NameMary Richards
CompanyABC News
CategoryThe Academy Oscar Award
Executive SummaryThe Mary Tyler Moore Show was an American sitcom of the transmitter CBS and ran from 19 september 1970 to 19 March 1977. It was a groundbreaking series for women in the lead role of a sitcom. It was the first time that the central figure of a show about a career woman turned. Mary Tyler Moore, who played the role of Mary Richards , a Bachelor in their thirties. A very different role as the female roles on television from that era. She was not married or divorced and was also not looking for a man. Some characters were so popular that they were given their own series, Valerie Harper and Cloris Leachman left the series for their respective character Rhoda and Phyllis.Edward Asner also received his own series, Lou Grant, but only after The Mary Tyler Moore Show stopped. This was also a drama series, one of the few times in television history that a spin-off of a comedy series was a drama series.
When Moore was asked for the role she was first unsure because she thought the role should lose because they would be compared with her character Laura in The Dick Van Dyke Show, one of the most popular roles in tv history until then. Mary would first play a divorced wife but because this was still controversial in 1970 they chose for a broken engagement. During the first two seasons she wore a long wig for her to have her style different than that of Laura.
DescriptionMary Richards moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota after her two-year relationship was broken off. They are applying for a job at the tv station WJM-tv but this course is already taken. To her surprise, her another job offer, she is also producer of the six o'clock news, this paid less than the job that she first envisioned.
At work, she becomes friends with her strict boss Lou Grant, who also had a soft side, the sympathetic news writer Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod) and news anchor Ted Baxter (Ted Knight). Other characters are her upstairs neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern, who is her best friend, landlady Phyllis Lindstrom and her daughter Bess (Lisa Gerritsen. Sue Ann Nivens were added later are characters out there (Betty White), a nymphomaniac host of a cooking show, the dear Georgette Franklin (Georgia Engel) and girlfriend of Ted Baxter and the African American Weatherman Gordon Howard (John Amos)
The show cut important segments, such as love, death, career and friendship in the life of Mary and her friends on a comical way.