EBL: Mary Tyler Moore
Hollywood Report: Mary Tyler Moore, dead at 80
Instapundit: Mary Tyler Moore RIP and James Lileks visits MTM Show Minneapolis filming locations
Federalist: Mary Tyler Moore rejected the feminism of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan
Lem's Place: You Wonderful You, Ordinary People, MTM dead at 80
TOM: What Women Want @CAwkward
I always wonder what part of MTM was merely screen presence and what portion was just her? I always fancied that she'd be a nice person to know.
ReplyDeleteI don't think much of her old friend Penis Van Lesbian (Dick VanDyke) these days but he's a prog like most of the show people. Ed Asner is a full blown Communist. They have the right to be who they are, but I don't think that I'd want to spend five minutes hanging out with them. MTM would have been a different matter to me.
I concur with your sentiments above and I would not want to be around Asner.
DeleteThey worked for the studios back then under contracts. They got no residuals and didn’t own any piece of the shows. They made a few thousand a week back then, nice money in the day, but peanuts even adjusted for inflation compared to today’s situation. So whether you liked Asner or not, you pretended, because if you blew up a show, a concept, a pilot, you’d get a major blackball against you. You had no choice.
ReplyDeleteSeries had better chances back then because they could gauge opinion and ratings before studio audiences. But they got more time because the Nielson Families’ opinions took longer to form up and report and decide a show’s fate. A pilot used to be eight episodes in the can. Now it’s three or four. Cable boxes do the reporting now, I suppose the Nielson Families are, well, dead.
Let the record show *I* pointed out Mary Tyler Moore last month for Christmas in time for this little gem:
https://youtu.be/6aoU5e-YXY4
I heard an interesting Radio Lab where because Fran Drescher was being stalked, they got rid random studio audience. But actors play better off a crowd, so they hired professional laughers to fill in. They found it really raised the actor's game and laughter is contagious. It was an interesting show.
Delete