Mary Tyler Moore ‘hid’ her blindness for decades

Good interview with her. I don't care if she was a bitch: I'm glad she existed.

The drinking didn't help. I'm so grateful I don't have diabetes. I eat pretty well, but revel in not having to worry about that.

Mary told a joke on David Letterman several years ago:

A extremely talented vaudeville performer came through town. The audience went wild. An agent rushed to him backstage. He said, "I'm gonna make you a star. What's your name?" The vaudeville performer responded, "Penis von Lesbian."

The agent said, "No, we've got to think up another name." After pausing for a moment, the agent said, "I've got it!" Your new name is:

"Dick Van Dyck!"

She tells a great story here about accidentally stealing a car. I wonder if her eyesight was a factor.

Lovely interview, and you can sense David held onto a crush for her (even after staring on her ill-fated variety show).

[quote] even after staring on her ill-fated variety show

Didn’t his mother tell him that’s not polite?

Not only did I miss it when I proofread, I stared blankly for several seconds until I realized where my 'oh dear' was located.

Maybe it's bedtime.

R6, take a few edibles and relax until the room starts to dissolve around you.

R7 = Maureen Dowd

Ugh, this breaks my heart. Poor Mare. Loved her.

Damn, I loved Mary.

R4 - yellow is a difficult color to pull off.

She was funny when saying And that's why you won't see me in a Rob Reiner film.

Lots of gifted comedians are difficult off-camera. She had impeccable comic timing. And I'm not surprised to hear about this, as it's quite common for people to adapt so well to progressive vision loss that people hardly notice they're blind - and blind can mean partial but significant loss of vision, not just complete sight loss.

The new Max documentary is worth watching.

At first, it's all voiceover from interviews that have been on YouTube for years, but the new footage from home movies (including her bachelorette party/roast with Betty White and Bev Sanders) is fascinating. And there are Speedo and shirtless shots of toyboy Levine.

One gripe: They didn't even mention her disastrous two variety series from the '78-'79 season but several clips are shown, including the Ed Asner Dancers and a disco sketch under the closing credits.

R14 I can kind of understand why they wouldn't mention two short-lived flops, maybe for time's sake? Do you think they were worth mentioning? I'm not asking sarcastically. I'd be genuinely curious to hear why, if you do.

R14, There was also another failed attempt at a 30 minute sitcom in the 1980s with James Farentino as her love interest.

R16 . . .

It wasn’t concealed very well. It was clearly evident that Mary had vision issues for years.

I can’t believe her husband let her endure these creeps.

R17 MARY!

Well in the early 2000s I walked in on her when she was in the bathroom. Not my fault- it was a single person bathroom at a broadway rehearsal studio and Mary hadn’t locked the door.

She certainly saw me when I entered the room.

Exactly, r18. I didn't pay much attention to her, but when I saw the "Hot in Cleveland" episode she did, she was clearly blind.

It’s hard to believe watching that clip at R21 that they’re all dead now. The clip was from 2013 and Betty, the oldest, was the last survivor who died in 2021.

Buck never would have been blind,

Mary Tyler Moore concealed her blindness for at least 30 years THEN she died.

Fixed it for you, OP

I was born in 1978. I heard about Mary Tyler Moore's belovedness all my life but every time I saw reruns on TV, it just didn't look interesting to me. I did grow up watching Rhoda, and she was my only real curiosity about MTM's show.

I finally watched it on Hulu during the pandemic lockdown. What a brilliant sitcom. The early seasons felt more like watching a smart play more than a silly sitcom. I do think Rhoda stole most of her scenes, but there's no question that MTM's performance and her executive role were the heart of the series. I did kind of fall for her.

It seems crazy that she wasn't diagnosed with "juvenile" diabetes until age 33 after a miscarriage. Unless it was gestationally induced, that means her system was suffering for years. I actually wonder whether she may have been self-medicating with alcohol before she was diagnosed. It's sad that alcoholism is still seen as a moral failure instead of a physiological dependency.

[quote]Lots of gifted comedians are difficult off-camera.

Mary (like Lucy) was an actress, not a comedian.

R3, I remember that - it was cringe inducing.

The documentary covered what a beloved TV actress she was in the 60s and 70s, and ended it there. They never mentioned her television 'comebacks' which included 2 failed variety shows in the 70s (during press for the shows, Mary said back then she always 'dreamed' of having a variety show like Carol Burnett had) and two failed attempts at sitcoms in the 1980s ('Mary Maguire' and 'NY News'). They didn't mention her attempt to bringing back her Mary Richards character for a weekly series in 2000 either, with the flop pilot show 'Mary and Rhoda'.

So after 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' ended in 1977, her TV career was done. Four 'comebacks' in different formats over the next decade and no one tuned in - plus the one in 2000. That is part of her TV legacy as well as the 60s and 70s, and shouldn't have been overlooked.

DAMN! That Dr. Levine was a hottie in the 80s when she met him - loved his shirtless poses. Very sexy guy,

Robert Levine was a fug imho. And knowing Mary's history from her autobio, it's doubtful there was much of a sexual life to that marriage.

R29, As previously posted, Mary once admitted that she and Grant Tinker never saw each other completely naked throughout their marriage.

R30 She never saw him completely naked because her vision was impaired.

In 1964?

Was Mary averse to sex? Or did she have gay husbands- or both-

I thought this photo was very funny at the time. They must have been hot shits to pose in this way.

I always found Dick van Dyke to be so, so hot. Am I the only one? Was MTM confirmed to have gotten a piece?

The doc's narrative was about the degree to which Mary's roles reflected her own life as a woman as well as the changing representation of women generally, during the 50s thru the 70s. So by the time we finish Mary Richards, I think we've covered that, and going into her variety series (with Letterman and Michael Keaton) or the MARY series, or the attempt at a Mary-Rhoda thing, just doesn't add to that.

This is why I liked the doc, even though I wish, in a way, it had covered her entire career in more detail, I respected that the filmmakers had a story and they developed it. I mean, look no further than the fact that the Rona Barrett interview was the framing device all the way thru.

[quote] I always found Dick van Dyke to be so, so hot. Am I the only one?

Probably, yes.

r35 - Mr. Van Dyke was a dancer like Ray Bolger. They could do gay choreography but still come off as straight. Sylvia Lewis was Bolger's featured partner on his own show.

Her drinking even after her Diabetes-1 diagnosis was a significant contributing factor to her vision and health issues later in life.

R36, And we never saw Rona’s face.

R39, Slow suicide?

She also smoked like a chimney - she was sitting with a full ashtray in the clips from her '80s bachelorette party. That's rough on the arteries, including in the eyes.

Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker were such a great-looking Hollywood couple.

In the later season of the MTM Show, in the opening credits when you briefly see Mary having a dinner date in a restaurant it is actually with Grant Tinker.

The documentary made it seem that Mary was close to Grant’s children from a previous marriage.

[quote]The documentary made it seem that Mary was close to Grant’s children from a previous marriage.

Closer than to her biological son. That was straight from Grant Tinker's son, who was interviewed for it.

Guys, the documentary was executive produced by MTM's husband. Why would you think it would be critical of her career or take a harsh view of her addiction or relationships?

It's a documentary but docs always have an editorial angle, and it would be fucked up for a widowed spouse to produce a movie or TV series that is critical of the dead partner.

It's peculiar that the doc is produced by Lena Waithe's production company.

Fun fact: Mary killed Rhoda in a murder-suicide.

In 1977-78, Rhoda rebounded ratings-wise after the divorce in a Sunday 8pm timeslot after 60 Minutes. For fall 1978, CBS gave Mary's variety show that time slot and moved Rhoda to Saturday at 8.

"Mary" was gone in three weeks. Rhoda fell to 95th place (!) in the ratings and was off the air by December.

R44. Good eye. Good trivia.

[quote] Lots of gifted comedians are difficult off-camera. She had impeccable comic timing.

The "Chuckles" episode is proof of that. The final sequence at the funeral where she keeps cracking up is a masterpiece of timing.

So is her favorite scene (below, starting at 20:41) from "The Dick van Dyke" show: where she opens Rob's mail... and gets into enormous trouble. (The background: he has made fun of her for being a snoop in a sketch on his show, and she's chewed him out for it.)

In interviews, Mary would cite this episode as her personal favorite.

That Chuckles episode was totally overrated, IMO. I don't think Mary was ever funny and I don't think she was a great straight-woman, either. She was a very good, attractive, charming everywoman in the MTM Show. The saying was kind of true:

Mary was who you wanted to be.

Rhoda was who you probably were.

Phyllis was who you never wanted to be.

I do think Mary was funny singing "One More for the Road," with Lou egging her on as if she were a torch singer.

[quote]That Chuckles episode was totally overrated, IMO. I don't think Mary was ever funny and I don't think she was a great straight-woman, either.

Thank you for sharing, Minority Report.

I've heard Dick van Dyke's cock is long and heavy, with a forest of pubic hair.

And he’s still alive to fuck you with it.

One of my favourite episodes, and one of the final episodes in the series, has Murray, Ted and Lou imagining what life would be like married to Mary. MTM gets a chance to play different versions of her character.

The cast plays their roles as old people in Lou’s fantasy. This begins at 13:05.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show was the best television show ever. However, there are much funnier episodes than the unfunny, Chuckles the Clown. It's an insult to say that the mediocre. Chuckles episode is representative of the gold standard set by MTM, the cast, writers and production team.

Mary's third husband, shirtless.

R51, Mary had good taste. I often quote, to clueless people, “I’m usually so much cuter.”

R58, I would choose the episode that introduced Betty White’s character, “The Lars Affair” as the series’ funniest.

I also like the episode in which Mary goes to jail, where she’s visited by Lou, prompting her hard-edged cellmate, played by the great Barbara Colby, to look at Lou up & down before uttering , “I’ve seen some tough-looking chicks in my day, but this one takes the cake.”

My favorite episode is "Not a Christmas Story" from season 5. The WJM gang are all having separate beefs with each other and then get snowed in at work at night. Luckily, they won't starve because Sueann has just completed taping on her Happy Homemaker Christmas special and has Christmas dinner laid out on a table.

The beefs from the work day carry over into "Christmas dinner." The only one who's happy is Sueann, who dangles some mistletoe over Lou's head and assaults him with a kiss.

...and a partridge in a pear tree.

Funny joke about Mary....she has diabetes.

Christmas Evie