Mary Tyler Moore’s iconic role inspired female journalists
Her popular TV show showed how women could be successful in a man’s world
Mary Richards, an associate producer at WJM-TV played by Mary Tyler Moore, spent seven seasons proving she could compete in what was very much a man’s world when The Mary Tyler Moore Show began in 1970: a TV newsroom.
North American viewers, urged on by Helen Gurley Brown and Gloria Steinem, cheered her every step of the way.
As Washington’s Newseum pointed out Wednesday, the day Moore died at 80, she brought the newsroom into our living rooms.
The show, which lasted until 1977, mined that cramped WJM newsroom for every gag they could find. The news anchor was a dolt. The news writer was cynical and bitter. The gruff but lovable news producer kept a quart of scotch in his desk drawer.
Still, you did not need to work in a newsroom to know a Ted Baxter or a Murray Slaughter.
Richards was a 30-year-old unmarried career woman, a step up from Moore’s portrayal of a 1960s housewife on The Dick Van Dyke Show. The question every week was: could she “make it after all” in world where not even Barbara Walters could crack an evening newscast until 1976?
The show was not All in the Family. It was not trying to change the world. It was trying to make people laugh on Saturday night.
Plucky Richards did, however, inspire real-life reporters and journalists to get into the TV business. One was Oprah Winfrey, never more star struck than when Moore herself visited Winfrey’s daytime talk show (bringing along a replica of Mary Richards’ apartment set).
“I was the biggest Mary fan, like the biggest Mary fan,” Winfrey told her studio audience in 2002. Recounting the moment during a 1997 taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show when Moore surprised Winfrey on the set, she said, “I thought I was going to wet myself. I went into the ugly cry.”
“Thank you, Mary,” Winfrey says in footage from that day, “for being such an inspiration to us all.”
Moore was even recognized for the role by the United States’ National Association of Broadcasters, which awarded her a Distinguished Service Award in 2009.
“Mary Tyler Moore is a television icon who not only entertained millions of Americans week after week with her quick humour and amazing talent, but inspired many women of her generation to pursue careers in broadcasting, journalism and related fields,” David Rehr, association president, said at the time.
Hoda Kotb, a co-host on NBC’s Today show, paid tribute to Moore on her Sirius XM radio show The Hoda Show on Wednesday.
“I would guarantee you there are a whole bunch of people who are in the TV business right now of a certain age, who remember that it was possible because they saw Mary Tyler Moore doing it on TV,” Kotb said. “You saw her in a room full of men. With Ted Baxter and all those guys. And she was able to keep who she was and still show that she could be a woman and successful, and she could do it by herself and she had a best friend.”
As Richards, Moore was vulnerable, relatable and always authentic. More newsroom series followed: the drama Lou Grant, Murphy Brown, CBC’s The Newsroom.
All quality shows, but none had quite the heart of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. They were missing one essential ingredient, a talented professional from Brooklyn who really did make it after all: Mary Tyler Moore. CBS plans to broadcast a tribute, Mary Tyler Moore: Love is All Around, Thursday at 9 p.m. With files from the Washington Post