59 Fun Facts About Mary Tyler Moore Show

Opposite which star did Mary Tyler Moore play a nun in the 1969 film Change of Habit?

Elvis Presley. He played an inner-city doctor who falls in love with her nun, in what proved to be his final acting role; a year later Moore was back on television in her own sitcom.

Mary Tyler Moore starred in a doomed 1966 Broadway musical version of which Audrey Hepburn film?

Breakfast at Tiffany's. Moore played Holly Golightly in the troubled show, which impresario David Merrick shut after only four Broadway previews, before it ever officially opened.

Offered a drink in her job interview, which creamy cocktail does Mary Richards ask Lou Grant for?

Brandy Alexander. She first says no; when Lou says he wouldn't mind some company, she names the dessert cocktail, and he offers her coffee instead.

Which talk-show host had the WJM newsroom and Mary's apartment rebuilt on stage for a 2008 cast reunion?

Oprah Winfrey. She has said Mary Richards inspired her to go into television, and she got there quickly: while the sitcom was still on the air she was anchoring the news at a Nashville station.

Which actor played head newswriter Murray Slaughter?

Gavin MacLeod was called in to read for Lou Grant but couldn't see himself as Mary's boss, so he asked to try the wisecracking Murray instead and won the part.

Rhoda Morgenstern's spin-off sent her back to which city, where she had grown up?

New York. Bronx-born Rhoda flew home for a short visit in the 1974 pilot, met Joe Gerard and stayed, marrying him that same autumn in an hour-long special episode.

What was Phyllis Lindstrom's relationship to Mary, apart from being her friend?

Her landlady: Phyllis rented Mary her apartment, and after five seasons Cloris Leachman took the snobbish busybody into a spin-off of her own.

Betty White's Sue Ann Nivens hosted which show on Mary's station?

The Happy Homemaker. The script asked for a sickly sweet 'Betty White type'; after other actresses failed to fit, the producers hired White herself for what was meant to be a single episode.

Which character marries anchorman Ted in a spur-of-the-moment ceremony in Mary's apartment?

Georgette Franklin. When Ted proposes at Mary's, she insists they marry then and there, with a young John Ritter as the minister who arrives straight from the tennis court.

Mary Tyler Moore won two Emmys as whose TV wife?

Dick Van Dyke. As Laura Petrie on his sitcom, Moore insisted on wearing capri pants around the house, as real housewives did, at a time when TV wives vacuumed in dresses and pearls.

Which sitcom broke The Mary Tyler Moore Show's record of 29 Emmy wins in 2002?

Frasier took its record-breaking 30th Emmy at the 2002 Creative Arts ceremony, the separate night for craft and guest-acting awards, so the mark fell ahead of the main telecast.

Which First Lady made a cameo as herself on The Mary Tyler Moore Show?

Betty Ford appeared on the phone, as herself, in the 1976 episode 'The Seminar'; in the mid-1980s Moore checked into the clinic that bears Ford's name to treat her alcoholism.

What was Mary Richards's job title when Lou Grant first hired her?

Associate producer. She had come about a secretarial job that was already filled, but Lou hired her anyway after telling her she had spunk, then adding that he hated spunk.

What did Mary do at the end of every opening title sequence?

Tossed her hat into the air. The puzzled woman frozen behind her was a real bystander, Hazel Frederick, caught by chance; years later Moore brought her on stage and introduced her as her co-star.

Which cable network unveiled a bronze statue of Mary Richards on Nicollet Mall in 2002?

TV Land, then rerunning the show daily, had already put Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden outside the Port Authority bus terminal; Moore came to unveil her own bronze likeness in person.

Which Clash cover did Mary Tyler Moore theme writer Sonny Curtis write?

I Fought the Law. For the sitcom, Curtis reworked his own lyric after season one: the tentative original asked how Mary would make it on her own, and the famous version insists she will.

Which band covered the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme in 1985 and restaged scenes from its opening titles for the video?

Hüsker Dü, a trio that made its name in hardcore punk, put the sitcom theme on the B-side of a 1985 single and mimicked Mary's title sequence in the video; Joan Jett and Sammy Davis Jr. recorded it too.

On which night of the week did The Mary Tyler Moore Show air throughout its original run?

Saturday. Sharing the night with All in the Family, M*A*S*H and The Carol Burnett Show, it helped make staying home on Saturday fashionable, Time's Lance Morrow wrote as the show ended.

What sign did the owners of the real house shown as Mary's home hang out to stop crews filming there again?

Impeach Nixon. The owners of 2104 Kenwood Parkway had been overrun by fans demanding to see the house, so they hung the banner where it would spoil any further exterior shots.

In which city were The Mary Tyler Moore Show's newsroom and apartment scenes actually filmed?

Los Angeles. Only the title sequence and establishing shots were filmed on location; the newsroom and Mary's apartment were sets on a Studio City lot where her company became the main tenant.

The character of Mary Richards was originally written as what, before the network objected?

A divorcee. The network feared viewers would think she had walked out on Rob Petrie, her previous TV husband, so Mary arrived in town getting over a broken romance instead.

Which animal kills Chuckles the Clown at a circus parade in 'Chuckles Bites the Dust'?

An elephant. Chuckles was marching as Peter Peanut and, as Lou tells the newsroom, a rogue elephant tried to shell him; the staff can't stop joking, and only Mary is appalled.

Where does Mary finally burst out laughing over the clown's death in 'Chuckles Bites the Dust'?

At his funeral. Having scolded everyone else, Mary gets the giggles as the minister praises the clown's characters, and when he kindly tells her to laugh, she bursts into sobs instead.

In Chuckles the Clown's credo, 'a little song, a little dance', what goes 'down your pants'?

A little seltzer. Mary scolds her colleagues for cracking jokes about the dead clown, then hears the credo recited in earnest and cannot keep a straight face herself.

What happens to Mary, Lou and Murray in the series finale?

They are fired. The new station manager wants better ratings yet keeps Ted, the bumbling anchorman; by one co-creator's account the writers settled on the ending only two days before taping.

Why does the whole group hug shuffle across the newsroom in The Mary Tyler Moore Show's finale?

To reach the tissues. By the cast's account the move was found in rehearsal: asked for a funny way out of the hug without breaking it, Georgia Engel pointed to the Kleenex on the desk.

What is the last thing Mary does in the final scene of the series?

Turns off the lights. She looks back at the empty newsroom, smiles and closes the door, an ending Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman called the gold standard when writing her own finale.

Which song do Mary's colleagues sing as they leave the newsroom in the series finale?

It's a Long Way to Tipperary. Ted had quoted it in his heartfelt final sign-off, and Lou starts singing it to lift the mood as they all walk out arm in arm.

Which 1977 program passed Rhoda's 1974 wedding as the most-watched TV episode of the 1970s?

Roots. More than 52 million people watched Rhoda marry Joe in October 1974; when the ceremony ended, Howard Cosell welcomed the returning audience back to Monday Night Football.

Which talk-show host is Mary's guest of honor at the party wrecked by a power cut in 1977?

Johnny Carson. The power fails as the guests wait for him, with no candles or working flashlights to be found, so they pass the time recalling the earlier disasters among Mary's famously doomed parties.

Which future Simpsons voice actress played Rhoda's sister Brenda on the spin-off?

Julie Kavner won an Emmy as Brenda in 1978, and the role led her to The Tracey Ullman Show, where a series of cartoon shorts first gave her the voice of Marge Simpson.

In the spin-off Lou Grant, Lou becomes city editor of which newspaper?

Los Angeles Tribune. The spin-off turned a sitcom boss into the lead of an hour-long newspaper drama, and it twice won the Emmy for outstanding drama series.

After Ed Asner, who became the second actor to win Emmys for one character in both comedy and drama?

Uzo Aduba won a 2014 comedy Emmy as a guest actress and a 2015 drama Emmy as a supporting actress, both as Crazy Eyes, because Orange Is the New Black competed as a comedy one year and a drama the next.

In the spin-off Phyllis, the newly widowed Phyllis moves with daughter Bess to which city?

San Francisco. With Lars dead, Mary's snobbish friend moves in with her in-laws and, after years as a rich doctor's wife, takes a job as a photographer's assistant.

Cloris Leachman won an Academy Award for which 1971 film, released while she was playing Phyllis?

The Last Picture Show. Far from the sitcom snob Phyllis, her Ruth Popper is a coach's neglected wife who drifts into an affair with a high-school student; she returned to the part in the 1990 sequel, Texasville.

Which pageant did Cloris Leachman compete in as Chicago's representative in 1946?

Miss America. She didn't take the crown, but the $1,000 scholarship she won paid for her move east, where she studied acting under Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio.

Ted Knight had an uncredited bit part guarding the captured killer at the end of which Hitchcock film?

Psycho. Knight is the policeman watching Norman Bates in the closing scene; he spent the 1960s in bit parts and commercial voice-overs before The Mary Tyler Moore Show made him a star in his forties.

Which actress left The Mary Tyler Moore Show after its fourth season to star in a spin-off?

Valerie Harper left in 1974 for Rhoda, which finished in the year's top ten in each of its first two seasons, ahead of the show it had sprung from.

NBC dropped Betty White from which parade's broadcast in 1975, as too identified with a rival network's sitcom?

Rose Parade. She had been its commentator for 19 years, and she told People magazine that she spent New Year's Day at home feeling wretched, 'watching someone else do my parade'.

What animal appears in the MTM Enterprises logo at the end of each episode?

A meowing kitten. The logo was a takeoff on MGM's roaring lion, and its star, an orange tabby named Mimsie, had been rescued from an animal shelter.

Grant Tinker, Mary Tyler Moore's husband and MTM co-founder, later chaired which network?

NBC. Tinker left MTM in 1981 to run the last-place network and made it the home of Cheers, Family Ties and The Cosby Show; he later spoke of regretting that he had left his old company.

Mary Tyler Moore's first TV job was dancing as the elf 'Happy Hotpoint' in commercials for what?

Home appliances. The teenage Moore danced as a tiny elf in ads shown during The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and lost the job when her pregnancy began to show in the costume.

Mary Tyler Moore was nominated for an Oscar for which 1980 film?

Ordinary People. Director Robert Redford cast her against type as a cold, grieving mother who turns on the son who survived the accident that killed his brother.

As the switchboard operator Sam on Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Mary Tyler Moore was famous for showing little more than what?

Her legs. The show's publicity played up the mystery of the unseen Sam; when Moore asked for a raise, the producers simply replaced her with another anonymous actress.

Which comedy writer said she developed her own sitcom and its harried heroine by watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show?

Tina Fey. She said 30 Rock and its heroine Liz Lemon came out of studying the series, and critics soon mapped Liz and her boss Jack onto Mary and Lou.

Which Mary Tyler Moore Show co-creator later helped launch The Simpsons?

James L. Brooks hired cartoonist Matt Groening to draw short cartoons for The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987, and two years later the shorts grew into The Simpsons.

The actress who played Rhoda on The Mary Tyler Moore Show honed her comedy with which famous improv troupe?

The Second City. She had set out to be a dancer and worked in Broadway choruses before she learned comedy in the improv troupe, where she toured with her husband, Dick Schaal.

Georgia Engel earned three straight Emmy nominations as Robert's mother-in-law Pat on which sitcom?

Everybody Loves Raymond. Engel owed her television career to Mary Tyler Moore, who spotted her on stage in The House of Blue Leaves and had her cast as Georgette.

The actor who played Murray Slaughter went on to captain the Pacific Princess on which series?

The Love Boat. Captain Stubing made him so identified with cruising that Princess Cruises took him on as its ambassador in 1986, a role he was still playing in his eighties.

Which real network newsman appeared as himself, as Ted's idol, in a 1974 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show?

Walter Cronkite. Fresh from winning a local Teddy award, Ted takes his idol's visit as proof that a network job of his own is on its way.

Which sitcom from Mary Tyler Moore's own company aired straight after her show for most of its run?

The Bob Newhart Show. It was the second hit for MTM Enterprises, the company Moore and Grant Tinker formed to keep control of her sitcom, which went on to make Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere.

What job did Rhoda Morgenstern hold at Hempel's department store?

Window dresser. Rhoda took the trade back east with her, and in the spin-off she set up a window-dressing business of her own.

Which cable channel began rerunning The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1992 with a week-long 'Marython'?

Nick at Nite. The 1970s hit found a second life there: launched with seven straight nights of episodes in September 1992, the reruns became the channel's top-rated series.

On which sitcom did the five leading women of The Mary Tyler Moore Show reunite on screen in 2013?

Hot in Cleveland. Betty White's sitcom cast her four former co-stars as her character's old bowling team, the Gorgeous Ladies of Bowling, in their first scene together in more than 30 years.

Ed Asner led which performers' union in the 1980s?

Screen Actors Guild. As president from 1981 to 1985 he spoke out against U.S. policy in El Salvador, and he always believed that got his own drama series cancelled; when he died in 2021, his seven acting Emmys were a record for a man.

Ted Knight played the pompous Judge Smails in which 1980 comedy?

Caddyshack. After his own 1978 sitcom lasted only six episodes, Knight bounced back in 1980 with both the country-club snob and Too Close for Comfort, which ran until his death in 1986.

Which Pixar character did Ed Asner voice in 2009?

Carl Fredricksen in Up. The grumpy widower who ties thousands of balloons to his house to reach South America introduced Asner, then nearly 80, to a whole new generation of fans.

Lou Grant became an hour-long newspaper drama partly because of the success of which film?

All the President's Men. The 1976 Watergate film showed how gripping a newsroom could be, so the creators moved their sitcom boss to a big-city daily and played it straight, tackling issues from gun control to invasion of privacy.

Which future sitcom star won an early guest part at one of Mary's disastrous dinner parties?

Henry Winkler. He played the unexpected extra guest at Mary's dinner for a congresswoman in November 1973; two months later he was the Fonz on Happy Days.