Why Did Mary Tyler Moore Fail After Her Sitcom Ended

[quote]And Ordinary People was a fluke, anyone could've done that.

Anyone?

MTM played herself in Ordinary People.

Don’t forget her years on the Dick Van Dyke show. She had two hit series. Not a bad run.

OP, I wouldn't call it a fail. Doing a weekly sitcom (x2) for that long takes a LOT out of a girl. She prolly wanted to do nothing more than rest and giggle whilst Cloris Leachman's sitcom went to shit.

Because she was typecast after essentially twenty years in the public eyes as Little Mary Sunshine.

I know there were 4 years between Dick van Dyke and MTM Show, but still, in terms of the public consciousness, she was America's Sweetheart. That is a challenge to overcome.

Buck never would have started a thread like this.

Her characters never had another foil like Rhoda.

But they made her beloved, r5. How many performers achieve *beloved* status?

Mary's vibe and comedy talent wasn't exactly right for a mature woman to carry a comedy series, in the decades in question. Bea Arthur could do it and did it several times. Candice Bergen succeeded as well.

Mary had three failed TV series after the MTM show ended. She did very well with feature films and television movies. I enjoyed most of them.

Funny thing about Mary Tyler Moore....she's a diabetic!

I think she was a personality of an easier time. And she could have done with reinventing herself a little. Betty White actually reinvented herself from this wholesome personality to Sue-Ann Nivens. Similarly Rue McClanahan reinvented herself with Blanche Deveroux. Had she appeared on a sit-com as a different kind of character she would have succeeded. Candace Bergen was completely playing against type when she started Murphy Brown.

She got too locked into DVD and MTM -- she wasn't able to shake the characters' quirks. . . canned ham.

r12 post-Golden Girls, neither could Rue, Betty or Estelle.

The death of her son.

Both The Dick van Dyke Show and Mary Tyler Moore Show we’re in heavy syndication for years - she had to compete with her younger self - that is hard for anyone to do- unless she did something completely different like Murder She Wrote. Not to mention her health gave her a brittle appearance.

[quote]Ordinary People was a fluke, anyone could've done that.

Buck never would have TYPED a line like this.

The series she did with Katey Sagal in the newspaper was a bad idea. Why put her in another newsroom with an inferior, less likeable cast and a very dreary set?

r15 It isn't just shaking off the typecasting and the love of the former characters by the audience. She was pretty stilted unless she was wearing shades or straining her neck. She took a lot of bad habits with her. I think it's a larger problem in the industry where the majority don't continue training and education -- which often we've seen as the separation between the greats and everyone else.

Not that education alone cuts it... but those that achieve fame, especially early in their careers, often develop a bad case of celebritis and don't stretch themselves further because they can always fall back on the fame of their previous roles.

Also, often they get trapped in a social bubble with other celebs and rarely venture outside of it... to those ends about the only roles their left with are sci-fi and fantasy where we can let apply disbelief for coming off a bit autistic.

it can be down to mannerisms and expressions... actresses have a more difficult time with that one because they begin to fear looking ugly in any given scene. . . MTM also had the problem of crazy eyes. (not to mention the inability to ignore the camera ala the MTM show... that bad habit continued to follow her)

though it's a difficult tightrope to walk.. having to maintain the old fan base while allowing room for new opportunities... and its' where we get the other problem of those that think they can cut away the past, too.

for actresses, the legends of hollywood are those that only subtly change from character to character... and yet have completely, fully formed characters that could be put side by side and viewed as eaparate individuals rather than it coming off like the patty duke show,

[quote] She was pretty stilted unless she was wearing shades or straining her neck. She took a lot of bad habits with her

Did you wander in from another thread. What are you talking about?

In hindsight, hard to remember what a straitjacket the TV / film world was in up until cable/streaming exploded.

Flirting with Disaster worked........ Lily Tomlin navigated it the best maybe?....

She filmed 300+ episodes between Dick van Dyke show and the MTM show, earning 30 awards (Emmy, Bafta, Golden Globe) with an additional 30 nominations. Then played against type in a very successful movie for which she won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar and Bafta. And somehow OP thinks her career ended in failure??

Perkiness can only go so far...then you become nothing more than a middle-aged neurotic.

She was a poor man's Faye Dunaway in Like Mother Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Kimes.

She had very poor choices in her projects after The MTM Show. She wanted to do a variety show, but the genre was exhausted by the time she did "Mary" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Hour," and she did two terrible tearjerkers: "Six Weeks" and "Just Between Friends."

Her TV movies often did well, however, and she did win an Emmy for her 1993 performance in "Stolen Babies." She also gained some critical applause (and was again nominated for an Emmy) for her work as Mary Todd Lincoln in the TV miniseries "Lincoln" with Sam Waterston, and critics responded very well to her supporting role in "Flirting with Disaster."

Mary was hard to cast, not only because she was so familiar as Mary Richards and Laura Petrie but also because she looked so odd as she aged due to her diabetes and because she insisted on remaining stick-thin.

jump to middle of clip / a candid assessment

She did well in TV movies. Bunch of Emmy nominations and a win.

Gore Vidal's Lincoln she is especially good in.

r18 is an idiot

[quote]and because she insisted on remaining stick-thin

That was the dancer in her.

I think we officially have a Mary Tyler Moore Stares at the Camera troll.

Her standout achievement was "Thoroughly Modern Millie", where she stole the film from Julie Andrews.

What’s wrong with the OP? The woman starred in two of the most successful sitcoms of all time and even was able to “escape” her image and engage in some acting- which she was more than competent. She retired in NYC and with an estate outside the city a very wealthy woman. What does one have to do to overcome being a failure on DL?

Miss Dorothy was not a film stealing role, r30, nor did Mary make it one.

She was trying to regain the lost years by playing 30 at age 45, competing with Sissy/Sally/Meryl/Jessica.

Not interesting

[quote]Perkiness can only go so far...then you become nothing more than a middle-aged neurotic.

Marlo Thomas? Bonnie Franklin?

Fail? OP is an idiot for the use of the word in that context. The implication that any successful person 'fails' by doing anything after their success. I believe that's called keeping on or moving forward or living. Yikes. OP, what is a successful person supposed to do? Retire to oblivion? Give up? Please enlighten us.

Man, the clip at R25 makes me wish I could've taken Nanette Fabray out for drinks. Even in her 80s, sharp as a tack and eloquently spilling the tea on working with MTM.

It was weird and kind of shitty for the MTM Show to move Mary's parents to Minneapolis — and offer a veteran actress a potential part on a top-10 hit — and then drop them after a few episodes with no explanation, never to be seen again. But Nanette's pretty clear-eyed and humble about it: It just didn't work.

I would have pressed her for nasty gossip about Bonnie Franklin (which she no doubt had).

Mary was a success in Hollywood

This may be WAY off of the mark - Mary started dating Grant Tinker while she was on The Dick Van Dyke Show and carefully hired the staff, casting directors, writers, directors for The Mary Tyler Moore Show - it freed Mary up to be Mary Richards - they could be good cop bad cop. When she was on her own after that it was probably hard to recreate the magic without the one person who could be brutally honest with her. …….. The same could be said for Lucy and Desi. He directed the early episodes of The Lucy Show with Lucy and Viv - he was able to keep her mugging under control. Once Desi left and Gary Morton came in she became that awful childlike grating character always getting in trouble with Mr Mooney. When Desi left - “Lucy” became far less womanly…….. NOW - in REVERSE - with the exception of “Victor/Victoria” it seems like Julie Andrews red hot movie career tanked after she married Blake Edwards.

Mary needed Grant Tinker's guidance, or the strong advocacy of a major creative force (see Robert Redford), because she was not well managed on her own and didn't have great instincts on material.

They divorced in 1979, and they were already estranged at the time of her disastrous variety show #1, which Tinker frankly told her she should not do. The video below shows why—the writing was terrible. Variety show attempt #2 was less of an outright disaster but still not funny, total squaresville old '60s variety material.

Mary's 1985 sitcom "Mary" was actually not bad. It had the excellent Ken Levine and David Isaacs from Cheers as producers.

The network killed it before it even aired. Levine and Isaacs wanted to do a different premise but CBS insisted that it be something familiar that MTM would be automatically accepted in—hence the newspaper office. The characters were actually great (including Katey Sagal's chain-smoking reporter), but the premise ensured every single thing they did would be held up to the MTM Show and inevitably fall short (and Cheers too, because they set up a Sam-and-Diane thing between Mary's character and her new boss).

Mary also became unhappy and difficult to work with, according to Levine. He's written about this on his blog and IIRC he doesn't get into minute detail, but it seems the main problem was that MTM was insecure and intimidated and didn't know how to interact with creative types because that had always been done for her, so she just froze up. (She was also just a year out of rehab for her little glug-glug problem, and the post-acute withdrawal period can really make a gal edgy.)

What's so bad...?

Grant

On the finding-a-sustainable-new-project front, Mary probably paid dearly for divorcing Tinker. He went to head up NBC in 1981 and presided over the greatest creative period in the network's history. He technically resigned from MTM Productions but scheduled a bunch of their shows and kept them on the air (Cheers, St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues). There's not a much safer environment for launching a new show—and making sure it's creatively refined to order—than if your husband is president of the network.

As she became a Hollywood grande dame, I think she lost her sense of humor and vulnerability that had made her so popular. Success robs people of the qualities that made them attractive to audience, and they seek productions that are essentially vehicles. That's why she was so good in Ordinary People. As someone noted, she played herself.

What does the OP expect, that she should have been starring in top rated sitcoms until the day she died? I think she did pretty damn well; two classic tv series. Everybody's career goes on a downswing eventually.

I like her cameltoe in this picture

I like that show at #41. Mary looks gorgeous and she's in top form. I would watch it every week.

R33 also pretty much nails where she was in 1980, where she got a great movie role but there was nowhere to go with it.

She was 44 at that point, so she wasn't going to be competing with Sally, Jessica, and Meryl for the big roles on a simple age basis, not to mention range. What else was there? Marsha Mason had a death grip on Neil Simon's matriarchs because she was married to the dude. She took a mom role in Six Weeks, which was a disaster, and back then you didn't recover from starring in a cinematic disaster so well, particularly at that age.

She got a special Tony in 1980 for Whose Life Is It Anyway, and maybe she could have done more Broadway, but I wouldn't be surprised if her drinking precluded that.

I thought Nanette Fabray and Bill Quinn were great as Mary's parents. And there seemed to be genuine chemistry between Nanette and Mary.

Mary (1985, R41) was a victim of unrealistic expectations. It was hyped to the sky, and that and the similarities to the MTM Show were untenable. If CBS had put it behind Newhart, it would have taken off and run for years. But because it couldn't open a night on its own, it was considered a disappointment.

The ratings weren't bad—middle-range, second place in the timeslot, which was good for third-place CBS at the time. But that was considered unworthy of MTM (again, unrealistic expectations) and things got so bad creatively between her and Levine/Isaacs that they quit the show after the initial 13 episodes. CBS likely figured it wasn't worth the hassle of restarting with new showrunners and axed it.

Interesting to hear Nanette’s take. She let Mary live in her house and then Mary refused to vacate when Nanette & husband needed to move back in.

Nanette was plausible, physically, as Mary’s mother. She came off as self-centered and neurotic in the role of Mary’s mother. Interesting to hear that she had misgivings about the character. But thing could have gone opposite. Lots of obnoxious characters become popular.

Kathy Griffin met MTM, Rickles, and B. white at a party one night. Rickles and Betty were fine; Mary was unfriendly. I think Mary had a hard time with other women. She did age super fast. She was married to Tinker, who was old. She was used to being bubbly and young.

[quote]She did well in TV movies. Bunch of Emmy nominations and a win.

So did I

Whether or not Mary had prior success is not being disputed, but the OP's question is valid. After her sitcom ended she failed pretty much all the time.

Even the Rhoda and Mary movie was horrible.

The mention of Bob Newhart is interesting as he seemed to slip easily into another sitcom (Newhart) after the success of his original series within a decade and within relative ease. I guess it could be argued that that is what happened with Mary and DVD and MTM, but she was more of a supporting player on DVD and the show was not supposed to center around her character. Both of Newhart's series were vehicles for him.

Miss Dorothy stole people’s LIVES, because she put them TO SLEEP.

I don’t think that movie’s very good.

^^ wow, how did that get here from the other MTM tread?

The real question is who kidnapped her from humanity and brought her over to the dark side politically??

Bob Newhart is a great example of a performer whose appeal endured throughout his life. And there's a reason for that: of you watch Bob in one of his '60s TV stand-up appearances, his '70s or '80s sitcoms, or in the '00s "Elf," it's the same persona, with the same grumpy charm.

Now look at MTM. Adorable and perky on The Dick Van Dyke Show. A little less adorable on The MTM Show, but still sweet and appealing. The variety shows, nobody watched.

Then came Ordinary People and a new, startling, cold and brittle Mary that we'd never seen before. And this chilly, brittle quality stayed present to one extent or another in pretty much everything we saw her in afterwards. A lot had happened to Mary - a divorce, alcoholism, rehab, and the shocking death of her son. Those things changed her, and changed her portrayals in a way that her former fans found puzzling and off-putting. It's really not her fault... It's unfortunately simply what happened.

They chopped off a toe for every flop show.

It's strange that she only made about 4 movies in the decades after Ordinary People. I'm not sure if that spells "failure," but the DLers posting like she had an illustrious movie career are a big much. She was a TV star and starred in two classic sitcoms, no small feat for sure. But she was never a movie star. One memorable role does not make you a movie star, and it's debatable how much Ordinary People is remembered outside of DL. I never see it on TV or streaming sites, never hear it talked about in general. It's a depressing movie from 40+ years ago that most people alive today have never seen.

People wanted Mary to be like Mary Richards the same way they wanted Lucille to be Lucy.

[quote] Now look at MTM. Adorable and perky on The Dick Van Dyke Show. A little less adorable on The MTM Show, but still sweet and appealing. The variety shows, nobody watched.

Maybe a middle-aged perky woman was not what people wanted to see.

[quote] Then came Ordinary People and a new, startling, cold and brittle Mary that we'd never seen before. And this chilly, brittle quality stayed present to one extent or another in pretty much everything we saw her in afterwards.

Maybe she should have leaned into this aspect of her personality, role-wise. Watching the MTM Show (later seasons) as an adult, I really see clearly what Robert Redford must have seen. Mary Richards had coldness underneath the perky exterior.

A poster above remarked that Mary (as Sante Kimes, part of a mother/son grifting team) was seen as the poor man's Faye Dunaway. Maybe there was only room for 1 or 2 actresses who could play those brittle parts.

[quote]Watching the MTM Show (later seasons) as an adult, I really see clearly what Robert Redford must have seen. Mary Richards had coldness underneath the perky exterior.

I have noticed this also, R63. I remember a review of Ordinary People that described Redford casting MTM because he spotted "the tension behind the smile." Watching the MTM show today, it's very evident. She was always being put-upon by others and just wanted people to GTFO of her face or apartment so she could be alone.

1982 release/ free on youtube / if you can make it through the whole thing.... well, i couldn't

God, no, R65. Why do successful comedic actors always want to do maudlin dramas in order to show their range?? Anybody can scowl and shout and fake cry. Not everybody can make people laugh.

OP - Dick Van Patten once said-

You are only as successful as the show you’re on

A friend of mine who is a type 1 diabetic (as Mary was) approached her at a restaurant and thanked her for her work for the cause and being a role model. He said she was extremely kind, warm, welcoming and appreciative. He said the other people in her party seemed annoyed.

I don't think she ever truly got sober. Those late decades with the diabetes or "diabetes," and the caretaker husband with the cops coming to the house and all that . . . Her diabetes was booze-generated and she was very debiliated much of the time. They've hidden it well, but not that well.

R69- One could say that MTM knew where to find the BOYS ( her much younger husband)and the BOOZE

If The Mary Tyler Moore Show were on the air today, the Transtapo would insist on Mary dating an FTM and having Georgette be a trans "woman"

They are truly spawn of Satan!!!

r69 is an ignorant fool. MTM has type 1 diabetes which is when the body does not produce any insulin at all and has nothing to to with a person's health, habits or lifestyle. It is completely different from type 2 diabetes which can often be linked to poor overall health or lifestyle choices (especially obesity). Idiots like r69 have no clue what they're talking about and lump in victims of type 1 with type 2 and then blame/shame them for having it.

I actually liked her 1986 "Mary" followup comedic sitcom version, the one that featured the actress who went onto pop TV immortality as Peg Bundy on Fox for 11 years after that. But the show was such an almost carbon copy in some ways of the original "MTM Show" setup, and TV was so saturated with dorky comedies and homages to the '60s and '70s TV days at the time, that I think people had had enough of "Newsroom Mary" by that time. Or else maybe it would've been nice if the network had given the show more time, or viewers felt that the time was right for Moore instead to make a reunion TV movie about her '70s hit show (rather than waiting until 2000 to do it and featuring only Valerie Harper's Rhoda character).

[quote] Kathy Griffin met MTM, Rickles, and B. white at a party one night. Rickles and Betty were fine; Mary was unfriendly. I think Mary had a hard time with other women.

You can't judge ANYONE by whther they were cold to Kathy Griffin the onetime they met her.

Kathy is notoriously difficult, and people in Hollywood have been exceptionally wary of her for years, usually because they know any private interaction with her will go into her act.

You should be genuinely embarrassed you offered this as evidence of any claim.

R74 I read that (on some other thread here) as : they were making crass jokes and Mary was prissy and walked away because she didn’t want to join in on the fun, so to speak. Not necessarily that she was friendly or unfriendly to Kathy.