When we knew we were ready to bring the play to New York, Tony asked the college to back us. He offered them a deal they couldn’t refuse. It was advantageous for them in terms of publicity for their prestigious but small college, as their name would be tied in to the production. The very set built in Lynchburg, Virginia, by their young female students would appear on the New York stage. We opened in an off-Broadway theater on Fifteenth Street called the Century Center for the Performing Arts. It was a beautiful space that had a Victorian atmosphere with wall sconces designed to resemble gas lamps. It was perfect for Pearl.
The theater was a little jewel and, like many old New York buildings, had a small behind-the-scenes mouse infestation. I could hear the little guys scurrying around as I performed. The problem got so bad that the stage manager had to set out glue traps. As I made my entrance for my very first New York preview performance, I stepped in one of those damn traps and came clattering onto the stage with the thing stuck to my shoe. I floundered for a second, then played it as if Pearl were angry with her renovation contractors for leaving traps around her house. Rob rushed backstage at intermission, appalled but pleased about the energy it lent to our opening scene! Apparently, Pearl’s agitation played well with the audience. However, I had to go through the evening in stocking feet.
The esteemed television journalist-host Charles Gibson, whose wife was an alumna of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, hosted an elegant opening-night party. Mary and Robert, Iva and Ron, Nicole, and other pals were there. We got lots of great press coverage, including a segment on Entertainment Tonight and a terrific review in The New York Times that allowed us to open the play in many other venues after the New York City run.
In the 1990s while I was doing television movies and guest slots, Tony was hard at work building and opening a charming Italian restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard that he named Regina Coelia, after an infamous Roman prison. As I was packing to fly to Chicago for a three-episode guest appearance on the TV series Missing Persons starring Daniel Travanti, the 6.7 Northridge earthquake hit. After the initial jolts, Tony rushed with a ten-year-old Cristina to check on the restaurant, which was minutes away from our Beverly Hills home. No structural damage, but olive oil as far as the eye could see, mixed with wine, broken dishes, smashed glasses. Cristina, an accomplished ice skater, said, “Daddy, it’s like the rink!”
After four years with New York as our base, we had decided to return to the West Coast, where Tony produced All Under Heaven in Los Angeles.
We leased a house on our old street in Beverly Hills. Cristina was happy to enroll in Beverly Hills High so she could graduate with her former classmates from Hawthorne Grammar School. We were all pleased to be home and settled back into the familiar L.A. life: shopping at our old market, reconnecting with our West Coast friends, especially Iva, Arlene, and Charlotte. I began to polish All Under Heaven for a go-round at the Ivar Theatre.
Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows, the sister of Audrey from The Honeymooners, came to the opening night. Jayne and Audrey were daughters of missionaries (“mish kids”) and, like Pearl, were raised in China. It was wonderful to be playing this old landmark theater in the heart of Hollywood near the venerable restaurant Musso and Frank and all the historic movie palaces. In 1937, the film of The Good Earth premiered in this neighborhood. How gratifying that our “Pearl” project, which had started as Tony’s idea and which we had both developed from the ground up, would be presented here at the Ivar Theatre. Great.
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THIRTEEN
In 1999, during my final year of touring with All Under Heaven, Mary Tyler Moore and I began discussing bringing Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern back to television. Nearly twenty years had passed since the finales of both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda, and we thought that television audiences would be ready to see our characters once more.
As producer, Mary was considering different formats for the show—a half-hour comedy pilot or an hour-long show. Eventually, she sold a two-hour movie event to ABC, which would give us the chance to delve into and explore all the changes that two decades had brought for Mary and Rhoda. Mary and Rhoda would be a sort of back-door pilot. In other words, if the network liked the movie, they could order it as a series.
Mary and I had seen each other numerous times over the years. During my time in New York, she and I used to have lunch on the Upper East Side or in her beautiful Fifth Avenue apartment. She and her husband, Robert—both always so supportive of me—attended Death Defying Acts and All Under Heaven. But this was the first time we had been given the opportunity to work together—and bringing Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern together after so many years of dormancy would be a true delight. Before we started working, she needed to confer with Jim and Allan. After all, Mary and Rhoda were their creations. Neither Jim nor Allan wanted to be involved in the script for Mary and Rhoda, which was written by Katie Ford, but they gave the project their blessing, and we were off to the races.
In twenty years, a lot had happened to Mary and Rhoda. When we meet them again, both women are single. Mary has recently lost her politician husband in a rock-climbing accident, while Rhoda has just divorced her second husband, an unfaithful Frenchman named Jean-Pierre. The women return to New York City, where they are reunited after two decades of estrangement. (Apparently, Mary never cared for Jean-Pierre, who made a pass at her at his and Rhoda’s wedding.)
Each of them has a twenty-year-old daughter. Mary’s daughter, Rose (after Rhoda), a student at NYU, is free-spirited and countercultural. Rhoda’s more straitlaced daughter, Meredith (after Mary), is pre-med at Barnard. Mary has raised a Rhoda, and Rhoda has raised a Mary. Obviously, Mary and Rhoda really missed each other.
The moment Mary and I walked onto the set of Mary and Rhoda, it was as if no time had passed at all. We fell right back into the same lighthearted yet professional rapport we’d had on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. There was an immediate familial and nostalgic atmosphere to the set, as well as constant laughs.
Everything about working on the film felt instantly familiar. I loved being in the makeup chair beside Mary, kibitzing and gossiping. As thrilling as it was to be working at Mary’s side, I was equally excited to revive Rhoda. Becoming Rhoda again was like falling off a log. I had internalized so many of her quirks that it was as if she’d been lying in wait inside me, biding her time before coming out to shine. She bubbled to the surface in an instant.
Shooting on location in New York was a pleasure and a challenge. Wherever we filmed, people were excited to see us. New Yorkers showed their enthusiasm loudly; the fans were incorrigible. The minute they glimpsed the two of us, they started laughing, clapping, waving, even screaming. “Look at you girls! Back together. This is so cool!”
Cops went out of their way to come say hello and surreptitiously confess they’d watched the show with their moms. In the middle of a take, passersby called out, “Hey, Rhoda. Hey, Mare. Long time.” Their enthusiasm often interfered with shooting, forcing us to start a scene over from the beginning. Although our skillful director, Barnet Kellman, had his work cut out for him, Mary and I didn’t mind the warm response from the public. Far from being forgotten, our alter egos were effusively welcomed back by New Yorkers of all shapes and sizes.
Rhoda had matured in the interceding twenty years. She was much more content with herself. For once, she didn’t feel she needed a guy to make her life complete. Ha! Success! She had a beautiful daughter who was growing up to be the good Jewish doctor Rhoda never married. Fresh off a terrible divorce, she loved her new independence. Rhoda embraced her move to New York as the next in a series of adventures. She’d tried single in Minneapolis, married in Manhattan, married in Paris. Now she was back to her old stomping grounds on her own terms.
The fact that Mary and I had aged in tandem with our characters lent an important alchemy to the film. Rhoda and I were both mothers; like her, I had raised an intelligent, lovely, and independent daughter. Cristina, who was embarkin
g on her own collegiate life, was roughly the same age as Meredith, my on-screen daughter. With Cristina, I had been through the requisite eye-rolling phase and the moments of minor rebellion. I’d also been through the wonderful experience of growing closer with her as she got older. Like Rhoda and Meredith, Cristina and I had learned that we would always need, respect, and rely on each other; our bond had deepened over time. It was easy to channel all of this into Rhoda.
Dressing like Rhoda once again was a blast. I knew that she would have kept her bohemian, eclectic tastes while evolving with the times. The modern-day Rhoda was the same woman as before, though now she had money. There would be no more cheap beads and feathers, no more thrift-store finds. Instead, her accessories would be souvenirs of her round-the-world travels with her ex-husband.
When we filmed the movie in 2000, Rhoda’s original look—colorful scarves and gypsy-girl clothes—was very much in style with the younger set. Our eccentrically dapper costume designer, David Robinson, who sported an impressive handlebar mustache, knew that it would be easy to source clothes for Rhoda, but he wanted to update them to give her a more grown-up, sophisticated edge.
David found an absolutely gorgeous scarf from Etro in several fantastic shades of deep rust, ocher, and orange. At twelve hundred dollars, it was way out of the younger Rhoda Morgenstern’s budget. Rhoda Morgenstern-Rousseau, however, might have splurged on such an item. David had two velvet jackets made for me, one in olive green and one in purple. We decided to hang up the head scarf, but in a nod to Rhoda’s younger days, David found me some great hats, ones she might have picked up in a boutique in Paris.
On the first season of Mary Tyler Moore, Mary had been devoted to wearing clothes by Norman Todd, but then used several designers, including Michael Kors, over the course of the series. David thought that classy corporate-chic clothes were a perfect update to Mary’s wardrobe because she looked great in anything. His only challenge in styling her for Mary and Rhoda was to find sophisticated vegan pumps—Mary, a devoted animal rights activist, no longer wore leather. When David and I were shopping for Rhoda’s wardrobe in Saks or Bergdorf’s, I’d occasionally pick up a beautiful pump. “For Mary?” I’d ask David.
David would look at me and reply simply, “Moo.”
Filming on location always poses difficulties and we shot all over one of the world’s busiest cities from Harlem down to the East Village. As producer and star, Mary had a lot of responsibility on her shoulders. She never stopped working, even when the cameras weren’t rolling.
One evening we were filming a dinner scene with our two daughters out on a terrace. I’d just arrived on-set; Mary had been shooting all day. Though it was quite late when we finished filming the scene, Barnet needed to shoot it again with the camera on me in a close-up. I saw that Mary was looking very tired as she patiently waited for the crew to adjust the lighting. She was going to do her part of the scene off-camera just to be helpful to me.
“Mary,” I said, “they’ve got your footage. Why don’t you go home?”
“No, Val. You’re still working on our scene. I want to do the dialogue with you.”
“Don’t be silly,” I told her. “You look exhausted. The script supervisor can read your lines.”
“No, Val, it’s not right. I can’t leave.” She was the soul of professional courtesy.
“Okay, Ms. Actress,” I said. “But tell Ms. Producer that I won’t continue if you stay.”
After five more “Are you sure, Val?”s, she reluctantly left.
I felt so tender toward her in this moment that I almost teared up. Her steadfast assistant, Terry, hurried her off the set and home. And the audience never knew the difference. The magic of film!
The movie had some great moments that were reminiscent of the old Mary Tyler Moore days. Rhoda, always struggling to express herself artistically, gets a job as a photographer’s assistant and tries to force the models to eat. Mary, desperate for work, takes a job that requires her to dance around in a pickle suit. Perhaps my favorite scene is one in which Mary and I go to see her daughter, Rose, do a stand-up routine in a downtown dive bar, filmed at the famed nightspot CBGB. Rose is bombing onstage, spewing one awful joke after another. Rhoda and Mary try to support her with overblown laughter. Here are these two middle-aged women, cackling and guffawing like crazy people in a roomful of silent, disaffected youth. It was monumentally awkward and true to life.
Mary was determined that Mary and Rhoda be current, interesting, and somewhat unconventional. In the second half of the movie, Mary Richards lands a job as a producer at ABC News and begins investigating a gang killing. As she gets deeper into the investigation, the film takes a darker contemporary turn while keeping comedic elements.
Stepping back into Rhoda’s shoes was a pleasurable and effortless process—one that allowed me to reflect on all the changes that had happened in Rhoda’s life since she first climbed through the window into Mary Richards’s apartment on that cold Minneapolis day in 1970. To commemorate our reunion, Mary, generous as usual, gifted me with a beautiful, enormous painting of two young women, one of them in a head scarf.
Over seventeen million people tuned in to the movie, which aired in March 2000. With such substantial numbers, it was surprising that ABC chose not to order a series. Nevertheless, it was great that Mary and Rhoda got to catch up with each other and the viewers after twenty years. Although I didn’t get the chance to revive Rhoda in another series, she acted as an intermittent guardian angel, poking her head in now and then to influence my career. People loved Rhoda, so they embraced Valerie in different roles. Valerie has an association with Jewish cultural and humanitarian endeavors partly because Rhoda was Jewish.
One of the loveliest events I’ve ever been asked to be part of was a Hadassah presentation of the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony in June 2000. I did a reading along with opera singers and a full orchestra performing a cantata called Women of Valor by Andrea Clearfield.
The cantata Women of Valor is based in part on the Eshet Chayil, which is a long biblical poem honoring women’s contributions to life. It has an acrostic arrangement in which the verses begin with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in regular order. The poem describes the woman of valor as one who is energetic, righteous, and capable. The Jewish Symphony did a beautiful arrangement of the piece. They had opera singers performing the parts of Sarah, Ruth, Esther, and other female biblical figures; I was asked to read the English translation to accompany the singers and the music.
Rehearsing with the symphony was an incredibly uplifting experience, albeit terrifying. The conductor and artistic director, Dr. Noreen Green, a beautiful young blonde and a consummate professional, calmed my fear of missing a cue or jumping one. “If that happens,” she said, “rest assured, we’ll keep playing.”
Although most of my reading was in English, I had to speak several phrases in Hebrew. My hairdressers at the time, two gorgeous redheaded Israeli sisters, Batia and Aleeza, coached me on pronunciation. So did Zvi, Penny’s Israeli husband. At rehearsal, some of the committee ladies putting on the event questioned my Hebrew pronunciation. “So guttural. So Israeli,” they said. They had expected me to sound like someone from Reseda on Shabbat, not like a person from the Holy Land. Or maybe they expected me to sound like Rhoda.
“You know what,” I said, “Hebrew is not a dead language. A whole lot of folks in Israel speak it. I should sound like them, not a Valley Girl.”
They agreed. My accent would be a reminder that correctly pronounced Hebrew lives on.
It was exhilarating, sitting on a stage surrounded by such exceptionally talented musicians and singers. After all my years struggling to become a dancer, I knew full well what it was like to devote yourself single-mindedly to an art. I was struck by the extent of the commitment and dedication of those around me. Hundreds of thousands of hours of practice went into forming these expert musicians, each individual honing his or her craft so that all of them could come together and produce such stup
endous sound.
Around the time of the Jewish Symphony concert, our family was living above Sunset Strip in a house once owned by the famous game show creator and host Chuck Barris, Tony’s former employer and pal. The house had a tiny secret room behind a false bookshelf where Chuck used to go when he wanted to disappear. I would have used it, but Tony and Cris would have known where to look.
Cristina was considering colleges, and Tony and I were unsure whether we wanted to settle permanently in Los Angeles or return to New York. All Under Heaven was booked for a two-month run at the Ivar Theatre in Hollywood. I continued to work steadily in television, doing guest spots and movies. I reunited with Paul Haggis for his television series Family Law, playing the mother of a high school mass murderer. I also played Debra Jo Rupp’s more successful sister on That ’70s Show, a cosmetics saleswoman who drove a pink Cadillac and wore hot pink from head to toe in every scene. Cristina had a small part and looked exactly like a teenage Grace Kelly. Debra Jo cautioned the boys in the cast about Cristina: “Don’t even think about it! She’s like my daughter.” Mila Kunis was unbelievably sweet and welcoming to Cristina. The two of them bonded immediately. They hung out together, dancing wildly and tormenting their on-set tutor with their teenage antics.
I shot a very funny pilot about an Italian-American family called The DeMarco Brothers by John Levenstein. It was a really good script, and I was sorry that it didn’t get picked up. But good doesn’t always sell.
I had been spoiled by nine uninterrupted years on Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda, and I was looking for steady work on-screen or onstage, something that would run for a solid period of time. Although pilot season was over, there was a chance I’d be called for a midseason replacement series. I wasn’t sure if that would occur.
As often happens at the moment when you tell yourself you’ll never work again, a call came from Manhattan Theatre Club, one of the nation’s most acclaimed theater organizations. Under the leadership of artistic director Lynne Meadow and executive producer Barry Grove, this New York City company is committed to premiering new, innovative works and nurturing artists and audiences alike. They invited me to replace Linda Lavin (yes, again crossing paths!) in their hit production of The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife. Stepping into the lead role in a successful Broadway comedy was extremely appealing, especially because the talented Lynne Meadow would direct the marvelous script by Charles Busch.
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