The Mary Tyler Moore Show

While visiting my Aunt Bert (86) in Michigan this summer, we found ourselves sitting around the TV in the evenings watching the Mary Tyler Moore Show...  LAUGHING OUR HEADS OFF!  I hadn't seen the show in years. Such great humor-- the characters (and actors) all flow so perfectly together. When we came home I borrowed the first season DVD from the library and a really interesting book about the show's creation, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted (see links at left).

I LOVE this show!  The show's first broadcast was in 1971 (I was 7 years old) and now it's like watching a time capsule.  Like watching old friends perform in a vintage antique store...the bell-bottoms, mini-dresses, hairpieces & flip hair-dos, peace-sign beaded neck chokers, men's ascots, leisure suits, long side burns, fringed vests and purses. And the WJM-TV newsroom with its rotary phones, old-school typewriters, and the electric percolator in Lou's office.

The book is fascinating! I had no idea all the different  ideas, people, and timing that all had to 'line up' for the series to come to life.  It's really interesting to learn about the many obstacles and opposition the creators and actors faced in the beginning. It seems funny now, but the 'new' sitcom format and subject matter (featuring a 30-year old single woman) was groundbreaking for the time. How ironic that whenever something new, challenging, and 'out of the box' comes along there are always the opposers, naysayers and negative predictions by 'experts' to say it won't succeed.  I'm sure glad they stuck with it!   

Is there something you or I need to stick with?  Any negative voices we have to silence to see our dreams come to pass, or to start dreaming in the first place?  

Enjoy your weekend! I encourage you to do something fun today that makes you laugh!  

A merry heart does good, like medicine. Proverbs 17:22

Mary Tyler Moore Show
Original theme song lyrics:

How will you make it on your own? 
This world is awfully big, girl this time you're all alone 
But it's time you started living 
It's time you let someone else do some giving 

Love is all around, no need to waste it 
You can have a town, why don't you take it 
You're gonna make it after all 
You're gonna make it after all

Here's a recording of the original theme song by Sonny Curtis, the lyrics of which later changed as Mary 'grew'.  (The DVD, of course, has the full opening sequence.)