Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: A History of the Mary Tyler Moore Show (37 page)

Moore said at the time that the change had “
set television back drastically.” For the medium to thrive, she felt, the envelope had to be pushed.

But fearful of FCC sanctions, the networks reshuffled their fall 1975 schedules to avoid infractions of the new policy. Norman Lear’s shows
All in the Family
and
Maude
were particularly stung. After five seasons,
All in the Family
moved from leading off CBS’s powerhouse Saturday lineup to 9 p.m. on Mondays, while
Maude
plunged from a top-five program to well below the top thirty when it was moved out of the way of “family” time.
Lear joined with
M*A*S*H
producer Larry Gelbart,
Barney Miller
producer Danny Arnold, and Burns to form the Writers Guild Committee on the Family Viewing Hour. Arnold learned that a story line on his show from the previous season, in which a detective fell in love with a prostitute, would no longer be allowed at ABC. A script he was planning, in which a man was to be arrested because he “shacked up with a minor,” was nixed; the phrase “shacked up” was banned. The concern over family-viewing time did, in fact, affect the way Brooks and Burns made decisions about their shows, Brooks confessed in a
New York Times
piece at the time. “It scares me that we have been intimidated like that,” he said. “I’m ashamed to admit it, but [we have].”

In October 1975, the Writers Guild group filed a lawsuit against the FCC’s new policy. “
If the networks were to make a sincere effort, it seems to me they would have called a series of meetings with the creative community to talk about excesses,” Lear said. “No such meetings were even asked for. Part of the deceit is also the fact that we all know children of all ages are awake long after 9—so if they are all to be protected, cutting off family viewing time at 9 doesn’t do it.” Indeed, 11 million children still watched TV past 9 p.m. That was exactly why several religious groups complained that the change didn’t go far enough, leaving twenty-three of twenty-four hours open to “anything-goes” content. Lear added, facetiously: “And 9 on the coasts is 8 in the Midwest. Why are the networks abandoning the little ones in the heart of the Bible Belt?” The networks countered, in all seriousness, that lots of families went to bed earlier in the farm states anyway. They had to tend to the crops, you know.

The power of the Christian right in American culture and politics would only grow from there. Iowa Democrat Harold Hughes resigned from the U.S. Senate to become an evangelist. Astronaut Jim Irwin joined forces with a different evangelist to start an organization called High Flight. Singers Pat Boone and Anita Bryant spoke about their own Christian beliefs—and spoke, and spoke.

The 1976 Democratic presidential primaries would pit Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, a down-home evangelical Baptist-turned-born-again-Christian, against California governor Jerry Brown, a former Jesuit seminarian who freely aired his religious beliefs, both Buddhist and Christian, during the primary campaign. Carter won the nomination. And in a moment that indirectly summarized TV’s new views on risqué content, the presidential candidate talked openly of his Christian beliefs and also famously admitted to having “looked on a lot of women with lust” in an interview with
Playboy
. He beat Gerald Ford in the election a few weeks later.

Nielsen reported that the daily average home viewing of television slipped seven minutes in 1975—the second-largest decline in a generation—which sent TV leadership into a further panic. NBC promoted executive Herb Schlosser to lead the network in trying to attract younger viewers, but his efforts tanked—none of his new fall 1975 shows earned a second season, but they did manage to alienate older viewers. (His only bright spot: signing
Saturday Night Live
.) “Most critics agree this has been the most disastrous television season in the history of broadcasting,” Johnny Carson said during a
Tonight Show
bit. He jokingly listed his suggested shows for the next season:
The Bionic Dog, Frontier Proctologist, Monday Night Cockfighting,
and
The Minority Next Door,
a Lear-esque proposal featuring a Jewish family, the Margolises, who move in next door to the Vatican. “The comedy high jinks begin,” Carson deadpanned, “when Mr. Margolis runs into the pope and says, ‘How’s the missus?’ ”

No one, least of all writers and producers of longtime hits, knew what their network bosses wanted anymore. “
I’d like to thank a lot of
people at CBS,” Burns quipped while he accepted an Emmy in May 1976, “but unfortunately, none of them are there anymore.”

Just a few years earlier the industry media had hailed a sitcom “golden age.” Now miniseries were the hot new thing, thanks in large part to the success of ABC’s
Roots
—an adaptation of Alex Haley’s novel about slave life, and another smashing success for Silverman. TV also struck a new ratings gold mine with more showings of films such as
Gone With the Wind
and
The Wizard of Oz,
a rare treat around which families would plan their evenings. At a time when movies essentially disappeared once they’d finished their theatrical runs, with no VCRs to replay them, big movies made for effortless event programming.

In this shifting TV market, Grant Tinker started to feel his company’s flagship show would be better off ending than soldiering through.
Rhoda
and
Phyllis
were on the wane in terms of both ratings and quality, and MTM had lost four writer-producers to Silverman’s new network. A fadeout in a terrible time slot seemed all wrong for the sophisticated, groundbreaking
Mary Tyler Moore Show
. And with five seasons in the can, the show would easily sell on the increasingly lucrative syndication market—studios were now making millions by selling reruns as a package to local television stations to fill slots outside of prime time, but they usually needed at least one hundred episodes to make the deal worthwhile. It was time, Tinker reluctantly concluded, to quit. But he wasn’t sure how his producers or actors would feel about that.

He approached Brooks and Burns with his argument: To quit the show would be difficult, he said, but to go out on top would be better—in its fifth season,
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
still ranked in television’s top twenty. But Mary Richards was now thirty-six, which made it a very different show from what it was when it began. There had been “a drying up of the creative thrust,” as he said. Harper and Leachman had left, and Asner wanted his own show. MacLeod was getting tentative offers for other shows.

The producers agreed: Either major changes would have to come to the show soon, or they’d have to end it. Burns himself looked forward to the chance to give his long-neglected movie-writing career its due once he was away from the grind of weekly television. Tinker and Burns proposed ending the show the next season, at the end of its sixth year. Brooks pushed for a seventh, hoping to hold on to his success just a little longer. He was sure he and the other producers and writers could squeeze one more good year’s worth of stories out of their beloved characters. Tinker and Burns agreed, and it was settled. They had become a workplace family like the one on their own show, but now they would have to leave it behind, for everyone’s best interest.

Moore didn’t quite feel the same drive to end things, but she understood that Brooks, Burns, and their staff craved new creative challenges. As the imminent end of the show was announced late in its sixth season—the seventh would be its last—she told the public that she, too, hungered for more substantial roles. She did, in fact, want to get back to dancing more, perhaps in a musical variety series, as she admitted to her friend Betty White. She was scared, but she fired up her trademark smile and told curious reporters, “
Yes, this is a creatively healthy move we’re making. Quit while you’re still on top!”

She didn’t discuss her future with any of her other coworkers. She didn’t want to lose one moment of their remaining time together in the present.

A year after announcing the end of her show, and with a year left to go, Moore decided to try taking on a variety show. It would allow her to return to singing and dancing, which was what she’d always envisioned doing with her career. Even better, it was an idea she could test out before
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
ended. CBS happily handed an hour of airtime over to one of its biggest stars for a variety special in January 1976, a time of year normally stuffed with reruns anyway.

Moore hired Jack Good, who’d created the Monkees’
33
¹
/
₃
Revolutions Per Monkee
special. He presented her with his concept: The show,
Mary’s Incredible Dream,
would tell the history of the world through song and dance numbers, from creation through World War II to the present—bookended by Moore slipping into and out of a dream state.
Moore thought the idea was divine—edgy, mind-blowing, avant-garde kind of stuff. She gushed about it to all of her friends. She told every interviewer she spoke to about it. Hollywood columnist Marilyn Beck reported that Moore had shown screener tapes to so many friends that White teased her, “It’s a shame you don’t put it on TV, instead of showing it door to door.”

However, when it finally did air, it turned out viewers and critics weren’t quite ready for such a mishmash of songs, glitz, production numbers, religion, philosophy, angel-versus-devil battle, history, and psychedelic dream sequence. They did not appreciate spending an hour watching Moore as a pink angel, floating among religious symbols and singing “Morning Has Broken”; Broadway star Ben Vereen as a singing, dancing, glittery green devil; a version of the “Hallelujah Chorus” set in heaven; a review-of-history version of “Sh-Boom”; and Jerome Kern’s “She Didn’t Say Yes” rewritten to tell the story of Eve. It bombed in the ratings, and reviewers deemed it indulgent and weird. The
New York Times
called it “a landmark in TV vulgarity.” It ran once, never to be repeated.

One of its few fans was Joe Rainone, who’d gotten too busy with working full-time at his family’s printing business to write his detailed weekly letters to
Mary Tyler Moore
anymore. He’d thought a little more about Tinker’s interest in him, the possibility of trying to work for the show, but he just didn’t see himself going into television as a career. He was the accountant for the family business. That was what he did.

He still tuned into the show every week, however, and didn’t miss
Mary’s Incredible Dream
. When he read the vitriolic reviews of the special, he decided to write to Moore again to tell her he’d loved the production. Moore returned to the United States from Russia, where she’d hosted a network special about the Bolshoi Ballet, facing a barrage of criticism for her beloved project—and that nice letter from Rainone.
She sent a handwritten thank-you note in reply: “It seems like you were the only one who got what we were trying to do.”

Rainone was inspired to take up his weekly letter-writing to
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
again, continuing it until the end of the series.