Farewell to a TV FAVORITE
EVERYONE LOVED HER AS RHODA — AND FOR THE NEVER-SAY-DIE SPIRIT OF HER FINAL DAYS
“Don’t go to the funeral until the day of the funeral. Live this day.”
— Valerie
Ed Asner put it best, praising his former Mary Tyler Moore Show co-star Valerie Harper as “a beautiful woman, a wonderful actress and a great friend. Her brilliance burst through and shined its light upon all of us.”
Mary Richards could turn the world on with her smile, but her BFF and onetime upstairs neighbor, Valerie’s Rhoda Morgenstern, warmed the hearts of the world with her plucky chutzpah. So, too, did Valerie, who died on Aug. 30 at 80 after a long and brave battle with leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare condition in which cancer cells spread into the meninges, the membranes surrounding the brain.
Mary and Rhoda’s on-screen relationship felt so real because Mary Tyler Moore and Valerie truly bonded behind the scenes. “Almost any scene we ever did, we could look into each other’s eyes and be comforting or uplifting for each other,” Mary said in 2013.
No one mourned Valerie’s loss more deeply than her devoted husband, Tony Cacciotti. “My beautiful, caring wife of nearly 40 years has passed away after years of fighting cancer,”
said Tony, 80. “She will never, ever be forgotten. Rest in peace, mia Valeria.” While Valerie’s adopted daughter, Cristina, 36, had recently clashed with Tony over Valerie’s care, the family made peace prior to her passing.
OPEN RHODA
Born in Suffern, N.Y., Valerie toiled as a dancer in obscure Broadway shows like Wildcat and Subways Are for Sleeping before landing the role that changed her career and life in 1970. “Rhoda — free-spirited, funny and from the Bronx— leaped off the page and grabbed me with her honest and brash humor,” Valerie remembered. “This was a woman I liked — no, a woman I loved. This was a woman I wanted to play.”
After four years on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, she spun off into her own sitcom, Rhoda, and set ratings records when her longtime-bachelorette character married her beau, Joe (David Groh), in a 1974 episode. Still, “I’m not a star,” Valerie insisted at the time. “I’m the same old shlep I’ve always been.”
Another sitcom, Valerie, ended unhappily for the star in 1987 when she was fired over a contract dispute. A year later, she won a lawsuit awarding her more than $1.8 million in damages
and 12-and-a-half percent ownership of the show, which continued as Valerie’s Family, then The Hogan Family.
Valerie went back to stage work, playing everyone from former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in the one-woman show Golda’s Balcony to Hollywood diva Tallulah Bankhead in Looped. Then she returned triumphantly to TV as a contestant on Dancing With the Stars in 2013, after she had received her dire diagnosis.
As she explained, “Every five minutes, every hour, every day, every year that you waste worrying about your cancer, you have forfeited time you could have been alive having fun.” For Valerie’s family, friends and fans, her legacy of fun will live forever.