MARY TYLER MOORE

(29 December 1936 - 25 January 2017)

The American actress Mary Tyler Moore began her career as a dancer and her first TV appearance was in a Hotpoint commercial during the popular show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet in 1952 with the real-life Nelson family. Umpteen more television shows ensued until she made a break for films with X-15 (1961), a Cold War space drama. Then came 158 episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show as the ditsy wife of Van Dyke’s scriptwriter. The film musical Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) with Julie Andrews might have made her a movie star but ensuing film roles,  including Change of Habit with Elvis Presley, were nothing great. Back on TV she was in Phyllis, then Rhoda, and her own show, playing the same character, Mary Richards in all three. Ordinary People (1980) was the film that showed her at her dramatic best and she was nominated for an Oscar. This was followed by Six Weeks and Just Between Friends before she returned to TV for the Lincoln mini-series playing Mary (who else?) and in many other series and TV movies. Her last film was Against the Current (2010), and her final TV appearance was on Hot in Cleveland (2013). On stage she was in an ill-fated musical of Breakfast at Tiffany’s with Richard Chamberlain in 1967, but she won six Emmy Awards for her TV work and Tony Awards for Whose Life Is It Anyway? and A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. She was married three times and had a son, Richie, who died in 1980. Her own company MTM Enterprises made many successful TV shows.

MICHAEL DARVELL