Every guy my age I know — even the gay ones — had a crush on a couple of women who were on TV or in Playboy in the sixties. Chronologically, I think Mary Tyler Moore may have been my first. This was not a crush that acknowledged her intelligence or talents or accomplishments. It was all based on the fact that I thought she was beautiful on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Forgive me my shallowness. I was ten at the time. I wasn't quite sure what women were good for except to look at.
I thought she was beautiful in black-and-white on our little 19" TV set. When I attended a filming of the show and saw her in person and in color…oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.
Later, I realized how good she was on that show as an actress and that made me like her even more.
I have had the pleasure — and it's happily always been a pleasure — to get to know some of the women who had a big impact on me back then but I only met Ms. Moore once for a few seconds and it was a moment of great embarrassment. You will therefore like this story very much…and as a bonus, it also includes a moment of symbolic parallelism.
On the old Rhoda TV series, produced by Ms. Moore's company, there was an unseen character named Carlton the Doorman. His voice was done by a lovely man named Lorenzo Music, who was one of the producers. In 1979, someone had the idea to do a spin-off show of the adventures of Carlton…but to do it in animation. At the time, it had been many years since there had been a successful cartoon show in prime-time but the MTM Productions company had the clout with CBS to get the project bankrolled.
CBS ordered a pilot and two back-up scripts. The pilot would show what the series would be like upon its debut and the back-up scripts would demonstrate other things that could happen to the characters. I had experience in both cartoons and sitcoms so I was engaged to help out on the pilot and to write one of the back-up scripts. That's how I got to know Lorenzo, a few years before he also became the voice of Garfield the Cat. A few more years after that — and there was no connection here — I was hired to write and voice-direct most of the Garfield cartoons.
The Carlton, Your Doorman pilot was recorded and animated. Eventually, CBS decided to not pick the show up as a series but the pilot aired as a special in May of 1980, and later won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. Before it aired, there was a screening of it on the CBS Radford lot for various execs and folks who'd been involved in it and I was invited.
When I got there, I was supposed to have a pass to drive onto the lot and park but someone had screwed-up. No pass. I had to go find parking on the street, which turned out to be a space blocks away. Then I had to talk the guard into letting me onto the lot. By the time I got in, the lights were down, the screening had just started and the only open seat was at the far end of a row so I had to squeeze past about nine people, which I did with great awkwardness. I have feet the size of gondolas and one of them stomped on the toes of a lady in the second seat.
You'll never guess whose foot that was.
I didn't. When I reached my seat, I made a mental note to apologize profusely to the lady, whoever she was, once the film was over. When the lights came up and I saw it was Mary Tyler Moore, I briefly contemplated just staying in that seat for the rest of my life. Somehow, I managed to go over and apologize about eighty-two times to her and she was nice enough about it but there was a certain frostiness in the air so I never really got to talk to her. Some of that frost may have been because she apparently didn't like the pilot very much.
Those of you who know The Dick Van Dyke Show have probably have already noticed the symbolic parallel. In a flashback episode to the time Rob and Laura first met, we saw how Rob (DVD) was instantly smitten with Laura (MTM) but Laura thought he was a creep until he stepped on her foot, broke it and then was so charming in his apologizing and visiting her in the hospital that she finally fell for him.
In my case. I instantly fell for her, then I stepped on her foot and that was pretty much the end of any possible relationship. Maybe if I'd tripped over an ottoman…
I still think she was wonderful on Dick's show and also on her own. She died today at the age of 80 but I will always smile when I see her at a much earlier age, dancing in the Petrie living room, trying to convince Rob that they didn't bring home the wrong baby from the hospital, or apologizing to Alan Brady for telling the whole world that he was bald. And boy, was she an important part of television history.