore was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on Dec. 29, 1936. Her father was a clerk for Consolidated Edison who worked at the Southern California Gas Co. after the family moved to Los Angeles in 1945.

Moore began taking dance classes while in grade school and appeared in recitals. She continued to take dance lessons and perform through her years at Immaculate Heart High School, where she dreamed of dancing her way to stardom.

In her autobiography, Moore described her strict Catholic father as “undemonstrative” and her more fun-loving mother as an alcoholic. As a result, Moore spent half the time living with her parents and the other half living with her aunt and grandmother.

“It was not an ideal home life,” she said in a 1999 interview with the Ottawa Citizen, noting that, even if her mom and dad “weren’t the best of parents,” they had the best sense of humor.

“Thank God, I was not abused in any way, but I was seeking approval of some sort, in many different ways,” she said. “For me, it turned out to be a pat on the back for entertaining people.”

She was 18 and five months from graduating from high school in 1955 when she met 27-year-old Dick Meeker, an Ocean Spray cranberry products salesman, who had moved into a small apartment in the house next door to her parents’ home.

They were married two months after she graduated, and their son Richie was born the following year.

As a working mother, Moore found jobs dancing in the chorus of “The Eddie Fisher Show” and other TV variety shows, and appeared in commercials.

Her first regular acting role came in 1959 when she played Sam, the sultry-voiced telephone operator on the David Janssen TV series “Richard Diamond, Private Detective” — an uncredited role in which no more than her legs or an extreme close-up of her mouth were seen on screen.

Publicity for the show played up the mysterious Sam. But, Moore wrote in her book, when she asked for more money, she was replaced by another anonymous actress after 13 episodes.

After her stint as Sam, Moore played small parts in TV series such as “77 Sunset Strip,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Bourbon Street Beat” and “Riverboat.”

She auditioned to replace Sherry Jackson as Danny Thomas’ grown-up daughter on his popular sitcom, but missed landing the part by a nose: her own.

“Here’s the reason you didn’t get the part,” she later recalled the famously large-nosed Thomas telling her: “With a nose like yours, no one would believe you’re my daughter.”

Two years later, when Thomas, executive producer Sheldon Leonard and Reiner were looking for someone to play the wife in Van Dyke’s new TV series, Thomas said: “Who was the kid we liked so much last year, the one with the three names and the funny nose?”

Moore, whose first marriage ended in divorce in 1961, married Tinker in 1962. They were divorced in 1981. In 1983,  she married Dr. Robert Levine, a Manhattan cardiologist.

 She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1969 and later served as the international chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

In 2012, she received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

McLellan is a former Times staff writer.

news.obits@latimes.com

ALSO:

‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ is back on CBS in living color

Butch Trucks, Allman Brothers Band co-founder, dies at 69

Howard Kaufman, manager for the Eagles, Aerosmith and Stevie Nicks, dies at 79

Miguel Ferrer, star of ‘RoboCop,’ ‘NCIS: Los Angeles’ and ‘Twin Peaks,’ dies at 61

UPDATES:

3:45 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction to Moore’s death. 

12:50 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details and background.

This article was originally published at 11:40 a.m.

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link