Here's an article about Mary Tyler Moore, who's about to receive the big award from the Screen Actors Guild. As I've mentioned here before, I had one of my first crushes as a lad on Ms. Moore. I still recall and tremble a bit at that first moment I saw her in person when I went to see The Dick Van Dyke Show being filmed. It wasn't just that she was there, right in front of me less than six feet away. It was the first time I saw her in color.
I've only met her once and in the grand tradition of Rob Petrie, I managed to be quite awkward and to actually step on her foot. I actually did that. Remember how in the flashback to how Rob and Laura first met and Rob stepped on her foot and broke it? Well, I stepped on Mary Tyler Moore's foot — though thankfully not enough to do any harm. It was at an in-house screening of a project I worked on for her company, MTM — an attempt to turn the character from Rhoda, Carlton the Doorman, into an animated superstar. When I tried to get a seat in the screening room, I had to squeeze past her to get to an empty one and — whoops! — right on her foot. I apologized for about the next ninety minutes, then I felt the need to apologize for apologizing so much.
Her body of work speaks for itself, of course, as does her wisdom in making (for the most part) pretty sound career choices. The Mary Tyler Moore Show worked in large part because Mary was willing to play straight for others on the show. She let Ted Knight be the funny one. She let Ed Asner be the funny one. She let Valerie Harper and Cloris Leachman be the funny ones and so on. I would guess that of shows that fail which have the star's name or character name in the title, a good 75% have crashed and burned because the star wanted to be the whole show. Some of them do this even when they know in their heads that it's wrong. You point out to them that Jack Benny let his supporting players shine, as did Andy Griffith and Mary Tyler Moore. No one was ever more successful than Jack Benny, Andy Griffith and Mary Tyler Moore. They acknowledge the truth of that, then they point to the script and ask, "How come this guy has more funny lines than me?" The few times Mary's ever failed — her variety show, for instance — I think the problem was that she or her managers forgot that.
I'm long over my crush on her. I think it ended around half past Julie Newmar. But I still have great admiration for Mary Tyler Moore. I would have told her that that day at the screening room if I hadn't stepped on her foot. (Thanks to Anand Kandaswamy for telling me about the article.)