August 31, 2023 – Mary Tyler Moore Show

Happy Throwback Thursday! Today our throwback year is 1970, the year The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuted on CBS! The show starred Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Richards, a single, independent woman focused on her career at the fictional local station WJM in Minneapolis. The show also starred Ed Asner as Mary’s boss Lou Grant, Valerie Harper as Mary’s friend and neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern, and Cloris Leachman as her friend and landlady, Phyllis Lindstrom. All 3 of these characters would get their own spin off series after The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended in 1977.
Moore was hesitant when first approached about the show. She was afraid the new role might suffer in comparison to her super popular character of Laurie Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Originally, Mary Richards was supposed to be a divorcee, but that was still an extremely controversial topic at the time, so the premise was changed to a single woman with a broken engagement.
The opening title sequence shows many scenes filmed on location in Minneapolis. It changed based on the seasons but always ended with Mary throwing her hat into the air in front of what was then the flagship Donaldson’s department store. Entertainment Weekly named the hat toss as the 2nd greatest moment in television. In 2002, TV Land dedicated a lifesize statue of Moore that captured her iconic hat toss. The statue is located in downtown Minneapolis, near where the title sequence was shot.
After 6 years of being in the top 20 in the ratings, the show fell to 39th in the seventh season. Producers asked for the show to be cancelled, afraid that its legacy would be harmed if it was renewed for another season. Even with the declining ratings, The Mary Tyler Moore Show won its 3rd straight Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy. In all, the show won 29 Emmy’s, a record that stood until 2002 when it was surpassed by Frasier. 
If you’re interested in watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show, it’s available for streaming on Hulu and Pluto. Learn more here.