Rant #1,829: The Kind of Girl We Could Love

Mary Tyler Moore died yesterday. She was 80 years old.

But to me, she will always be in her 20s and 30s, via her TV shows, two groundbreaking sitcoms that live on in our hearts to this day, and probably will for eternity.

Yes, that is a heavy thing to say, but talking about her, I do think that that statement is true.

How can you argue against the fact that "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" were more than sitcoms, they were statements of the time that they existed in, too?

Prior to these shows, Moore was just like any young actress in Hollywood, looking for her big break.

She had started out as a dancer, and her legs were the only part of her that you saw in the old "Richard Diamond" TV series.

She had a few other bit parts in the late 1950s, including an uncredited appearance as a dancer in Dan Rowan and Dick Martin's first film, "Once Upon a Horse."

She also had a few bit TV roles, including being billed as "Mary Moore" in an episode of "Bachelor Father."

But when the role of Laura Petrie came around ... well, Mary Tyler Moore WAS Laura Petrie.

The inexperienced actress, playing along with much more weathered performers such as Dick Van Dyke, Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie, filled that role to the hilt. She became America's most modern sitcom mother/wife, and she also filled those capri pants quite nicely.

It probably helped that she kind of looked like a prettier Jackie Kennedy, too.

The show supposedly showed off the modern suburban family, and thus, the modern suburban mother/wife, who often stood her ground in the home that she ran, doing it in separate beds, of course.

When that classic show ended, Moore gravitated to the movies, and her initial forays into the big screen were up and down affairs, including films with Elvis Presley ("Change of Habit") and Julie Andrews ("Thoroughly Modern Mille").

She then came back to the small screen in something called "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," where again, she played a modern woman of the time, the early 1970s, which pretty much was the antithesis of the character she played on "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

Mary Richards was the "new" woman, who worked outside the home, had no steady man in her life (for a good portion of the show's run), lived by herself with some crazy neighbors, and well, when the occasion came upon her, let's say, she took care of herself, if you get my drift.

Using Marlo Thomas' "That Girl" as a springboard, this show opened many doors, and eyes, and ears, as to what the modern woman was, and based on the show, it was not Laura Petrie.

Modern women of the early 1970s could have it all, and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" demonstrated that.

In those years, she and her then-husband Grant Tinker became media moguls, and their MTM Productions had many successful shows beyond her namesake sitcom, including Bob Newhart's first successful foray into sitcom success.

When her show went off the air in the mid-1970s, Moore again returned to the big screen, scoring one big, major role as the grieving mother in "Ordinary People," for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.

Subsequent TV and movie projects fizzled, but she was still in the public eye through her almost ubiquitous presence on TV, in the theater, and as the writer of two memoirs.

Also coming to the public's attention was her intertwined battles with alcoholism and diabetes, and other health concerns she had during the last 20 years of her life.

The last time I can remember seeing her was in a "Mary Tyler Moore Show" semi-reunion on the cable TV series "Hot in Cleveland." She barely spoke, and honestly, she did not look well.

That was two or three years ago, and now, she has succumbed.

Mary Tyler Moore was able to balance being both "America's Sweetheart" and "America's Modern Woman" with aplomb, and she had a smile that could light up any room--as well as several Emmy Awards to attest to her success.

She was smart, had "spunk" and she had an incredible amount of talent.

To say that she will be missed is an understatement.

But as I said earlier, Laura Petrie and Mary Richards will live on forever ...

And so will Mary Tyler Moore.