We bid a sad farewell to Robert Osborne, the most gracious of gentlemen and the most devoted and erudite of movie fans.
Osborne’s love of old movies and the people who made them brought a new generation to movies made before their parents were born. His interviews were always fascinating and thoughtful and his books, including a history of the Oscars and a tribute to some of his most cherished favorites, are filled with illuminating insights and insider details.
As the suave, soothing public face of TCM, Mr. Osborne delivered revelatory tidbits before and after each screening, and he gently coaxed stars well past their prime (Patricia Neal, Tony Curtis, Betty Hutton) to speak tantalizingly of their career highs and lows.
Erudite without being snobbish, Mr. Osborne conveyed a seemingly limitless ardor for the job. He could enthuse about the 1940 Ann Sothern vehicle “Congo Maisie” as much as the Oscar-winning epic “Gone With the Wind” (1939).
The TCM host worked hard to intrigue first-time viewers, garnishing his segments with stories about backstage affairs and egos run amok amid filmmaking, and he tried to find new approaches to entice more-experienced viewers such as himself.
Like the movies he loved, he brought so much joy. May his memory be a blessing.
She could turn the world on with her smile. She could take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile. We have lost one of television’s brightest lights, Mary Tyler Moore, who has died at age 80.
Mary Tyler Moore starred in two of the most beloved and most influential series in television history, but in one of her earliest appearance in the then-new medium of television, you never saw her face. As Sam, secretary to detective “Richard Diamond” (David Janssen), the camera stayed on her legs, hands, and mouth. She also performed as the sprite Happy Hotpoint in appliance commercials.
When she was cast as Laura Petrie in “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” created by Carl Reiner and based on his experiences as a writer for Sid Caesar’s variety show, it was the rarest kind of magical pairing. Rob and Laura Petrie were a new kind of married couple in television sitcoms. They were gorgeous, sophisticated, and obviously crazy about each other. Their chemistry perfectly suited the superb writing on the show, and it is still my all-time favorite series. Moore was a trained dancer, and the Petries danced together in many of the most beloved episodes.
Some of the episodes involved Rob or Laura getting into trouble, often featuring Moore’s “Oh, Rob!” My favorite episode is “Snoopynose,” where Laura can’t resist opening the mail addressed to Rob. I also love the one where she has to admit that she lied about her age when they got married and the one where she accidentally admits on television that Rob’s boss wears a toupee. But any episode is worth watching and they are all available on Hulu and on cable television.
Moore returned to television with one of the most iconic television series of the 1970’s, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” where she played a single woman who has to “make it on her own” as a news producer on a small station in Minneapolis. YouTube has a wild assortments of home-made videos of people re-enacting the opening sequence, which ended with Moore throwing her hat in the air. There’s even one from Oprah, one of the series’ biggest fans, who says Moore’s character inspired her to go into television journalism.
Moore played Mary Richards, an independent single woman unseen before on television (it was shocking when she acknowledged being on “the pill” in one episode). The show had one of the best casts in television history, with Ed Asner as Mary’s crusty boss, Lou Grant, Cloris Leachman as her bossy landlady Phyllis, and Valerie Harper as Rhoda, her best friend. All had spin-off series. Also in the cast: Ted Knight as the dimwitted anchor, Ted Baxter, Georgia Engel as his girlfriend, Georgette, and Betty White as the station’s cooking and household hints show, Sue Ann Nivens.
One of the best-remembered episodes is “Chuckles the Clown Bites the Dust,” where the newsroom staff attends the funeral of the station’s children’s television host. It is both hilariously funny and very perceptive about grief and loss. TV Guide picked it as the third best television episode of all time.
The last episode of the series featured a group hug that seemed to embrace us all.
Moore also appeared in movies like “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “Flirting With Disaster.” Her most memorable performance was in “Ordinary People.” Director Robert Redford saw something in the former Happy Hotpoint and cheery sitcom star that no one else had and picked her for the role of the mother who could not express her feelings about the loss of one son and the struggles of the other. When Entertainment Weekly did an oral history of the film, Moore and Redford spoke about the decision to cast her.
ROBERT REDFORD: At that time I had a place in Malibu, and it was winter and I was sitting there looking out on the beach. I saw this lonely figure all wrapped up and walking slowly. The figure looked sad. On closer examination I saw it was Mary Tyler Moore—America’s sweetheart. She was probably just cold, but the sadness hit me and stuck with me when I began casting. I went to see Mary and her husband, Grant Tinker….She had only done these bright, happy things, so I felt pretty awkward going in there and suggesting she play a darker character. But she was very excited and wanted to do it.
MARY TYLER MOORE: Redford was warm and funny and very charming. He told me I was the one whose face he saw as he read the book. Beth was the character he said he most cared about, and he wanted her portrayed with sensitivity. And he wanted me. This was Robert Redford. How could I say no?
The influence of Ms. Moore’s Mary Richards can be seen in the performances of almost all the great female sitcom stars who followed her, from Jennifer Aniston to Debra Messing to Tina Fey, who has said that she developed her acclaimed sitcom “30 Rock” and her character, the harried television writer Liz Lemon, by watching episodes of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Many nonactresses also said that Ms. Moore — by playing a working single woman with such compassion and brio — inspired their performances in real life.
Moore went from pushing the boundaries of television by wearing Capri pants (the network executives wanted her to look like the other TV moms, who did housework in dresses and pearls) to pushing the boundaries by portraying an independent woman with a satisfying career and a full life without a boyfriend. She was a gifted comic performer because she was a great actress. May her memory be a blessing.
We mourn the loss of Carrie Fisher, who has died of a heart attack at age 60.
Her first two movie roles were in films that have becomes icon of their eras: “Shampoo” and the original “Star Wars,” now known as “A New Hope.” In both, she wore white. Other than that, they had little in common, introducing us to a performer with confidence and range. She has said that George Lucas gave her little direction as she had to watch a green screen that would some day have an image of her planet being destroyed. All he said was, “Look over there.” But, still a teenager, she instantly conveyed the fierce resolve that made Princess Leia a heroine to lift the hearts of boys and girls around the world and across the generations. She even survived one of the worst hairstyles in the history of movies.
She also survived a Hollywood childhood of chaos in the public eye. Her parents, Debbie Reynolds (who also became a movie superstar while still in her teens, when she made “Singin’ in the Rain”) and pop star Eddie Fisher were considered America’s sweethearts, until Fisher left Reynolds for the just-widowed Elizabeth Taylor (who would leave him for then-married Richard Burton). Fisher explored her relationship with her mother and her recovery from drug abuse in Postcards from the Edge, first a novel and then a movie starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine, and her relationship with singer Paul Simon, including a brief marriage, in Surrender the Pink.
She was an uncredited script doctor for many films, including “The Empire Strikes Back.”
Copyright 1980 Lucas Film
If the heroine of a romantic comedy (or her sarcastic best friend) has a witty quip, more than likely that was written by Carrie Fisher. She reportedly sharpened up the dialog on “Sister Act,” “The Wedding Singer,” “Lethal Weapon 3,” and “Hook.” Perhaps her most apt role was as the quippy best friend in Nora Ephron’s When Harry Met Sally. Slate has a lovely tribute to that role.
I was lucky enough to see her one-woman show, “Wishful Drinking,” based on her memoir. I loved the story she told about what happened when her mother found out she had dropped LSD. “So, she called Cary Grant,” Fisher said with a dry edge. “As one does.” And no one could bring down the house with one syllable the way she did in describing some of the people on her very complicated family tree. She would assign them their legal relationship and then pause for just a beat to add, “ish.”
Fisher was fearless about her failures and challenges, from her struggles with bi-polar disorder and drugs to personal upheaval. She was a devoted mother to her Billie Lourd, who is following in the family tradition by appearing on the television series “Scream Queens.”
Like fans everywhere, I sighed with happiness to see Han Solo and Leia embrace in “The Force Awakens” last year. And like fans everywhere, I wept to hear that she left us today. The Force was strong with that one. May her memory be a blessing.
We mourn the loss of actor/composer Alan Thicke, best remembered as the understanding and affectionate dad on “Growing Pains.” The good-natured star never hesitated to spoof his home country of Canada and his own image, appearing as a version of himself on “How I Met Your Mother” and this year’s hit series, “This is Us.”
Here he talks about an especially memorable episode of “Growing Pains.”
Thicke was a versatile performer, appearing as a talk show and game show host and composing theme songs for other television shows, including “The Facts of Life.” He also played a talk show host on the soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful” and was on the writing staff of the parody talk show series “Fernwood 2Night.” He wrote books tied to his image as “America’s Dad,” including How to Raise Kids Who Won’t Hate You.
His son, musician Robin Thicke, wrote: “”My Father passed away today. He was the best man I ever knew. The best friend I ever had. Let’s all rejoice and celebrate the joy he brought to every room he was in.”
We mourn the loss of actor Gene Wilder, who died today at age 83. Best remembered as the mild-mannered accountant enticed into fraud by Zero Mostel in “The Producers” and as candymaker Willy Wonka, and as the gunman in “Blazing Saddles,” Wilder also starred with Richard Pryor in “Stir Crazy” and starred as the title character and co-wrote one of the funniest movies of all time, “Young Frankenstein.”
Director Mel Brooks tweeted: “Gene Wilder-One of the truly great talents of our time. He blessed every film we did with his magic & he blessed me with his friendship.”
