All quotations and recollections in this book come from the author’s interviews with the major, surviving participants in the scenes and incidents recollected, unless otherwise noted here. Quotes at the beginning of each section and attributed to characters from The Mary Tyler Moore Show come from episodes of the series. Sources follow for other quotes and information from publications not attributed in the text.
introduction: comedy and the single girl
“platinum blonde”: Graham Greene, quoted by Rhoda Koenig, “The Queen of Comedy,” Independent, June 24, 2005.
“Theoretically a ‘nice’ single woman”: Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl (Open Road Integrated Media ebook, 2012), p. 23.
“glamour girl”: Ibid., p. 21.
“not to stay back home”: Katherine J. Lehman, Those Girls: Single Women in Sixties and Seventies Popular Culture (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), p. 73.
chapter 1. the comeback (1961–70)
first national live television broadcast: “This Day in History,” http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-truman-makes-first-transcontinental-television-broadcast.
commercial television had its first live television broadcast: “CBS at 75,” http://www.cbs.com/specials/cbs_75/timeline/1950.shtml.
The former dancer had grown up watching Milton Berle: Mary Tyler Moore interview, Archive of American Television.
“This child will either end up on stage”: Ibid.
moved with her family to Los Angeles: Mary Tyler Moore, After All (New York: Dell, 1995), p. 29.
“straight woman”: Mary Tyler Moore, Museum of Broadcast Communications, http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=mooremaryt.
first tested it out: Vince Waldron, The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book (New York: Applause Theatre Books, 2001), p. 125.
“very egalitarian”: Mary Tyler Moore interview, Archive of American Television.
word pregnant was not allowed: Ibid.
“You’re very good”: Ibid.
“rather than subject the drama critics”: Steven Suskin, Second Act Trouble (New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2006), p. 54.
when Reiner and Van Dyke started craving more variety: Carl Reiner interview, Archive of American Television.
Moore felt insecure: Moore interview, Archive of American Television.
“a nervous chorus girl”: Mary Tyler Moore, Growing Up Again (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2009), p. 3.
“the fantasy girl of the American dream”: “Moore: Healthy, Zany, Sexy,” Newsweek, Aug. 1, 1966.
closed in sixteen days: Playbill Vault, http://www.playbillvault.com/Show/Detail/4498/The-Loves-of-Cass-McGuire.
lasted only a week: Playbill Vault, http://www.playbillvault.com/Show/Detail/4360/We-Have-Always-Lived-in-the-Castle.
airplane-ride argument: Howard Kissel, David Merrick: The Abominable Showman (New York: Applause Books, 1993), p. 338.
“Get me Abe Burrows!”: Webster’s Online Dictionary, http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/Abe+Burrows?cx=partner-pub-0939450753529744%3Av0qd01-tdlq&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=Abe+Burrows&sa=Search#906.
Moore grew terrified: Sheilah Graham, “Boston and Philadelphia Critics Broke Mary Tyler Moore’s Heart,” Milwaukee Journal, Dec. 4, 1966.
lack of TV’s retakes: Moore, After All, p. 154.
admired her intense work ethic: Kissel, David Merrick: The Abominable Showman, p. 340.
trashed the original script: Ibid., p. 341.
looking for Moore’s old boss: Moore, After All, p. 156.
“Why drown in two feet of water?”: Kissel, David Merrick: The Abominable Showman, p. 341.
“All those awful jokes”: Ibid.
“masterful”: Moore interview, Archive of American Television.
ran four hours: Koenig, “The Queen of Comedy.”
“a vocal range”: Moore, After All, p. 154.
Audiences in Philadelphia: Kissel, David Merrick: The Abominable Showman, p. 340.
Who’s Afraid of Holly Golightly?: Ibid., p. 343.
“She was a dream”: Ibid., p. 340.
throw her arms around the stage manager: Josh Wolk, “The King of Comedies,” Entertainment Weekly, March 26, 2004.
“What have I done wrong?”: Kissel, David Merrick: The Abominable Showman, p. 343.
thought she was always about to be fired: Moore, After All, p. 155.
$1 million in advance ticket sales: Frank Rich, “David Merrick, 88, Showman Who Ruled Broadway, Dies,” New York Times, April 27, 2000.
“my Bay of Pigs”: “Quotable Quotes,” Ocala Star-Banner, Feb. 19, 1967.
“I told everybody”: “Rhoda and Mary—Love and Laughs,” Time, Oct. 28, 1974.
“Step aside”: Ibid.
smoking and drinking: Moore, Growing Up Again, p. 9.
doctors discovered she was diabetic: Ibid., p. 7.
“caved in”: Moore, After All, p. 170.
forget about the Breakfast at Tiffany’s debacle: Ibid., p. 177.
As soon as CBS executives saw: Ibid., p. 178.
2,063 feet: “N.D. TV Tower No Longer World’s Tallest,” NPR, All Things Considered, Jan. 5, 2010.
chapter 2. the producers (1969–70)
only skyscraper ever designed: Jayson Blair, “CBS’s ‘Black Rock’ Building Is Said to Be for Sale,” New York Times, Aug. 30, 232.
83 million TV sets: Les Brown, Televi$ion (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 3.
particularly his competition: Seth Scheisel, “Paul L. Klein, 69, a Developer of Pay-Per-View TV Channels,” New York Times, July 13, 1998.
Ratings were born: Martin Mayer, About Television (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 33.
$8,389 annual average: http://www.infoplease.com/year/1969.html.
NBC’s 1970 “Product Usage Highlights”: Mayer, About Television, p. 47.
“You are scum!”: “Television: Dann v. Klein: The Best Game in Town,” Time, May 25, 1970.
To pull off a last-minute victory: Brown, Televi$ion, p. 92.
“My [contract] option is coming due shortly”: “Television: Dann v. Klein.”
20.3 percent to 20 percent: Ibid.
“HAPPINESS IS BEING”: Ibid.
“I’ve never known”: Ibid.
“a bit of wire”: Cecil Smith, “Tough Sledding for New Concepts,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 1970.
“A stirring up of the schedule”: Ibid.
“broads, bosoms, and fun”: Andrew Grossman, “The Smiling Cobra,” Variety Life, June–July 2004.
“The American public”: Lance Morrow, “Goodbye to ‘Our Mary,’ ” Time, March 14, 1977.
moon landing was viewed: “1969: Man Takes First Steps on the Moon,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/21/newsid_263541/2635845.stm.
two failed pilot episodes: Museum of Broadcast Communications, http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=allinthefa.
chapter 3. not quite making it yet (1970)
met Holly in the ’50s: Ellis Amburn, Buddy Holly (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995), p. 25.
from Iran to the United States in 1955: “Reza Badiyi, Set Record for Directing Most Hours of Episodic Television,” Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Aug. 22, 2011.
wear a wig: Moore interview, Archive of American Television.
would symbolize Mary’s graduation: Reza Badiyi interview, Archive of American Television.
“Run out into the middle”: Moore interview, Archive of American Television.
pronounced Mary Tyler Moore’s fate: Cecil Smith, “A Gloom Sayer Could Be Wrong,” Los Angeles Times, April 29, 1970.
chapter 4. casting call (1970)
CBS casting executive Ethel Winant: Ethel Winant’s pieces of the Mary Tyler Moore story are constructed from others’ recollections of her, most notably her son, Bruce Winant.
Anne Nelson: Josef Adalian, “CBS Loses Its Longest Serving Staffer,” TV Week, June 24, 2009.
dropped out of high school: Burt A. Folkart, “Hollywood Star Walk: Ted Knight,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 27, 1986.
host of a kids’ show: Kenneth W. Parker, “WJAR-TV’s Ted Knight,” Providence Journal, Feb. 23, 1955.
Jack Cassidy: David Cassidy, C’mon Get Happy: Fear and Loathing on the Partridge Family Bus (New York: Grand Central, 1994), p. 50.
channeled her own aunt: “Love Is All Around,” Oprah.com, http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/The-Cast-of-The-Mary-Tyler-Moore-Show-Reunites_1/2.
chapter 5. technical difficulties (1970)
careful not to leave stray syringes: “The Needle That Keeps Mary Tyler Moore Alive,” Photoplay, March 1971.
“Having worked with Mary”: John Rich interview, Archive of American Television.
Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich: Ann O’Neill, “Marilyn Monroe Slept Here,” CNN.com, Nov. 30, 2011.
could feel the audience’s patience dwindling: Moore, After All, p. 197.
pulled herself together: Ibid., p. 199.
made Tinker and Moore an offer: Ibid., p. 203.
“I firmly believe”: Mayer, About Television, p. 67.
“cancelled everything with a tree”: Anthony Harkins, Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 203.
a group of about one hundred feminists: Megan Gibson, “A Brief History of Women’s Protests,” Time, Aug. 12, 2011.
“wholesale upheaval”: Percy Shain, “CBS Shifts Six Shows to Different Time Slots,” Boston Globe, July 22, 1970.
chapter 7. pulling through (1970–71)
Nixon’s approval rating: “Nixon: The Pursuit of Peace and Politics,” Time, Sept. 28, 1970.
“The Mary Tyler Moore Show, on opening night at least”: Richard Burgheim, “The New Season: Perspiring with Relevance,” Time, Sept. 28, 1970.
“unmarried and getting a little desperate”: “Fall Preview,” TV Guide, September 12, 1970.
“preposterous”: Tom Shales, “The Mary Memory Tour,” Washington Post, Feb. 18, 1991.
“the return of a delightful and talented actress”: “Comedies Appear Back to Back,” St. Petersburg Times, Sept. 19, 1970.
“may take getting used to”: “Tube Filled with Series Openers,” Eugene Register-Guard, Sept. 19, 1970.
“she seemed to act”: Alan Rafkin, Cue the Bunny on the Rainbow: Tales from TV’s Most Prolific Sitcom Director (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998), p. 69.
“Mary should be presented with a problem”: Dwight Whitney, “Mary, It Needs Just One Beat of Wistfulness,” TV Guide, Feb. 26, 1972.
hated it: Fred Silverman interview, Archive of American Television.
had reduced earnings: Mayer, About Television, p. 251.
“patient capital”: Norman Lear speech at the Securities Industry Association, Wharton School, March 13, 1986.
Wood killed more programs: “CBS, in Big Sweep, to Drop Sullivan Show, Oldest in TV History,” Wall Street Journal, March 17, 1971.
“You know there’ll be other times”: Rafkin, Cue the Bunny on the Rainbow, p. 69.
chapter 8. success (1971–72)
“thirty-three, unmarried, and unworried”: Mary Tyler Moore, http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Mary_Tyler_Moore.aspx.
20 million viewers: Verne Gay, “Cronkite Was Lucky, but So Were We,” Newsday, July 18, 2009.
“of singular value”: Cecil Smith, “Ed Asner Comedy Find of the Year,” Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1971.
During the week, Moore: Details of Moore’s habits on set are from Whitney, “Mary, It Needs Just One Beat of Wistfulness,” as well as Robert Kerwin, “Can You Find the Boss in This Picture?,” Chicago Tribune, Nov. 24, 1974.
“when people don’t do their work right”: Kerwin, “Can You Find the Boss in This Picture?”
“A television job”: James L. Brooks, “What I’ve Learned,” Esquire, January 2011.
“the best show on television”: Benjamin Stein, “A Slice of Life Every Saturday,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4, 1974.
chapter 9. girls’ club (1970–73)
Leslie Hall: Leslie Hall’s story is told from the recollections of her son, Gary Hall, and those who knew her on the set.
promised its readers: Ladies’ Home Journal, September 1976.
“I do interviews”: Kerwin, “Can You Find the Boss in This Picture?”
asked Holly Holmberg out: Ann W. O’Neill, “The Court Files,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 1, 2000.
five foot seven and 118 pounds: “Editor TV Times,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 30, 1970.
“It’s a discipline in itself”: “Mary Tyler Moore: Enjoying Her Three Ds,” Edmonton Journal, Nov. 30, 1973.
encasing her thighs: Susan Cheever Cowley, “The Scavullo Look,” Newsweek, Nov. 22, 1976.
comparing herself to the models: Moore, After All, p. 368.
crab salad with diet cola: Kerwin, “Can You Find the Boss in This Picture?”
“It’s all well and good”: “Rhoda and Mary—Love and Laughs,” Time.
“I love her”: Mark Goodman, “TV’s Reigning Queen,” People, Sept. 30, 1974.
“it’s like Dorian Gray”: “Rhoda and Mary—Love and Laughs,” Time.
“On the big screen”: Kerwin, “Can You Find the Boss in This Picture?”
chapter 10. the writers wore hot pants (1972–74)
“breakthrough”: Mary Murphy, “Lou, Wife Split,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 5, 1973.
“On MTM”: “Victorious Loser,” Time, Sept. 3, 1973.
“We’re going to do a story about women”: Mollie Gregory, Women Who Run the Show: How a Brilliant and Creative New Generation of Women Stormed Hollywood (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), p. 91.
could still find talk show host Jack Paar: Don Shirley, “Sexism on Television Crumbling in Laughter,” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1973.
Of the Writers Guild’s nearly three thousand members: Gregory, Women Who Run the Show, p. 7.
“you never hear people say”: Marcia Seligson, “Being Rhoda Is No Joke,” McCall’s, January 1975.
cover of Ms. magazine: Gloria Steinem, “An Interview with Valerie Harper,” Ms., May 1978.
had just opened in 1972: Comedy Store, Club History, http://hollywood.thecomedystore.com/page.cfm?id=872.
Leno would soon meet David Letterman: David Letterman, Museum of Broadcast Communications, http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=lettermanda.
Led Zeppelin, the Who, and the Rolling Stones: Andaz West Hollywood, Hotel Overview, http://www.westhollywood.andaz.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels-westhollywood-andaz/index.jsp?hyattprop=yes.
chapter 11. pot and the pill (1972–73)
“As a writer and producer”: Norman Lear on Business, Politics, and Culture, http://normanlear.com/backstory_speeches.html.
first won approval: “The Birth Control Pill,” Embryo Project Encyclopedia, Arizona State University, http://embryo.asu.edu/view/embryo:123917.
Time magazine cover story: Time, April 7, 1967.
“Now she’s aggressively feminine”: Bill Davidson, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show—After Three Seasons,” TV Guide, May 19, 1973.
“In the romantic glow of sunrise”: Lehman, Those Girls, p. 149.
producers decided to nix a dialogue: Ibid., p. 150.
“It was awfully old-fashioned”: Ibid., p. 155.
Two CBS affiliates: Bruce Weber, “Bea Arthur, Star of Two TV Comedies, Dies at 86,” New York Times, April 25, 2009.
“Maude is commercial TV’s first striking manifestation”: Shirley, “Sexism on Television Crumbling in Laughter.”
“We’re not Maude”: Davidson, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show—After Three Seasons.”
“The show is opening up”: Kerwin, “Can You Find the Boss in This Picture?”
“Be careful”: Davidson, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show—After Three Seasons.”
“I think women are okay”: Kerwin, “Can You Find the Boss in This Picture?”
Conference on Women in Public Life: Gloria Steinem Papers, 1940–2000, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
“I’d like to ask each of us”: Original recording courtesy of Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
“compromised and contradictory feminism”: Bonnie J. Dow, Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement Since 1970 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), p. 51.
“girl-next-door sweetness”: Ibid., p. 25.
“she hardly ever gets to write the news or report it”: Judy Klemesrud, “TV’s Women Are Dingbats,” New York Times, May 27, 1973.
“challenging the family system”: Caroline Bird, “What’s Television Doing for Fifty Percent of Americans?,” TV Guide, Feb. 27, 1971, quoted in Serafina Bathrick, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Women at Home and at Work,” in Joanne Morreale, ed., Critiquing the Sitcom: A Reader (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003), p. 158.
chapter 12. the georgia and betty story (1972–74)
like she was starting her career all over again: Cecil Smith, “After 25 Years, the ‘Real’ Betty White,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 21, 1973.
“I don’t think I should”: Moore interview, Archive of American Television.
cook to handle dinner: Kerwin, “Can You Find the Boss in This Picture?”
the emptier it became: Moore, After All, p. 121.
she’d wave to Tinker: Grant Tinker, Tinker in Television: From General Sarnoff to General Electric (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 123.
one of the few people Moore had felt comfortable opening up to: Kerwin, “Can You Find the Boss in This Picture?”
moved into a new Bel Air home: Tinker, Tinker in Television.
chapter 13. girl, this time you’re all alone (1974)
had existed since at least 1941: John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 293.
used the hiatus: William Glover, “Change of Pace Role for Valerie,” Hartford Courant, March 17, 1974.
“a friend”: Steinem, “An Interview with Valerie Harper.”
making twenty-five thousand dollars a week: Seligson, “Being Rhoda Is No Joke.”
hated talking or thinking about money: Steinem, “An Interview with Valerie Harper.”
sent her a gift: Kerwin, “Can You Find the Boss in This Picture?”
sneaked back over: “Rhoda and Mary—Love and Laughs,” Time.
size fluctuated enough: Valerie Harper, Today I Am a Ma’am (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 38.
Tinker was so uncharacteristically anxious: “Rhoda and Mary—Love and Laughs,” Time.
“It would have been”: Clifford Terry, “Psyching Out Bob Newhart,” Chicago Tribune, Sept. 23, 1973.
“a neatly balanced show business cartel”: “Rhoda and Mary—Love and Laughs,” Time.
“I’m thirty-three”: Ibid.
raked in three hundred thousand dollars per year: “Hollywood’s Hot Hyphens,” Time, Oct. 28, 1974.
more than 50 million: Rick Mitz, The Great TV Sitcom Book (New York: R. Marek, 1980), p. 350.
shot by two men: Michael Newton, The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes (New York: Facts on File, 2009), pp. 87–88.
“Barbara stories”: Harry F. Waters, “TV’s Fall Season,” Newsweek, Sept. 8, 1975.
could spend hours debating: Ibid.
grossing more than $20 million: Goodman, “TV’s Reigning Queen.”
chapter 14. the best job of their lives (1975–77)
got ready to hit the stage: Elizabeth Peer, “The Rating Game,” Newsweek, Oct. 13, 1975.
“I don’t like having to write down”: Susan Harris biography, Paley Center for Media, http://www.shemadeit.org/meet/biography.aspx?m=32.
“look like the Gestapo”: Benjamin Stein, “The Old Taboos Fall, One by One,” Washington Post, Sept. 19, 1975.
“I think of commercial television like Times Square”: Harry F. Waters, “Why Is TV So Bad?,” Newsweek, Feb. 16, 1976.
received two thousand complaints: FCC Report on the Broadcast of Violent, Indecent, and Obscene Material, Feb. 19, 1975.
In a December 1974 letter: David Black, “Inside TV’s ‘Family Hour’ Feud,” New York Times, Dec. 7, 1975.
“set television back drastically”: Waters, “TV’s Fall Season.”
Lear joined with M*A*S*H producer Larry Gelbart: Black, “Inside TV’s ‘Family Hour’ Feud.”
In October 1975: Andrea Jane Grefe, “The Family Viewing Hour: An Assault on the First Amendment?,” Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, Fall 1977.
“If the networks were to make a sincere effort”: Black, “Inside TV’s ‘Family Hour’ Feud.”
Nielsen reported: Waters, “Why Is TV So Bad?”
“I’d like to thank a lot of people”: “CBS Under Pressure,” Forbes, June 15, 1976.
“Yes, this is a creatively healthy move”: Moore, After All, p. 5.
Moore thought the idea was divine: Ibid., p. 235.
stopping occasionally to laugh: Christopher Lloyd, “Veteran Sitcom Writer David Lloyd,” Entertainment Weekly, Dec. 4, 2009.
“It was the first time”: Mary Tyler Moore, “David Lloyd,” Time, Nov. 30, 2009.
Ken Levine was in the studio audience that night: Ken Levine, “In Memory of David Lloyd,” http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2009/11/in-memory-of-david-lloyd.html.
“It was not only a very funny show”: Cecil Smith, “Altering the Asner Image,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 7, 1975.
“In another moving and improbably funny show”: “Victorious Loser,” Time.
“bittersweet riot”: Tom Shales, “The Mary Memory Tour,” The Washington Post, Feb. 18, 1991.
“a classic”: Bruce Cook, “Now Women Are Calling the Shots,” Newsday, Nov. 19, 1978.
Moore still wasn’t sure: Moore, After All, p. 238.
Moore’s half filmed on the set: Ibid., p. 351.
“In many places”: “Victorious Loser,” Time.
chapter 15. leaving camelot (1977–present)
“The Taxi group”: Kenneth Turan, “On His Own ‘Terms,’ ” Film Comment, March/April 1984.
“Ed Asner finally brings something fresh to the beat”: Harry F. Waters, “Eyeballing the New Season,” Newsweek, Sept. 26, 1977.
cover of Time magazine: Time, Aug. 13, 1979.
“fast and funny”: Janet Maslin, “Burt Reynolds as Unmarried Husband,” New York Times, Oct. 5, 1979.
“Take that nap”: Turan, “On His Own ‘Terms.’ ”
“one of the more promising”: John J. O’Connor, “TV: Comedy of Divorce,” New York Times, Sept. 29, 1983.
Paramount sent him: Turan, “On His Own ‘Terms.’ ”
“uncastable”: Stephen Farber, “Comedy Buoys ‘Terms of Endearment,’ ” New York Times, Nov. 20, 1983.
After the New York Film Critics dinner: Turan, “On His Own ‘Terms.’ ”
split with his partner of twenty-seven years: O’Neill, “The Court Files.”
chapter 16. making it on their own (1977–present)
Polish immigrant barman: Burt A. Folkart, “ ‘Mary Tyler Moore Show’ Newscaster,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 27, 1986.
didn’t know what to do with herself: Moore, After All, p. 238.
“Mary’s not a Lucille Ball”: Thomas O’Connor, “Mary Tyler Moore: ‘I’m Not an Innately Funny Person,’ ” New York Times, Dec. 8, 1985.
“That was tough”: Kliph Nesteroff, “The Early David Letterman,” WFMU, http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2010/03/the-late-night-hosts-before-they-were-big.html.
“sit-var”: Moore interview, Archive of American Television.
“the dark side”: Ordinary People entry on Turner Classic Movies archive, http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/18955/0/Ordinary-People.html.
“I guess he was right to wonder”: Cole Kazdin and Imaeyen Ibanga, “Mary Tyler Moore: A Career Retrospective,” ABC News, March 31, 2009.
“self-expectation”: Moore interview, Archive of American Television.
took on extra significance: Moore, After All, p. 265.
remained in New York City: Ibid., p. 275.
when he treated her mother: Ibid., p. 313.
a drink or two before dinner: Louise Lague, “Addicted No Moore,” People, Oct. 1, 1984.
read about Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli: Moore, After All, p. 351.
“social drinking”: Lague, “Addicted No Moore.”
“I’m not an innately funny person”: O’Connor, “Mary Tyler Moore: ‘I’m Not an Innately Funny Person.’ ”
White had watched Star Trek: Betty White, Here We Go Again (New York: Scribner, 1995), p. 206.
“My name is Ed Asner”: Ed Asner, Museum of Broadcast Communications, http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=asnered.
“the Jane Fonda of Latin America”: Pete Hamill, “What Does Lou Grant Know About El Salvador?,” New York, March 15, 1982.
At the Church of the Recessional: “Laughter Wins over Tears at Funeral of Ted Knight,” Eugene Register-Guard, Aug. 29, 1986.
epilogue: mary, rhoda, and the modern girl
seventy-five-member crew: “Recreating History,” http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Recreating-History_1/11.
when she tried to get a good table at a restaurant: O’Connor, “Mary Tyler Moore: ‘I’m Not an Innately Funny Person.’ ”
if it wasn’t funny: Moore interview, Archive of American Television.
Time magazine cover story: Time, June 29, 1998.
visibly excited: Moore interview, Archive of American Television.
plans came together in 1997: Frank DeCaro, “Mary and Rhoda,” New York Times, Dec. 29, 1997.
“This was one of those cases”: “Mary, Rhoda Are Dead,” People, May 17, 1999.
doing her own stunt: James Poniewozik, “Doing Less With Moore,” Time, Feb. 7, 2000.
“Rhoda, you haven’t changed a bit”: Phil Gallo, “Mary and Rhoda,” Variety, Feb. 6, 2000.
“Mary and Rhoda is to be savored”: John Carman, “Mary, Rhoda Should’ve Just Sent E-Mails,” San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 7, 2000.
best TV show of all time: Alison Gwynn, Entertainment Weekly’s The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time (New York: Entertainment Weekly Books, 1998).
“All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show”: Todd VanDerWerff, “ ’70s Sitcoms,” AV Club, http://www.avclub.com/articles/70s-sitcoms,45254/.
deliberately structured it: Jacques Steinberg, “ ‘30 Rock’ Lives, and Tina Fey Laughs,” New York Times, Sept. 23, 2007.
“I love Mary Tyler Moore”: Nancy Randle, “Actress Will Be Real-Life Mother,” Chicago Tribune, July 7, 1992.