|
|
THE PHONE is ringing off the hook in Valerie Harper's hotel room. And she's locked out.
Just as Rhoda Morgenstern would do, she runs downstairs for help, commandeers a friend's room and calls a reporter back on the friend's phone, on the friend's dime.
And just as Rhoda would, Harper then makes fun of herself for having trouble with those magnetic hotel key cards.
She became an American icon playing the hapless but lovable best friend who lived upstairs and was always imposing on Mary Richards on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."
And she's much like that character. Easygoing. Effusive. Self-effacing. Funny. Likeable.
Within seconds, she makes the reporter feel like a lifelong friend.
Rhoda essentially was Harper. The classic TV show's writers molded the character to fit her. Rhoda and Mary were initially supposed to be rivals on the program and Cloris Leachman, who played Phyllis, was supposed to be Mary's buddy and confidante. But when the producers saw the budding chemistry between Harper and Moore, they quickly--and wisely--switched things around.
"I was supposed to be her nemesis, but there was a spark between us and the producers saw it," Harper said. "So they decided I would still be a thorn in Mary's side, but that we would be friends."
She also said the show's original concept was for Ted Baxter, the WJM-TV anchorman, to be Mary's love interest at the office.
"But when they auditioned Ted Knight, he was so funny, they moved it in a different direction," Harper said.
Like the late, great Knight, Harper has a big enough personality to make big things pivot sharply and go in new directions and to move big audiences just about wherever she wants them to go.
That's why she was the first choice to play the lead in the Broadway play "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife" three years ago--a role that ultimately went to Linda Lavin because Harper had other commitments then. And that's why the producers later jumped at the chance to hire her to play Marjorie Taub when the comedy went on tour and she happened to be available.
The comedy is at the National Theatre from Tuesday through March 23.
The role has some obvious similarities to Rhoda.
"Their backgrounds are similar," she said. "Both are Jewish women from the Bronx with a steamrolling entity of a mother. Freda in 'The Allergist's Wife' makes Ida Morgenstern look like Mother Teresa. And that's who Marjorie has to deal with."
But the differences between Rhoda and Marjorie were even more attractive to Harper.
People compare Marjorie to Rhoda, but the characters are very different, she said.
"Marjorie has these pretensions about herself and they cause her pain," she said. "She hasn't read The Washington Post or The New York Times from cover to cover or seen enough paintings and she's constantly trying to challenge herself.
She can't see the ways that she genuinely is a success in life.
"She's more like a Jewish Phyllis than Rhoda," Harper said.
By the show's end, Marjorie has stopped torturing herself.
"She realizes she should live for the moment, because it will not come again," Harper said.
She says the show, which was nominated for a Tony Award and has earned critical raves, is "screamingly funny" and that she takes satisfaction from making people laugh in these tense times.
Harper, a four-time Emmy Award winner, played Rhoda Morgenstern on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and in her spinoff series "Rhoda" for nine years, but never felt constricted by the role. And typecasting hasn't seemed to be a problem in her subsequent career.
In 1987 she was seen as "Valerie Hogan" in the NBC series "Valerie" and starred in the 1990 CBS series "City" and the 1994 CBS series "The Office."
In 2000, Harper reprised the role of Rhoda Morgenstern along with Mary Tyler Moore for an ABC television movie titled "Mary and Rhoda," which attracted more than 17 million viewers.
She also has appeared in many films and Broadway plays.
The Suffern, N.Y., native began her stage career at New York's Radio City Music Hall as a member of the corps de ballet. On Broadway, she performed in "Li'l Abner," "Take Me Along" with Jackie Gleason, "Wildcat" with Lucille Ball and "Subways Are For Sleeping" with Orson Bean and Carol Lawrence. Harper studied acting while she furthered her stage career. Her teachers included Mary Tarcai, John Cassavetes, and William Hickey.
Over the years Harper has continued to work in the theater. In 1983 she toured Florida with Zev Bufman's production of "Agnes of God" as the psychiatrist. She co-wrote "All Under Heaven" a play based upon the life of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck. In 1996, she starred in the New York production of "Death Defying Acts" by Elaine May and Woody Allen.
She said that over the years she has never felt the need to escape Rhoda.
"I don't know of any time I lost work because of Rhoda," Harper said.
If anything, she said, the popularity of the character has carried her career forward. She was eager to share the credit for that good fortune.
"Rhoda is so beloved because of her longevity and the quality of the show and its writing--the writing, yes, yes, absolutely," she said.
The writers of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," who were also the show's producers, had the last word, she said.
Today, she said, "People who aren't creative have the final say," and that's a major problem.
And she said the show was cast very carefully.
She said Ed Asner "and the other boys had only played heavies before," but that they were perfect choices, especially Asner as the amusingly gruff newsroom boss Lou Grant.
And she said the casting of Knight as Ted Baxter was pure inspiration. She said Baxter based his character on a somewhat pompous Los Angeles TV newsman at the time, George Putnam. Putnam, she said, "was very funny, but he didn't think he was. He'd rise up on his toes and say 'This is one reporter's opinion,'" and Knight borrowed that and used it famously on the show.
She said the show was groundbreaking because it was the first to portray women as independent individuals, not merely as wives and daughters, even though there was some initial fretting over Mary being single. The plan had been to make her a divorcee, but there was concern people would think she had divorced Rob Petry after playing his wife, Laura, on "The Dick Van Dyke Show."
In spite of that, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" became sort of a cultural watermark in women's liberation, while never being heavy-handed.
The decision to ditch the idea of Ted Baxter as a regular boyfriend and bring in a series of boyfriends for Mary inadvertently contributed to this liberation. "The show reflected what was going on in society," Harper said. "I think TV maybe was behind the times. We kind of idealized Ozzy and Harriet. I think the show reflected how mature young women were feeling."
That, she said, was essentially, "Am I going to get married? I would certainly like to, but I want to have a career."
The combination of a great ensemble cast, strong writing and the courage to make female characters three-dimensional ultimately made the show the gold standard of situation comedy.
Of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," Harper said, "When you do it, you don't think you're making a classic or think 'I'm going to be an icon' I was just doing the best work I could.
"And I think it's been the wind in the sails of my career," she said.