Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
‘Rhoda’ star, friend on ‘Mary Tyler Moore Show’
LOS ANGELES — Valerie Harper, who scored guffaws, stole hearts and busted TV taboos as the brash, self-deprecating Rhoda Morgenstern on back-to-back hit sitcoms in the 1970s, died Friday. She was 80. Harper had been battling cancer for years, and her husband said recently he had been advised to put her in hospice care.
Harper was a breakout star on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” then the lead of her own series, “Rhoda.”
She won three consecutive Emmys (1971-73) as supporting actress on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and another for outstanding lead actress for “Rhoda,” which ran from 1974-78. Beyond awards, she was immortalized — and typecast — for playing one of television’s most beloved characters, a best friend the equal of Ethel Mertz and Ed Norton in TV’s sidekick pantheon.
Fans had long feared the news of her passing.
In 2013, she first revealed that she had been diagnosed with brain cancer and had been told by her doctors she had as little as three months to live.
But she refused to despair. “I’m not dying until I do,” Harper said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show. “I promise I won’t.”
Mary Tyler Moore, her famous co-star, died in January 2017. Ed Asner, Cloris Leachman and Betty White are among the former cast members who survive her.
In recent years, Harper’s other appearances included “American Dad!” “The Simpsons” and “Two Broke Girls.”
Harper was a chorus dancer on Broadway as a teen before moving into comedy and improv. She found comedy when she fell in with a group of Second City players from Chicago who had taken up residence in Greenwich Village. In 1970, she auditioned for the part of a Bronx-born Jewish girl who would be a neighbor and pal of Minneapolis news producer Mary Richards on a new sitcom for CBS.
It seemed a long shot for the young, unknown actress. As she recalled, “I’m not Jewish, not from New York, and I have a small shiksa nose.” And she had almost no TV experience.
But Harper, who arrived for her audition some 20 pounds overweight, may have clinched the role when she blurted out in admiration to the show’s tall, slender star: “Look at you in white pants without a long jacket to cover your behind!”
It was exactly the sort of thing Rhoda would say to “Mar,” as Harper recalled in her 2013 memoir, “I, Rhoda.”
Harper was signed without a screen test.
With the success of Rhoda’s character, a spinoff of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” seemed inevitable.
In 1974, Rhoda was dispatched from Minneapolis back home to New York City, where she was reunited with her parents and younger sister in a new sitcom that co-starred Nancy Walker, Harold Gould and Julie Kavner.
She also met and fell in love with the hunky owner of a demolition firm.
The premiere of “Rhoda” that September was the week’s toprated show, getting a 42% share of audience against competition including Monday Night Football on ABC.
A few weeks later, when Rhoda and her fiance, Joe, were wed in a one-hour special episode, more than 52 million people — half of the viewing audience in the country — tuned in.