Robert Redford told critic Leonard Maltin how he came to cast the perky spirited hilarious TV star Mary Tyler Moore as the cold-as-ice mother in Ordinary People:
“I’ve always liked the idea of going off in casting, going off-center. Mary Tyler Moore was America’s sweetheart, you know. The ‘Dick Van Dyke Show’ was fantastic. Really, really, funny, funny show. And she was great. I had a place on the beach in Malibu. I’m sitting on this fall or winter day and there’s nobody on the beach. I’m sitting there looking out at the ocean and suddenly I see this figure walking by. She’s all bundled up and it’s Mary Tyler Moore; she had a place down the beach. When she was walking by, she was all bundled up, all alone and that wasn’t the Mary Tyler Moore I had seen on television. She was deep in thought, thinking something and I thought, “Hmm.” And it stuck in my head. Then years later, I guess that image came back to me. I said, ‘You know, maybe Mary Tyler Moore’ and the studio thought I was nuts. They said, ‘You can’t do that.’ And I said, ‘Well…’ I met with her and she agreed to do it and that was a very brave move on her part.”
I’ll say.
If you only saw her in Ordinary People. you would think she had made a career out of playing stiff repressed women. Her cardigan behavior alone …
In The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which premiered in 1970, she played a woman who struck out on her own, leaving behind an asshole boyfriend, moving to a new city, and starting a life that SHE got to choose, make her own way. She didn’t just have a job. She had a CAREER. Not only was it a pioneering representation of a career woman, even more than that it said something else extremely important, something that shows how far we have backslid since then: Women can carry a TV show. Women can have a show named AFTER them and still dominate the ratings. That show was appointment television. Not just for women. For everyone. It launched MULTIPLE careers.
I don’t even need to WATCH “Chuckles the Clown Bites the Dust” episode to start laughing. I merely THINK about it and start to laugh. Her acting in that scene is world-class.
We have all been her in that moment. I have one particularly horrifying memory of starting to laugh so hard at a solemn event that I actually thought I was going to perish from trying to hold it in. It’s much easier for actors to learn how to shed tears, there are technical things you can do, but to laugh? Laughing is spontaneous, quirky, weird. There are tricks you can do: push your stomach in, like you’re getting punched, and burst out with a HA HA at the same time and keep going with it. That’s pretty fail-safe, the laughter sounds pretty real when you do that. But this? This IS real. I can think of very few “laughing scenes” that are its equal. So much of acting-laughing looks fake. I am in awe of what she pulls off here. AND it makes me howl every time.
I could not put up this post without mentioning Change of Habit, Elvis’ final film, co-starring Mary Tyler Moore. They filmed in 1969, and it was released in 1970. They’re lovely together. He plays an inner city doctor who’s set up a clinic for the community. Because of course. And she plays a nun who is also a nurse, and is sent out of the convent, sans habit, to do good out in the real world. In other words, this is Elvis’ Vatican II movie. She goes to work in Elvis’ clinic. Blasphemous sparks fly. There’s a great scene when she joins up with a neighborhood football game in the park. Watching her and Elvis play football together is a Joy like no other. She joked that she grew up with brothers. She had been playing football since she was a kid. Here is Mary Tyler Moore and Elvis, hanging out during the filming of that scene. And, of course, she had nothing but good things to say about him, because that is true across the board. Her only complaint was that he could not – could NOT – stop from calling her “Ma’am” or “Miss Moore.” She did her best. “Please, Elvis. Call me Mary.” He tried. But it never felt right.
A pioneer. A game-changing woman. A torch-bearer for the rest of us.
RIP.
What a loss. It may sound trite to say the end of an era, but it feels like that. I remember so vividly the whole family sitting down in the rumpus room, watching her show. All 7 of us, and that warm feeling of my parent’s laughter.
She was amazing in Ordinary People. I caught it on cable not too long ago, and I was again struck by the depth of her performance.
My own experience of laughter at a solemn occasion-my wedding. I started laughing and could not stop. We have a picture of me with my head thrown back, howling with laughter, and the best man has his hand on my shoulder-like he thought I would bolt. I also used to get that urge in church-but always able to squelch it.
I saw Change of Habit in the theater, and I thought Mary and Elvis had a great chemistry. I remember being mad because they couldn’t be together, all because she was a nun. Vocation, smocation…it’s Elvis!
// We have a picture of me with my head thrown back, howling with laughter, and the best man has his hand on my shoulder-like he thought I would bolt. //
Hahaha!!!
It’s the WORST feeling in the world. I love the moments when Moore tries to pull herself together, glancing behind her, like help is going to come from back there or something.
and then how the laughter morphs into sobs.
It’s just a tour de force!
// // I remember being mad because they couldn’t be together, all because she was a nun. Vocation, smocation…it’s Elvis! //
I know!! I choose to live in the delusion that the ending may be somewhat ambiguous. Although if you look at that ending in another way – it’s totally blasphemous. She watches him sing in church – and she is blown away – and then there are all these shots of Jesus on the cross – and the connection is made: Loving God and loving Elvis are one and the same thing.
!!!!
Reminds me of what the Mother Superior said to actress Dolores Hart when they were discussing her becoming a nun. Hart was saying she wasn’t sure it was right for her – she had been an actress, she had worn a bikini onscreen, she had kissed all these different men, including Elvis – and the Mother Superior said, “Look at it this way. God is the bigger Elvis.”
I haven’t seen Ordinary People in a long long time but there are so many moments of her performance that I remember.
The LOOK on her face when her son comes across the room and hugs her. She cannot hug him back. You only see her eyes above his shoulder. Frozen devastated eyes.
My God, she was good.
It looks like 2017 is going to be a continuation of 2016. One performance of hers that I haven’t seen mentioned in any of the tributes I’ve read is her Mary Todd Lincoln in the miniseries Gore Vidal’s Lincoln. It’s well done all around but her performance is the standout, the definitive Mary Todd, even beyond Sally Field in Lincoln. Just thought I’d get that in there, because ya’ll know about the rest! It’ll be a mean world without her.
// It looks like 2017 is going to be a continuation of 2016. //
Well, that’s to be expected. Human beings die. Every year. :)
I actually haven’t seen Lincoln! I will check it out. It sounds very intriguing!
We were all just reminiscing about her great performance in Flirting with Disaster on Twitter – another favorite. It was great to see her get to do something huge and comedic. and – as always – she made it look totally real.
Sheila
Such a beautiful tribute to Mary Tyler Moore!
The Robert Redford story! Incredible. And so hilarious! “You know, maybe Mary Tyler Moore.”
I loved the Dick Van Dyke Show!
She really freaks me out in Ordinary People. I watched it a million times.
“Her cardigan behavior alone.”
I get chills, haha!
Elvis’s last film! Great story too. So sweet!
She was something!
I mean, who looks at Mary Tyler Moore walking on the beach – has that thought about her – and then years later, decides she’s the one to play that wretched woman?? God, it’s one of my favorite examples of inspired casting ever.
Member the moment when Hutton crosses the room – with no warning – and gives her a huge hug? She sits frozen, only her eyes seen over his shoulder – and she doesn’t hug him back, and she sits there, still, and devastated. She is a flawless actress.
And yes, the cardigan behavior. Plus the turtleneck. It’s so uptight and she OWNS it!!
I had forgotten the Oprah episode where Mary Tyler Moore showed up. It’s genius. I watched it yesterday and found myself in tears – probably exacerbated by the state of the world right now, but still – seeing such a beautiful moment of tribute and appreciation was so overwhelming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPd77roTra4
She was so, so good in Ordinary People. This brittle frigid spot moving through the movie, warping everything she comes in contact with. And how brilliant is that costuming? I bet even her underwear is beige.
Also, remember her golf outfit?? It’s CHILLING.
As I recall (it’s been a long time since Ive seen it, which I should rectify) – she and hubby are on a golf vacation – and hubby didn’t want to go because he felt anxious about leaving their son alone. She insisted it’s fine, etc. Of course (if I recall correctly), things start to fall apart for their son while they’re gone.
And she’s all jovial and chipper and happy on the golf course – NOT only because her vacation is fun but because she’s away from her son.
Mary Tyler Moore is just a genius at suggesting all of those different extremely ugly levels. You actually end up aching for her – because she can’t, she is UNABLE, to open up, to love unconditionally. And – I’m not sure of the timeline of filming – but her son died in 1980 from a self-inflicted (accidental?) shot-gun blast. She wrote in her memoir about feeling tremendous guilt about his childhood and how much she wasn’t there for him during those years.
I’m not saying she was tapping into her autobiography – maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t – but the problems of being a mother who can’t connect, for this or that reason, were very close to her. Forbidden feelings, really, if you think about the cult of motherhood in our culture – that motherhood automatically comes easy for most women. But what if it doesn’t? What if you struggle with it? What if you have resentment towards your child? Even momentary resentment? If you aren’t ever allowed to have those feelings – where do they go?
This is not to excuse bad parenting. But it’s a hell of a head trip, I imagine.
and her character in Ordinary People was chilling because she WAS able to love unconditionally – but only once – with her first-born. As long as the first-born was present, nobody else noticed that she couldn’t “go there” with anyone else.
I need to watch it again.
Yes, the golf outfit! How she’s so sunny, all of a sudden, as Donald Sutherland realizes it’s because she doesn’t have to think about their son. It’s a shattering portrait of what grief can do to a person who isn’t equipped to handle it, but as you said it isn’t only that – because there are those damning flashbacks, the ones that show poor Conrad was always shut out of his mother’s love. Even when her husband asks if she still loves him, and all she can say is “I feel the same way I’ve always felt about you.” What kind of an answer is that?
We’re so trained to expect a reconciliation in this kind of movie and there just isn’t one here, because Beth can’t change. It’s such a violent movie, emotionally. I do wonder what became of her. She’s kind of a monster, but she’s a very tragic one. And now she’s forced into dealing with all that ‘mess’ she can’t handle.
And all this is of course without even bringing up MTM’s contributions to comedy. The seventies were such a golden age for sitcoms in part because of Mary – I grew up watching a lot of them on reruns – Taxi, Laverne and Shirley, Rhoda. They seemed fresh and funny to me even as a kid in the nineties.
// Even when her husband asks if she still loves him, and all she can say is “I feel the same way I’ve always felt about you.” What kind of an answer is that? //
Ugh!!
She can’t be warm. She wants life to be what it was when she felt great about herself and what her life looked like. She is unable to adjust when things shatter. and of course ANYONE would have a hard time adjusting.
I think of that over-used analogy – in hurricane-force wings, a willow tree survives because it goes with the flow. an oak tree – rigid and straight – cracks in two.
// I do wonder what became of her. She’s kind of a monster, but she’s a very tragic one. //
I totally agree.
I would bet that she re-married someone else within a year. and never contacted Conrad again. Maybe a Christmas card. If that.
Sheila
Yes, chilling! Watching her able to give away her warmth and love and charm to her friends (and she’s so free and easy with them) and so freaked out by her son’s hug that she’s left so shaken afterwards.
Yes, It’s just so sad she doesn’t love her son that you do feel sorry for her!
When she tries with her son it’s so painfully awkward and makes it glaringly worse.
Those flash backs to her bantering with the older son and T. Hutton (who is brilliant and has moments where he is so funny too in the middle of all this) watching from the sidelines, always left out.
She never loved him! And interesting what you said about how she could hide it when the oldest son was alive.
It does feel freaky and unnatural and because it’s so unrelenting.
She’s not just pissed because it’s the annoying teenage years, where every Mom thinks, Right now, I just can’t stand this unreasonable pain in the ass that thinks I’m a jerk!
But this is something weird. Something missing in her.
The Why? is so mysterious.
She was repulsed and embarrassed by him. His awkwardness, bad grades.
What other people thought mattered more to her.
But you feel like there’s more.
And if it is a simple as she just never loved him for no reason. How terrible is that?
I didn’t know that about her own son. Devastating.
Mary Tyler Moore always so graceful and light, witty and funny and then she delivers this cold knock out blow.
// But this is something weird. Something missing in her.
The Why? is so mysterious. //
I think that’s such an insightful observation. The character is mysterious. Some people just don’t “have it” and probably shouldn’t be parents – and that’s okay! But … how can you know until you’re there? That scene between her and Sutherland at the very end is devastating (and his work too – my God.) When he realizes he cannot un-see how cold she is, how un-giving she is – and he realizes he doesn’t love her anymore. I can’t remember if he says “and I’m not sure if I ever loved you” – I’ll have to watch it again.
I love her performance because that “lack” in the charcter – whatever it stems from – is not explained. There is no “here’s what happened to her as a child and that’s why she’s this way” easy way out.
What a RISK she took with her persona in taking that role!! EVERYONE loved Mary Tyler Moore. To throw the dice on her own persona with this character takes GUTS.
// What other people thought mattered more to her. //
and that’s what her focus is. Like when they’re taking the family photo and she cannot bear to stand next to her son in a photo alone with him. Such a painful scene.
Scott Peck (he of Road Less Traveled) wrote a book called People of the Lie – I’m not sure if you’ve read it – but it’s about “evil.” I put it in quotation marks just because. But as a family therapist – time and time again parents would bring their “depressed” or sick children in for therapy – and he would realize that the kid might be depressed, but it was the parents who were really the sick ones. And – even more chilling – Peck sensed that in some cases the parents preferred that their child was sick so that they didn’t have to look at what might be wrong in THEMSELVES.
And he calls that evil.
I am now thinking of the scene when Sutherland decides to go see the therapist. Alone. The therapist had always wanted to talk to the parents together – and if I recall, they have some fights about it – she doesn’t want to go. So she doesn’t go. But he does. She would rather her son stay sick and isolated than to deal with and look at herself.
I mean, this is so common, right? It doesn’t always manifest in such a malevolent way – but I’ve known a couple of people like this.
Not to get political, but whatever, it’s the air we all breathe. I’m not sure if you saw an article that was being circulated a couple months back – Errol Morris had interviewed Trump a long while back, and he was asked about his observations on the man. The one thing I remember is that Morris got this weird feeling – because he realized he was in the presence of a man who had an “inability to reflect.” I think that was the term. Morris joked – “I’m Jewish. All I DO is reflect!” But here was a man who had never done so, and would never do so – it’s all surface.
I think that’s partially what Moore was getting at in her performance. If the surface is fine – her cardigans and her golf outfit and her spotless home – then her life was perfect. But “reflect”?? Reflecting is NOT part of life, and I REJECT the need to reflect, even if it will save my son’s life.
Incredible. Incredible performance.
Sheila Yes, that scene at the end with Sutherland where you don’t think, oh good, she finally got her due. You feel so sorry for her! This scene is the most devastating.
I first saw this when it came out I was not that much older then Hutton. I perceived my own Ma to be like this. I watched it gripping the edge of my seat. My Ma was very beautiful and smart. I didn’t get grades like my sisters, I was morose and shy and she didn’t know what to do with me. She was vivacious, had lots of friends and deeply cared about what people thought. I have no memory of her hugging or holding me. Later, it caused a full out rebellion in me, I was just in time perfectly for punk rock (hence me loving Joan Jett!) Then I proceeded to really drive her nuts! (You care about what people think, hey! how do you like my new tattoo Ma?!) She was pissed! She said “you did that to get at me.” “Oh it’s always about you right?” I was pissed! Only decades later did I realize, I have to admit to myself, she was right! When my Ma died I was only in my late 30’s, and I was only finally “getting her”. I had a child and it was only then that I really understood my Ma and, by the way, The Glass Menagerie. Oh she’s not just an old bitch, she’s worried about her kids! To be fair, I also thought of myself as Laura, that shy, good, sweet person. I found out, oh I’m not like Laura, at all!
My Ma only saw one of my performances, one of the very first ones in Carol Churchill’s Top Girls. I played the kid and I have a line with a brick in my hand saying, “I’m going to kill my Mother!” She was with my sister and my sister told me she yelled out loud, “Not if I get you first!” She was a hot blooded Italian woman, that’s for sure. My sister was horrified as everyone turned around. I’m glad I didn’t hear it. It’s something my sisters and I laugh about a lot now!
But I think the Mary Tyler Moore character was not like my Ma (she was in a lot of ways, like the way things always had to be clean and in order too) but more like Cathy in East of Eden. (I love your writing on that) Maybe not that nuts, but something is deeply missing. My Ma and I didn’t know how to communicate. When I went to see her in the hospital in my usual get up back then, hair every color, leather, I walked in and she was always sweet to me then. “Oh your hair looks beautiful today!” (This really scared my sisters and worried them! haha) But I knew what she was doing, she was making up with me. She was saying she was sorry but couldn’t come right out and say it and have a big moment. That wouldn’t be her style. I accepted it and we spent her final days at peace with each other. I don’t know if the Mary Tyler Moore character would come to that. There’s something so deeply twisted in her. Amazing film on all levels and all performances.
Oh sorry to go on, obviously this movie made a big impact on me!
I haven’t read Scott Peck!
And Trump. My sisters happen to be Trump supporters. We can talk together. I did say the other day though to them, “I think he’s mentally ill, there’s something wrong, he’s got something.” They don’t see that at all. They have gay friends, are pro-choice, I’m not really getting them on this one!
“I’m Jewish all I do is reflect.” Haha! When Bob Dylan says Don’t look back, I think, all I do is look back!
Regina: wow, those stories about your mother!! Shouting out during Top Girls!! My God! I am very glad you had some peace at the end with her. Sometimes people soften with age – they get over it – they release their kids into the world. Or they stop being attached to what things look like, what they think things should look like. OR they decide it’s more important to have a relationship with their child than not.
Scott Peck says that he considers evil to be, at its most basic, a REFUSAL to grow. That’s why I think of Mary Tyler Moore in OP. Like: you can see what you need to do to grow, but you refuse. Even if it means sacrificing a relationship with your children. He saw it over and over again with his clients. It’s chilling – and so sad.
and in re: The Cheeto. smh.
Talk about Cathy from East of Eden. Something is really really wrong with him.
Wow – evil a refusal to grow! I wish I had said that! And isn’t that pertinent to our times? Love Scott Peck!
Sheila, I am so enjoying your writings. I stumbled on your posts with a Supernatural search and have come back over and over to read others. I adore Elvis, love John Wayne, and becoming seriously addicted to the Winchester Brothers. I’m finding a lack of order to your SNF postings. though. Do you have a table of contents? A specific series listing? Order to your writing? Not that I’m complaining, it seems to be hit or miss, randomly thrown in with all of your other wonderful posts.
Side note; I searched for Robert Redford and all I got was Mary (not that she’s not wonderful). Was hoping for your thought on him…
Linda – thank you so much for stopping by. I am so glad you are enjoying my writing!
In re: an order for SPN posts … I probably should organize it better but if you look at the top right side of my site, you’ll see a picture of the Impala, with “Supernatural” written on it. That’s the full archive. Link: http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?tag=supernatural
Maybe you’ve already discovered that.
I’ve been stalled in doing re-caps of older seasons because my writing career is just too busy right now but here are the links to each SPN season:
Season 1: http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?tag=spn-season-1
Season 2: http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?tag=spn-season-2
Season 3: http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?tag=spn-season-3
and you know I haven’t written anything on Redford. I did review All Is Lost, I know that – but not much else. I should rectify that.
Thanks again! I love to hear from people!