Actress Mary Tyler Moore dies at 80
NEW YORK — Mary Tyler Moore, the star of TV’s beloved “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” whose comic realism helped revolutionize the depiction of women on t he small screen, died on Jan. 25. She was 80.
Moore gained fame in the 1960s as the frazzled wife Laura Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” In the 1970s, she created one of TV’s first career-woman sitcom heroines in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
Moore won seven Emmy awards over the years and was nominated for an Oscar for her 1980 port rayal of an affluent mother whose son is accidentally killed in “Ordinary People.”
With her unerring gift fo r c o medy, Moore seemed perfectly fashioned to the smarter wit of the new, post- Eisenhower age. As Laura on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” she traded in the housedress of countless sitcom wives for Capri pants that were as fashionable as they were suited to a modern American woman.
Laura was a dream wife and mother, but not perfect. Viewers identified with her flustered moments and her protracted, plaintive cry to her husband: “Ohhhh, Robbbb!”