Mary Tyler Moore: She Turned the World On With Her Smile (but she wasn’t always smiling)

The pandemic re-introduced me to the simple joys of TV’s long-running Mary Tyler Moore Show. From 1970 through 1977,  the nation watched Mary Richards (a smart and attractive single gal with a megawatt smile) at home in Minneapolis, where she toiled in a local TV station’s newsroom while also hanging out with pals and occasionally dating someone who never turned out to be Mr. Right. The description hardly sounds like much, but the show’s writing and its casting were so smart that viewers turned in week after week. At the time, Moore was remembered by sitcom fans as the wife of Dick Van Dyke on his long-running series. The show that bears HER name introduced us to Ed Asner (who went on to play his curmudgeonly Lou Grant character on a fine dramatic series set at an urban newspaper), Ted Knight (as doofus newscaster Ted Baxter). Valerie Harper (as Mary’s lovelorn buddy, Rhoda Morgenstern), Cloris Leachman (as Mary’s ditsy landlady), and the inimitable Betty White (as the station’s s man-hungry “Happy Homemaker”). Tying it all together was plucky Mary: a female maneuvering in a man’s world while trying not to let her natural femininity get quashed.

 Mary Tyler Moore, originally an aspiring dancer, moved from TV commercials to sitcoms with ease. She seemed to have it all, despite a background that was more wine than roses. As made clear in a recent documentary, Being Mary Tyler Moore, alcoholism ran deep in her family. So did early deaths: her sister died of painkillers and alcohol at age 21; her brother succumbed to kidney cancer at 47; her only son died of an accidental gunshot wound at 24. She herself struggled with diabetes while also managing to surmount years of alcoholism.

 One of the painful ironies of her son’s death was that it came a mere three weeks after the release of her all-time major film role, that of a bereaved mother in Robert Redford’s directorial debut, Ordinary People (1980). The film, based on a novel by Judith Guest, zeroes in on an affluent suburban family rocked by the death of its eldest son in a boating accident. Tyler Moore played a woman whose considerable social charm masks a rigidity that makes her unable to show compassion toward the younger son (Timothy Hutton) whose guilt for his part in the accident is destroying his life. The film was named Best Picture by the Academy, and Hutton’s youthful performance (he was 20) won him a Supporting Actor Oscar. Tyler Moore was nominated too, in the Lead Actress category, though she lost out to Sissy Spacek for Coal Miner’s Daughter. But the role of Beth Jarrett showed the world she could do far more than be perky.

 There were to be many disappointments in her life, like the last-minute cancellation of a musical version  of Breakfast at Tiffany’s in which she was set to star on Broadway. Her first marriage, at age 18, dissolved quickly. Her second, to TV executive Grant Tinker, with whom she founded the highly successful MTM Enterprises, also ended in divorce. Unexpectedly, she fell for a 29-year-old cardiologist, Dr. Robert Levine, when she was in her late forties. To everyone’s surprise, they remained married for 34 years until her death in 2017. He continues to be devoted to her memory,  and was deeply involved with the making of the documentary film. The doc contains frank interviews with Mary, showing her to be far more thoughtful about her personal lapses than one might guess. It also chronicles her passion for animals and for ever-changing hair-dos.

 

 

 

And Here’s to YOU, Larry Turman

 

The passing of Hollywood producer Lawrence Turman at age 96 has, I’m glad to say, not gone unnoticed. Turman produced 42 films, directed two, and spent the last three decades of his life teaching his trade to graduate students as the head of  the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC. I got to know him while researching Seduced by Mrs. Robinson, my 2017 book on the long-term impact of Turman’s best-known film, The Graduate. Released in 1967, The Graduate was a worldwide smash that briefly catapulted the then-41-year-old Turman into the top ranks of Hollywood players.  He enjoyed the notoriety, but hardly let it go to his head. The man I first met at his USC office in 2007 was both cordial and feisty. Above all, I quickly recognized him as a straight-shooter.

 This became clear  when our chat turned to the topic of Larry’s directorial debut. His goal was to bring to the screen another racy comedy by the original author of The Graduate, Charles Webb. But The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971) turned out to be a disappointment, one for which he now blames himself.  Comparing Dustin Hoffman, whose career was launched with The Graduate,  to the young actor he cast in Stockbroker, Larry admitted, “There’s a reason Dustin Hoffman is a movie star and Richard Benjamin is not. Dustin is vulnerable and likable; Richard Benjamin, wonderful guy and a wonderful actor, he comes across on screen as brittle, cold, distant.” He now admits to having made, among many other errors, an unfortunate casting choice.

 While exploring the papers on the making of The Graduate in Larry Turman’s archives,  I was surprised to come across glossy photos of what looked to be a stag party. The men in the film’s cast and crew, perched on folding chairs, were being cozily entertained by two cuties wearing high heels, bikini bottoms, and nothing else. When I asked Larry about the circumstances, he sniffed, “If they had that party, they didn’t invite me, the producer.” That’s when I pulled out a photo, and he expressed surprise, “That’s me on Mike Nichols’ left.” An audition? I strongly doubt it.

 Larry’s 2005 book, So You Want to be a Producer, lays out in clear-cut terms what it takes to succeed in his field. But he cautions aspirants against being overly ego-driven. Case in point: some years back he saw an announcement of a Motion Picture Academy screening of The Graduate, with director Mike Nichols as the evening’s honored guest. Wrote Larry, “No mention of me whatsoever. If you’ve read this far, you know I think the world of Mike, but The Graduate exists as a film only because of me. So you want to be a producer?”

 Fortunately for me, I’d rather be a writer than a producer. And Larry was enormously helpful to me in clarifying why and how The Graduate was made. We did some jockeying over interpretations: I refused to accept that Katharine Ross’s character, the lovely Elaine Robinson, remains passive throughout. (After all, she comes to Ben’s Berkeley rooming house at midnight demanding to be kissed.) On the other hand, I learned something important: that although The Graduate seemed remarkably timely to college students in 1967, the thinking throughout the production was that the story took place circa 1963. (Hence, no Vietnam reference at all.)

When my book came out, I invited Larry to lunch as a thank-you, and afterwards received an email I cherish: “Lunch was very enjoyable and even enlightening.  Thank you again for initiating it.  You’re formidable.”

 So were you, Larry. So were you.

 

 

 

Born in the U.S.A.: Indiana Jones and Asteroid City

There was a time, back in the Thirties and Forties, when Hollywood backlots stood in for all the exotic places on the globe. You needed to set your story in a Casablanca bazaar? An Irish village? An exotic palace high in the Himalayas? If SoCal couldn’t find a suitable location, perhaps you went as far away as Yuma, Arizona (where Crosby and Hope filmed Road to Morocco). Back then, Hollywood studios’ screenplays circumnavigated the globe, but their production was strictly all-American.

 How things have changed! I just saw Wes Anderson’s new Asteroid City, an all-star meditation on the difference between reality and artistic invention. Some of it is apparently set in New York, where a TV documentary captures the evolution of a fledgling theatre piece written by Broadway great Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). Most of it—showing the playing-out of Earp’s artistic vision—is set in a candy-colored version of the American Southwest, complete with a quaint filling station, a roadside café, and a bungalow court, as well as a freight train that passes through now and again. This out-of-the-way place, known as Asteroid City, gets its name from a small globule of space junk that once landed here. Now it’s the location of a modest but prestigious gathering of military brass, some “brainiac” kids who’ve won a science competition, and their eclectically assorted parents. And did I mention there’s an alien sighting?

 The locale, the cast, and the background music (lots of old western tunes that would surely make the Coen Brothers happy) all shriek Americana. So I was more than a bit surprised, in reading the closing credits, to discover that Asteroid City was shot largely in Spain, with additional production units in France and Italy. I’m sure the financing of the film had something to do with the choice of shooting locations. Anderson, who has made such films as The Darjeeling Limited, and The French Dispatch, has a great affinity for exotic locales. By choosing to shoot in far-flung corners of the globe, he’s doubtless come up with some lucrative funding sources that depend on him filming far from Hollywood, even when he’s dealing with all-American subject matter.

 I like Anderson’s loopy vision of the world, and it’s fun to see such major talents as Scarlett Johansson, Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston and even Tom Hanks pop up in offbeat roles. (Jeff Goldblum is billed as the alien.) The approach worked beautifully in probably my favorite Anderson ensemble flick, The Grand Budapest Hotel. (His sensitive coming-of-age romance Moonrise Kingdom is lovely but stylistically uncharacteristic.) But it certainly helps, when the canvas is so broad, if we care about the characters, and if the film is actually about something coherent. In Asteroid City, Anderson’s movement back and forth between the behind-the-scenes creation of a drama and the actual playing out of the finished version can be seen as meaningful . . . or simply aggravating. Me, I’ll go with the latter adjective.

 But of course the big news this week is about the launching of Indiana Jones and the Dial of  Destiny. Talk about Americana—and a great film with which to kick off a holiday weekend. No, I didn’t choose to brave what I hope will be big crowds at the multiplex (today’s film industry needs all the blockbusters it can get). But I rented Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in which Harrison Ford gets to play (delightfully) against old pro Sean Connery. Indie’s crusty dad may be Scottish, but the man himself is a strong, smart, courageous All-American. July 4 doesn’t get much better than that.