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by Harper, Valerie

  Dick, expert carpenter that he was, began to build us a loft in our living room. A few days into his project, he landed another film role and had to find a replacement to finish the job. He hired a young carpenter who was a neighbor of Viola Spolin’s in the Hollywood Hills. This young guy had a wife and two little kids and needed the money. When he showed up, I was struck by how extremely handsome he was, as well as soft-spoken and serious. While he worked on our loft, I learned that he was an actor, doing carpentry to support his family while he waited for a break. Well, he got one . . . falling from the loft, he broke his arm.

  “Look,” I told him, “sometimes an accident is a message. You broke your hammering arm. Maybe it’s time to stop carpentry and focus on your acting career, Harrison.” Yes, his last name was Ford. I’m sure he would have become a star even without my advice. But I like to think that the fall from our loft gave him a push in the right direction!

  Gene Varrone, one of the most sought-after tenors in New York and a veteran of more than twenty Broadway shows, had a second career as an interior decorator. In fact, he has decorated every home I’ve lived in since we met on Take Me Along in 1959. He has done apartments for Chita Rivera, Joe Allen, Glenn Close, and many others. Dick and I flew him out and put him up in a hotel so he could decorate our Westwood house. He had exquisite taste, a nose for bargains, and energy to burn. Also, he was like a beloved member of the family.

  I loved living in Westwood, which was still a sleepy enclave. Iva and her husband, Ron Rifkin, often joined Dick and me for movies at the lovely old cinemas in the center of town—the Fox and the Bruin. Afterward, we’d get ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. On the weekends, we’d take our sailboat out in Marina del Rey.

  The seeming extravagance of buying a house and owning a sailboat aside, Dick and I lived a quiet life. I was aware of the so-called wild Hollywood world of cocaine and other drugs, but that entire scene was utterly foreign to me. Like the rest of the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I lived a normal family life. My costars and I treated our jobs as work—we just happened to work on the artistic side of television. Our jobs weren’t some inconvenience that prevented us from dancing the night away in clubs. Being on such a prestigious series was what all of us had worked toward for a long time. And we’d made it. We had phenomenal times together, but not in the mythological Hollywood way you read about in gossip magazines. We appreciated that the winds of good fortune were blowing our way and hoped they’d last.

  chapter

  SIX

  At some point during the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Fred Silverman, the head of CBS, told me, “Valerie, we’re going to have to spin you off.” After the momentary I’m fired? pang of terror, I realized he was saying they actually wanted to give me my own show!

  As the second and third seasons progressed, talk about spinning Rhoda off grew increasingly serious. The producers were eager for Rhoda to step into her own spotlight. As season four got under way, I started meeting with Jim and Allan about the new show more regularly. I wasn’t entirely sure about the idea, but eventually, the guys and Mary prevailed on me. “You’d have to be nuts not to take CBS up on the offer of your own show,” Mary said. Like Mary Richards, she was often the voice of reason. Another sobering voice of reason came from the astute Nancy Walker: “Stop fretting, Val. It’s a good job, take it.” Yes, I would have had to be nuts to pass up the opportunity.

  It was a testament to how much the audience loved and identified with Rhoda that the producers and the network were offering her center stage. She had come a long way from her initial role as Mary’s energetic, wisecracking sidekick. She had developed into a fully realized person whom the world seemed to be rooting for. Rhoda, with her insecurities, her eccentricities, and her profound relatability, had become part of the cultural consciousness and left people wanting more. The audience admired her tenacity enough that the network was confident she could carry a show. But could I?

  Because Rhoda was being developed by the same extraordinary team of writers, I felt incredibly safe. I also felt, as always, a responsibility to live up to their first-rate writing. I didn’t want to ruin Rhoda, and I didn’t want to ruin a show produced by Mary’s company. “What if I bomb?” I asked Mary.

  “Then you’ll move back to Minneapolis,” she said. “You’re graduating. You’re going off to college. But you can always come home.” Talk about working with a net!

  Rhoda was moving on—exactly where was unclear. There was some talk around the studio that New York-based comedies were done to death. The network wanted to send Rhoda somewhere rural, like Wisconsin. That didn’t sit well with Jim and Allan. Rhoda had already moved from the Bronx to Minneapolis. The writers had mined the fish-out-of-water theme and wanted something new. Rhoda was a New Yorker, they reasoned. She was going home.

  Once it was determined that Rhoda was going into production, I sat down with Jim and Allan to talk about the direction they were going to take the show. Rhoda was going back to New York, and her family would become a big part of her life. Since her own series had been cancelled, the fantastic Nancy Walker, who played my mother, Ida Morgenstern, on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, agreed to come on board, which delighted me to no end. The comedic possibilities of Rhoda and Ida were endless.

  The consensus was that Rhoda needed to grow and gain more confidence. Diet jokes, fat jokes, and bad relationship jokes are very funny but not enough to sustain a central character. Everyone agreed that Rhoda needed to find some success and move up in the world.

  The guys decided that Rhoda was going to get a job in publishing (from which she was soon fired because they didn’t want to do a “workplace comedy” that too closely mirrored Mary Tyler Moore). More important, Rhoda was going to get lucky in love. After all the terrible dates she’d endured over the past four years, it was time. Jim, Allan, and Ethel Winant needed to find her a husband.

  We started casting while I was still working on Mary Tyler Moore. Liberty Williams had played Rhoda’s pretty younger sister, Debbie, who gets married on an early episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, so I assumed that she would reprise the role on Rhoda. But Jim and Allan had other ideas. David Davis, a producer on Mary who was coming over to Rhoda, remembered a young actress named Julie Kavner who had auditioned for the role of Debbie but had lost out to Liberty.

  When it came time to cast Brenda, Julie was exactly the person the producers were looking for—a wonderful comedic actress who seemed like Rhoda but ten years younger. When she came in to read, we were overwhelmed by how singularly funny she was. Her distinctive voice sealed the deal. The guys felt she sounded somewhat like Nancy Walker, our Ida Morgenstern. Even though I was eager to work with Julie, I worried about how they would handle the existence of Rhoda’s original sister, Debbie. But this was television. Relatives can disappear bloodlessly.

  In a prior episode Ida reprimands Rhoda, “Name anyone who has such problems with their mother as you do, Rhoda!”

  “Arnold and Debbie.”

  “Leave your brother and sister out of this!”

  See? Arnold disappears into the cosmos without ever having face time on the show.

  Charlotte Brown, one of the terrific writers on Mary Tyler Moore, was moving over to Rhoda and so was the great actor Harold Gould, who had played Martin Morgenstern, Rhoda’s pop. Tall, good-natured Martin and diminutive, strong-willed Ida were a delightfully humorous couple as Rhoda’s parents. Luckily I flew to New York and saw Harold in John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves. He was sensational and also one of the nicest people I have ever worked with.

  The remaining roles to cast were the disembodied voice of Carlton the doorman and, of course, Joe Gerard, Rhoda’s new husband. The producers had dozens of actors read for the part of Carlton but hadn’t settled on anyone. During our auditions for the part of Joe, Jim and Allan asked Lorenzo Music to read Carlton’s lines. Lorenzo had started as Dave Davis’s writing partner on Mary Tyler Moore and was now coming on board on Rhoda as a produc
er. A former musician, performer, and comic, he also warmed the audience up on show night. He would appear onstage or up in the bleachers and brilliantly improvise amusing patter about what was going on behind the scenes. He was excellent at keeping the audience engaged during the breaks so that they would continue to respond and laugh with the same energy in spite of the stop-and-start rhythm of filming.

  No one ever intended to cast Lorenzo as Carlton. But the more the guys heard Lorezno read the doorman’s lines, the clearer it became that no one who auditioned was better or funnier. Lorenzo brought such humor into Carlton’s voice that the writer-producers decided to go with him over anyone who’d read for the part.

  That left Joe Gerard. We auditioned a lot of actors, and I got to kiss a lot of appealing guys in the process. I, of course, thought that my husband, Dick Schaal, would be perfect for the part. While Jim and Allan agreed with me, they had made a pact as writing partners never to work with a husband and wife together, especially in the lead roles. “Valerie,” Allan said, “we love Dick. He’s wonderful, and he’ll be on a lot of shows in guest roles. But it’s a rule we just don’t break.”

  One actor they thought would be perfect for Joe was Joe Bologna. But Joe Bologna wanted to bring his wife, Renée Taylor, on board with him to play Rhoda’s boss at the publishing house. As anxious as the producers were to cast Joe, they were unwilling to cast Renée in any permanent role and break their rule on married couples. So Joe Bologna turned down the part.

  Both Carmine Caridi and Michael DeLano auditioned. While neither of them got the part of Joe, both appeared on Rhoda in different roles in later seasons. William Devane, a fantastic kisser, was offered the role, but he turned it down.

  As the production date approached, it came down to two actors for the part of Joe: Alex Rocco, who had played Moe Green in The Godfather, and David Groh. Both had the right look for a tough New Yorker who ran a construction company. Both actors auditioned really well. What it came down to was how Joe and Rhoda looked as a couple. And David fit the bill.

  David was a really nice guy and very professional—a serious Actors Studio type of performer, not a comedian. That didn’t worry the writers, because he gave a great audition and was terrific-looking. But when it came to the marriage, the writers had a tough decision to make. Would Rhoda come on the air in her own show already married to Joe? Or would she meet him in the first episode and give the audience a chance to watch the relationship evolve?

  It was decided that interest would build in the show if the audience came along for the ride—if they were there with Rhoda as she met the guy of her dreams. We wanted people to root for Rhoda and Joe, cheer them on as they met, got engaged, and got married.

  During hiatus on Mary Tyler Moore, Jim, Dave, Julie Kavner, and I and a film crew traveled to New York to film exterior footage for Rhoda. Julie had never been to New York, which, given her East Coast sound, was hard to believe. We shot Rhoda walking into her publishing job, getting out of a cab, going into her apartment building. We filmed the sisters in Central Park and the New York Public Library on Forty-second Street. We also filmed shots for the “Wedding Show,” even though it wouldn’t take place until the eighth episode.

  The writers came up with an ingenious plotline in which Phyllis, in town for the wedding, forgets to pick Rhoda up, so Rhoda has to take the subway in her wedding gown. When we went down into the subway to start filming, there was a businessman standing on the platform with blood pouring out of his nose and down the front of his shirt. Someone had hit him in the face and stolen his briefcase. My instinct was to run over to him. I’d taken two steps when the wardrobe lady threw a cross-body block, stopping me in my tracks. “Don’t go near him,” she shouted. “We only have one wedding dress. You can’t get blood on it.”

  The wedding sequence took all afternoon. They filmed me running all over Manhattan and the Bronx. We did a couple of shots on East Seventy-second Street right in front of the office of my former gynecologist, Dr. Myron Buchman. When I noticed his nameplate was still up, I went in. Needless to say, Dr. Buchman was surprised to see me—especially in a wedding gown and veil. I introduced him to Jim and Dave Davis. “Valerie’s a good girl,” Dr. Buchman volunteered.

  After this hiatus, I returned to film my final episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. This was a bittersweet time. I was excited to move on to Rhoda, but I was sad about leaving behind so many wonderful people whom I’d come to respect and love. I had learned so much from everyone on the show, especially Mary. She had given me a spectacular education in television. I couldn’t have asked for a better teacher.

  Until filming began on Rhoda, I was unaware how much I’d learned about being the lead in a show, as if by osmosis, at Mary’s side. I’d watched her be professional, courteous, and respectful in all aspects of the job. When I moved over to my own soundstage, I was prepared.

  With Jim and Allan at the helm, the first show masterfully introduced the new characters, brought back the old ones, and showed the transition from Minneapolis to New York City, as well as Rhoda’s personal evolution. Rhoda’s growth is evident at the end of the episode, when she asks Joe out. “I thank you, Ms. magazine, I could never have done it without you,” she says. This simple move of having Rhoda take her fate into her own hands and linking it with burgeoning feminism was a brilliant way of signaling that Rhoda had come into her own.

  Shortly after the premiere aired, I received perhaps the best fan letter of my entire life from a sweet seventy-two-year-old woman from the Midwest. “Just before the show started I sat down on my couch, so tense, with my hands held tight together and I prayed—Oh Lord, let this girl go over big!” she wrote. I think her prayer was answered.

  Very fortunately for me, Mimi Kirk, Mary Tyler Moore’s former stand-in and assistant, joined me on Rhoda as my assistant. As before, she had an enormous impact on Rhoda’s wardrobe. On Mary, I might have one or two costume changes per episode, but on Rhoda, I could have as many as six or more.

  At fittings, our wardrobe supervisor, Shannon, would look at me in an outfit and take a step back to examine her work. “That’s not bad,” she’d say. Then, with a smile, Mimi would jump in. “Not bad? We’re not going for ‘not bad’! We’re going for sensational.” Whenever possible, Mimi added scarves, ethnic jewelry, a hand-crafted purse, anything to give Rhoda an unusual and offbeat touch. Under Mimi’s guidance, I began to wear tops made out of doilies or decorative tablecloths, flared pants, and clothes culled from thrift shops. Rhoda’s clothes augmented her character. The more confident she became, the more courageously she dressed.

  At first I was a little startled by how much more responsibility I had as the star of my own show. People looked to me for answers and opinions. There were more lines to learn, more time in front of the camera, more costumes, more magazine interviews, more publicity appearances, more of everything. But I had many skillful people helping me to get it all done.

  When we started out on Rhoda, I asked Viola Spolin to come to the set and hold a Theater Games workshop for the cast, staff, and crew. Jim, Allan, and our fabulous director, Robert Moore, even attended a few. These biweekly workshops were fun and quickly created a sense of family within the company. I also set up lunch-break yoga classes, which the group enjoyed.

  Rhoda hit the ground running. It felt less like a pilot and more like a seamless outgrowth from Mary Tyler Moore. It was well conceived and well executed. There was an immediate feeling of comfort and ease on the set, as if we’d all been working together for a long time. Some of us had been!

  From the first episode, the ratings were high. People were familiar with Rhoda and eager to tune in to her adventures in New York. The writers did an incredible job in the opening episodes of investing the audience in Rhoda’s job search and her relationship with Joe. They created enough passion and tension that people were rooting for them to get married. From the moment Joe proposed to Rhoda, the media and the television audience began buzzing about the wedding.

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bsp; The producers did a spectacular rollout for the one-hour wedding special. CBS promoted it wildly. They even linked it to The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The episode of Mary that aired several days before Rhoda’s wedding showed the characters shopping for gifts and preparing to travel to New York. Excitement was building both in TV land and in the real world. It didn’t hurt that, shortly before the wedding special, Mary and I appeared on the cover of TIME magazine. The title of the article was “Victorious Loser”—a perfect description of Rhoda on the eve of her wedding!

  The week before we filmed the episode, gifts began to inundate the studio. Fans sent coffeemakers, engraved plates, and too many toasters to count. Thousands of cards that read “Congratulations, Rhoda and Joe” flooded in. I loved that our audience wanted to be part of the event. All the attention indicated that the show was going to be big.

  It was incredibly exciting to film Rhoda’s wedding, especially because the show would reunite me with the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It was an hour-long episode and required a longer rehearsal period, which meant more time together. It was going to be like a real party with old friends—like a real wedding.

  The writers really did us proud on the “Wedding Show.” The script was sensational and gave everyone a chance to shine. The cast laughed all week throughout rehearsal. Lots of colorful actors of all ages were hired to play Joe’s and Rhoda’s extended families. It was a great wedding! After filming, we broke out champagne in the studio for the whole company.