Mary Tyler Moore - could she have played Joan Crawford in MOMMIE DEAREST?

Buck would have never known where to find the boys and the booze

Lucy was offered the part of Carol Ann but once again Gary talked her out of it.

Joan loved spunk.

She never would've touched that Hollywood poison of a movie. Only a truly arrogant ghoul would've seen that trashy tell-all script, the comical production values, and the negative press before it was even cast, and said "THAT'S THE PART FOR ME!!!!"

Besides, she got an Oscar nomination out of playing another difficult mother that year. While that cunt Faye Dunaway never got solid work again.

I could see her in the role

Which was MTM more like in real life - Mary Richards or her Ordinary People role?

R6 she was probably more like Beth in real life.

R6 - Mary herself said she was more like Beth.

She was pretty good as an even nastier real life Mommie Dearest, Sante Kimes.

Lucy was offered the role of herself with a recreation scene from the movie where her and Viv's Studebaker breaks down near Joan Crawford's house and all of the hilarity that ensues. They would have rewrote the scene with just Lucy and Joan Crawford because Vivian had passed by the time the movie was filmed- but but but Gary talked her out of it.

R9- More hilarity would have likely ensued if Jean Stapleton had played the landlady as Edith Bunker.

You’re box office poison after all!

She wouldn’t have been able to save it and I don’t think she would have done it. Anne Bancroft dodged a bullet.

I’ve read Christina’s original script and it is not good. The shooting script for the movie was not good either. Frank Perry was a pussy and he let Faye bully him and the crew. He also allowed her cocaine fueled hijinks ruin what could’ve been an entertaining movie.

I can't picture Bancroft as Crawford, but who knows what her approach might have been. I think the movie is entertaining, just not in the way they intended it to be.

Mary wouldn’t have BEEN in Mommie Dearest.

Calvin! Conrad! Dammit!

I wonder how MTM would have done with Shirley MacLaine's role in Terms of Endearment.

James L. Brooks was the writer of it and he was the exec. producer of the MTM Show.

I always wondered if he ever thought of Mary for the role.

DAMN IT, TINA!!

I’M the Mary. You’re the Rhoda. All brash and sarcastic and needy.

R17 MTM never would've been equal to Debra Winger's acting in that movie. And she wasn't sufficiently mature to play Aurora Greenway, a strong and stone-hearted widow who raised a headstrong but insecure daughter on her own.

She's also too close to Debra Winger in age. At the time, MTM was youthful for her age, and Winger was mature for her age, so they'd seem more like sisters than mother and daughter.

Mary Tyler Moore IS Norma Rae!

Sally Field IS Shug Avery

LMAO R21.

I could just see Sal's scrunched up little face now....."You SHO is ugly!"

OP- MTM playing Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest is no more absured than our beloved Lucille Ball playing the role of Rizzo in the 1978 movie Grease. Can you imagine our Lucy wearing pink SHORT SHORTS in the We Go Together Finale.

She was deep in negotiations when Gary with the help of VV talked her out of it.

Lucy Dearest!