Mary Tyler Moore dies at 80

January 25, 2017 • 2:24 pm

This is so sad; I was a huge fan of her comedy, starting with her performance as Laura Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show (one of the best shows ever!) and continuing on to her own eponymous show set in Minneapolis. She was not just a comedian, but an actress, nominated for an Oscar for the movie “Ordinary People.” She was one of those people whose death you simply couldn’t imagine.

CNN gives the details, but you can read them for yourself. The New York Times gives the cause of death as cardiopulmonary arrest due to pneumonia.

Here’s one clip from her show, an episode called “Chuckles bites the dust,” about an expired clown. It shows as well as anything the range of her comedic talent.

The summary:

Chuckles the Clown is dead. He had dressed as the character Peter Peanut, and a rogue elephant tried to “shell” him during a parade. The unusual circumstances of Chuckles’ death provoke a wave of jokes (“You know how hard it is to stop after just one peanut!” and, “He could’ve gone as Billy Banana and had a gorilla peel him to death”). Everyone is consumed with uncontrollable laughter, with the exception of Mary, who is appalled by her co-workers’ apparent lack of respect for the dead.

Well, things change through the clip:

RIP, Mary.

marytm

34 thoughts on “Mary Tyler Moore dies at 80”

    2. From the closing scenes of the final episode:

      “It’s a long way to Tipperary,
      It’s a long way to go.
      It’s a long way to Tipperary,
      To the sweetest girl I know . . .”

      Still sobbing.

  3. What a brilliant clip. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was so well done. It had one of the classic opening theme song sequences, I bet anyone who watched the show at all can hum it, and of course, Mary’s wonderful clothes closet! A sad day, for sure.

  4. The last show I watched last night before bed was The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Very sad.

  5. I was in the studio when they were filming that episode about Chuckles. Afterward Mary walked with me and held my hand. (I was a wee tyke.) Lovely person…. She’ll be missed….

    – Jerry Piven

      1. Yeah, but all I have at hand is a hassock. I think MTM would understand.

        Thx, btw, I always wondered what the distinction was — though, obvs, not enough to look it up myself. 🙂

        1. I always get hassock and cassock mixed up. Another good reason for avoiding church.

  7. I grew up in the U.S. and regularly watched the Mary Tyler Moore show with my family. Really nice memories. Honestly sad to her of her passing.

  8. She probably was so upset about trump and women everywhere, and she couldn’t attend the march, so this was her statement.

  9. You’ve got to hand it to Robert Redford. It was impossible not to like the warm and gracious Mary Tyler Moore, but he saw something there that told him she could play the cold, withdrawn mother of her Oscar-nominated performance in Ordinary People.

  10. If we’re recounting MTM’s roles, let us not forget her turn as a nun, opposite Elvis’s urban doctor, in Change of Habit, the King’s final film performance.

  11. Crap. I really liked Mary Tyler Moore. I especially like her in The Mary Tyler Moore show and I even do an “oh Mr Grant” bit. 🙂

  12. Sometimes for the fun of it, I create a mental list of the 10 best sitcoms of my youth and younger days (the ‘’50s, 60s and ‘70s). The Dick Van Dyke show and the Mary Tyler Moore show always make the list, along with I Love Lucy, the Honeymooners, and the Andy Griffith Show. It was Mary’s self-effacing charm that made her shows so great. On MTM, her interactions with Lou Grant and Ted Baxter are sitcom gems. And on Dick Van Dyke, her oft said line “Oh, Rob” is a classic. I am sad to hear the news of her death.

    1. What–you forgot “All in the Family”–the best sitcom EVER (70s). I agree that the Honeymooners was a classic. (“One of these days, Alice, one of these days. . .”)

  13. I grew up watching CBS’ Saturday night lineup. I seem to recall the MTM show, Bridget Loves Bernie, All in the Family, and Newhart (or the Bob Newhart Show). Fond memories.

    The MTM Show also spawned Rhoda and Lou Grant; two pretty good shows in their own right.

    1. The next year [1973], “Bridget Loves Bernie” was replaced with “M*A*S*H” and “The Bob Newhart Show” was followed by Carol Burnett. 3 hours of great comedy. And then, a couple of years later, after a 30-minute break for local news (and a change of stations), the original “Saturday Night Live.” That was MY Golden Age of TV.

  14. I loved MTM. As a boy going through puberty, I loved watching her show and reruns of the Dick Van Dyke Show because she was so incredibly sexy. I now realize while I did find her physically appealing (alright – hot!), I just like HER. I thought she was so cool. Everything about her.

  16. One of those shows I recall watching regularly with my family — MTM was a particular favorite of my mother, also named Mary and only about 4 years younger than her. Almost hard to believe it’s been nearly 40 years since the last episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show aired, March 19, 1977. And I do remember watching it with my mother, back when I was 14. As a song from the year before went, “time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping ….”

  17. …on the Dick Van Dyke Show (one of the best shows ever!)

    I will second that. That was a brilliant comedy ensemble, and she was just brought in as a secondary character. Such good fortune in casting.

  19. Nooooo!

    She was my favorite crush!
    So smart, funny, and unbelievably pretty in a
    fresh and unpretentious way.

    MTM circa the Dick Van Dyke show is the pinnacle, the perfect woman! (For this guy)

    I’ve seen more recent interviews and she remained so classy. So sad…

  20. We watched the Dick Van Dyke show every week. I remember huddling in my mother’s bedroom where the TV was and watching it every week.

    I confess to having a crush on Mary Tyler Moore for many (too many!) years. She was my ideal – smart, funny, witty, insightful and attractive. Alas.

  22. I loved this show – one of the ‘family’ programmes I remember from childhood that we were allowed to watch.
    “Oo-ee-oo I look just like Buddy Holly
    Oh-oh, and you’re Mary Tyler Moore” (Weezer)

  23. The Dick Van Dyke show had a great cast and many creative scripts. Ms. Moore was one of the keys to the success of the show.

  24. finally took a look at this Tw##t from Command Line Magic originally dated 23 April 2010, retweeted apparently on 26 January 2017 :

    Command Line Magic (@climagic)
    4/23/10, 22:21
    N=$((1894 * 238291));for i in {0..8};do echo -e “\e[3${N:${i}:1}m$(echo REBBZ ERYLG LENZ|tr A-Z N-ZA-M|rev)\e[0m”;done #That 70s shell

    to see what that does, you can try to copy/paste it into a terminal – like the Terminal app on Mac OSX. IDK about Windows.

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