Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: A History of the Mary Tyler Moore Show (15 page)

In any case,
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
was now in prime position to become a hit. The problems threatening Brooks and Burns’s show had so distracted them, however, that they hadn’t even had time to think about hiring writers. Finding any writers who could handle the unique tone of the show would provide a challenge. But now they needed them, and fast. And they wanted at least a few of them to be women, ideally young and single like the show’s main character, to lend the sense of realism both Brooks and Burns cherished. But in 1970, few shows had hired anyone but white men to write them, no matter who the shows’ main characters were. As a result, there were hardly any female comedy writers with experience. Another challenge loomed before them.

“Rule number one: Never hire friends. I hired a friend once and you know what happened? Worked out great. But that’s me. You couldn’t handle it.”

—Lou Grant

(1970)

A statuesque brunette beauty in a sari mingled with women in miniskirts, bearded men, suited TV executives, and the cast of
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
. Their mismatched duo of producers, Jim Brooks and Allan Burns, circulated among them, flitting from table to table across Burns’s lawn, soaking up the admiration. It was the best kind of office party, the kind celebrating success, with congratulations and compliments sprinkled among the cocktail chatter. Stand-ins, crewmembers, husbands, and wives praised everyone from the actors to the writers to theme song writer Sonny Curtis.

There at the
Mary Tyler Moore Show
’s premiere-night party, the show finally felt like the show it was meant to become—the smash it was about to become. Or at least it seemed that way to the producers, who had defied the network and endured a disastrous preliminary taping to emerge triumphant with a not-half-bad pilot episode and a solid time slot for their star. That star, in turn, glowed among the crowd that
night. She had to take in the moment and all of its success, while still hoping this wouldn’t be her new show’s last celebration. A good pilot episode didn’t mean the momentum would continue.

Indeed, CBS executive Frank Barton still didn’t seem to believe in the show whose production he was charged with overseeing. Brooks and Burns already considered him their nemesis, the constant thorn poking them from the executive offices across town. The normally hospitable Burns had even balked at inviting Barton, but Tinker and Brooks had convinced him to. They didn’t want to make an enemy at the network. “He’s already our enemy,” Burns said. “Why invite him?”

Burns felt justified in his resistance when his wife, Joan, got up to take something to the kitchen and Barton plunked down into her seat. “Get your ass out of my wife’s chair,” Burns grumbled, but to no avail.

Barton continued the conversation he’d been having with some guests nearby. He was predicting the show’s inevitable low ratings, as Burns remembers it. Burns couldn’t believe Barton’s nerve. The producer was winding up to confront Barton again when Joan returned and, to Barton’s credit, he relinquished her chair. That wouldn’t stop Burns from calling Barton the next day and giving him hell one more time for his rudeness.

Other than Barton and Burns’s momentary clash, however, the evening proceeded like a dream—the beginning of a good dream. As everyone toasted to the show’s survival, Brooks made his way over to Treva Silverman, a TV writer whose smooth, dark blond hair and oversize glasses lent her the look of the librarian everyone had a crush on. Brooks had hired her to write for the show; she was the only woman he’d found thus far who was qualified. “Ah, here’s an honest face,” he said. “Tell me the truth. Is this just another sitcom?”

“Another sitcom,” she replied, “wouldn’t have had a character say, ‘I hate spunk.’ Nope, this is
not
just another sitcom.” Jim laughed, since he and Allan had put that line in specifically to satirize the corny movies where a man would congratulate a woman in a condescending way for being spunky. He loved that Treva got the joke.

Brooks appreciated the accolades, but he knew that to keep their creative momentum going, he and Burns had to hire more writers they could trust. They had both thought of Treva Silverman right away. They loved working with her, and admired the work she’d done for them on a few scripts for
Room 222
. She had, as they often described it, a “wicked” take on writing, a unique voice that stood out from other comedy writers at the time. Her zingers threw curveballs and her plots took funny twists. She made audiences laugh by giving them what they didn’t expect. Jim Brooks also harbored a nostalgic fondness for her. She’d once helped to inspire him to go into TV writing.

To entice her into the job, Brooks sent Silverman two scripts: the pilot and another episode he and Burns had written about Rhoda’s mother coming to visit. Silverman fell in love with them right away. As she read them, she thought,
How did this happen? There are real characters here.
She told her agent she wanted to work only on
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
from now on. The agent warned against hedging her bets on a show that had yet to air, but Silverman didn’t care. From then on, she wanted to devote all of her time to putting words in Mary Richards’s and Rhoda Morgenstern’s mouths.

That would suit her old friend Jim Brooks just fine. He wanted not only good writers for his new show, but women who could write comedy and lend insight into his single female character’s point of view. Silverman could provide all of that and more.

But Brooks and Burns needed more than just Treva Silverman. While they felt confident in their ability to write female characters, the more they talked about the show with women, the more they realized there were certain story lines they’d never think of themselves, certain nuances they’d never get without female writers. Mary’s workplace, in particular, was rife with story possibilities: How might it feel to be the only woman in a room? What was it like not to be paid the same as men in your position? How might you handle sexist talk and unwanted come-ons? The office, and women’s place in it, could be the focus of this series, a revolutionary concept, but Brooks
and Burns wanted to get their portrayal of Ms. Richards, associate producer, just right.

Treva Silverman had toiled for three years now in Hollywood, leaving behind writing sketches for the stage and playing piano in New York City bars to become a sought-after sitcom writer. After coming to Los Angeles, she’d written scripts for
That Girl, The Monkees, Get Smart,
and
Room 222,
all while outnumbered by male colleagues. And she was having a great time as a single young woman in Hollywood, though still maintaining faith that her dream would ultimately come true: She
would
one day find herself giving an Emmy acceptance speech while her sexy, smart husband waited in the wings whispering, “Hurry up, darling, finish your speech, because we’re going to take the next boat to Europe.” She was just working on the Emmy part for now; the dream guy would show up later.

Instead of worrying about meeting a husband, she threw herself into her work. She had gotten to the point where she was working regularly on sitcom episodes and pilots and was building a reputation. Although most of the time she worked alone, at one point she had a writing partner, Peter Meyerson (who went on to be the show runner of
Welcome Back, Kotter
). In those years, nothing had changed concerning the status of women writing comedy. It was still a boys’ club. One time Peter and Treva were called in to meet with a major TV producer. When they met with him at his house—actually, at his pool—he looked at Treva, startled. “Oh. I thought Treva was a man’s name.” Before she could respond, he applied another coat of suntan lotion and said, “So, what is it, Treva writes the story and, Peter, you write the jokes?”

Few in Hollywood believed women could be funny. One of the exceptions was when Treva worked with Jim and Allan on
Room 222
. She had an easy rapport with both of them, and found that their senses of humor jibed beautifully. In one of her episodes, she used her latent songwriting abilities to make up the anthem for the fictional school,
Walt Whitman High. She grew to be close friends with Jim and Allan. They kept each other up to date with what was happening with their careers, and more than anything, she appreciated the feeling that they saw her as their equal.

In the late 1960s, a handful of women were in the same situation as Treva, but in different places. Each was the only woman most places she went—writers’ rooms, meetings with producers, gatherings of other comedy-world folk. None of them had met each other yet. None of them had been given any reason to believe there were others like her out there. Each of them felt like the only smart, funny woman in the world, and each of them were proud of that fact—and yet it was lonely. That was, until they heard about Mary Richards.

As Susan Silver drove between the palm trees and gray, boxy buildings that led to General Service Studios at 6633 Romaine Street in Hollywood, where fans had once lined up to attend tapings of
I Love Lucy,
she went over her routine in her head one more time. She had the joke about her Realtor’s name and the story about a wedding she didn’t want to stand up for. Those were her two best bits, for sure. But that didn’t make her any less nervous about this meeting—this job interview, essentially.

Silver’s mentor, Garry Marshall, had gotten her a meeting with James L. Brooks and Allan Burns just after
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
started airing and Silver fell in love with it. Marshall warned her: Brooks and Burns needed good writers, particularly women, but they also had high standards for their brand of comedy. To prepare, Silver scoured her life for comedy. It started when she and her husband went to look at houses and a real estate agent gave them his card. She saw the agent’s name, Arnold Tvedt, and there she found her first gag: “God, you can’t kill this name with a stick,” she said to her husband. “If you take out the
e
you still say it the same way, and if you take out the
d
it’s still the same.” That went on her list of jokes for the meeting. She wasn’t sure what exactly a “pitch meeting,” as Marshall called it,
entailed, but she practiced talking in a mirror, honing her facial expressions while she told a few funny stories.

When the real thing came, she stood before them in her sensible dress and heels, knowing the ensemble was a better choice than the hot pants she’d naïvely worn to another meeting Marshall had arranged for her. She had realized her mistake the second she saw the ogles on those executives’ faces. But now she had to wow Brooks and Burns based on her material, not her short shorts. It was a trade-off.

Brooks and Burns wanted to like her, were primed to like her, if only to start filling out their sparse writing staff. But they were surprised by how much they liked her. So was she: She was a sometimes-blond (depending on her hair-dyeing whims) bombshell used to having men’s attention, but not this kind of attention—attention paid to her brain and her sense of humor. Brooks and Burns thought she was clever, even though she just told them stories from her life. They hadn’t heard real stories from real women’s lives pitched as comedy scripts before. They had never been forced to stand up for the wedding of someone they didn’t like while wearing an ugly dress, for instance. It sounded hilarious to them.

The producers chose the bridal-party story as Silver’s first assignment. She calmly accepted, then went outside to the parking lot and screamed with glee. When she returned home, she announced to her skeptical husband that she was quitting her job in casting at
Laugh-In
to make a go of being a freelance sitcom writer. She promised him she’d make at least twenty thousand dollars a year writing, and if she didn’t, she would stop and go back to a practical job that would pay the bills instead of fulfilling her dreams. She was sure she could do it.