LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 Mary Tyler Moore didn\u2019t have it all on her 1970s sitcom, but what she had was enough.
A husband and kids, long the stock TV recipe for female contentment, were absent from \u201cThe Mary Tyler Moore Show.\u201d Instead, Mary Richards combined work, friends and lovers into an alternative version of a modern young woman\u2019s full life.
Feminism already had said it was possible. Mary made it mainstream with her charm and million-watt smile, showing America that an independent woman could be admired and embraced.
She was so inspiring that even those lacking her perfect balance of grace and, yes, spunk, imagined themselves achieving their own success.
Moore, who died Wednesday at 80, \u201cinfluenced my career more than any other tv role model,\u201d NBC newswoman Andrea Mitchell posted on Twitter. \u201cShe indeed turned on the world with her smile.\u201d
Marlo Thomas, who played another single women intent on a career in the 1960s sitcom \u201cThat Girl,\u201d saluted Moore and their shared achievement. \u201cI\u2019m proud that we were in that groundbreaking sorority that brought single independent women to television. She will be deeply missed,\u201d Thomas in a statement.
In downtown Minneapolis, where Moore\u2019s sitcom was set, fans laid flowers at the base of a statue that depicts the opening-credits scene in which she joyfully, triumphantly throws her tam in the air.
Nichole Buehler, 35, who said she grew up watching the show with her great-grandmother, called Moore\u2019s character \u201ca strong, independent\u201d working woman.
Moore also was a daring actress whose talents extended beyond comedy, said Robert Redford, who directed her to an Oscar nomination in the 1980 family drama \u201cOrdinary People.\u201d
\u201cThe courage she displayed in taking on a role \u2026 darker than anything she had ever done, was brave and enormously powerful,\u201d Redford said in a statement.
Moore, who gained fame in the 1960s as frazzled wife Laura Petrie on \u201cThe Dick Van Dyke Show,\u201d went on to win seven Emmy Awards over the years.
As Laura, she traded in the housedress of countless sitcom wives for Capri pants that were as fashionable as they were suited to a modern American woman.
She wasn\u2019t perfect: Viewers identified with her flustered moments and her plaintive cry to her husband: \u201cOhhhh, Robbbb!\u201d
Moore\u2019s chemistry with Van Dyke was unmistakable. Decades later, he spoke warmly of the chaste but palpable off-screen crush they shared during the show\u2019s run.
They also appeared together in several TV specials over the years and in 2003, co-starred in a PBS production of the play \u201cThe Gin Game.\u201d
\u201cThere are no words. She was THE BEST! We always said that we changed each other\u2019s lives for the better,\u201d Van Dyke tweeted.
But it was as the plucky Minneapolis TV news producer on \u201cThe Mary Tyler Moore Show\u201d (1970-77), that Moore truly made her mark.
Mary Richards was comfortable being single in her 30s, and while she dated, she wasn\u2019t desperate to get married. She sparred affectionately with her gruff boss, Lou Grant, played by Ed Asner, and addressed him always as \u201cMr. Grant.\u201d And millions agreed with the show\u2019s theme song that she could \u201cturn the world on with her smile.\u201d
The series ran seven seasons and won 29 Emmys, a record that stood for a quarter century until \u201cFrasier\u201d broke it in 2002.
\u201cEverything I did was by the seat of the pants. I reacted to every written situation the way I would have in real life,\u201d Moore told The Associated Press in 1995.
\u201cThe Mary Tyler Moore Show\u201d spawned the spin-offs \u201cRhoda,\u201d (1974-78), starring Valerie Harper; \u201cPhyllis\u201d (1975-77), starring Cloris Leachman; and \u201cLou Grant\u201d (1977-82), starring Asner in a rare drama spun off from a comedy.
\u201cMary Tyler Moore\u201d was the first in a series of acclaimed, award-winning shows she produced with her second husband, Grant Tinker, who died in November 2016, through their MTM Enterprises. (The meowing kitten at the end of the shows was a parody of the MGM lion.) \u201cThe Bob Newhart Show\u201d and \u201cHill Street Blues\u201d are among the MTM series that followed.
Moore\u2019s seventh Emmy came in 1993 for a Lifetime network movie, \u201cStolen Babies.\u201d She had won two for \u201cThe Dick Van Dyke Show\u201d and the other four for \u201cMary Tyler Moore.\u201d In 2012, Moore received the Screen Actors Guild\u2019s lifetime achievement award.
On the big screen, Moore\u2019s appearances were less frequent. She was a 1920s flapper in the hit 1967 musical \u201cThoroughly Modern Millie\u201d and a nun who falls for Elvis Presley in \u201cChange of Habit\u201d in 1969.
Moore was born in 1936 in Brooklyn; the family moved to California when she was around 8 years old. She began dance lessons as a child and launched her career while still in her teens, appearing in TV commercials.
She endured personal tragedy in her life. Her only child, Richard, who\u2019d had trouble in school and with drugs, accidentally shot himself at 24. Her younger sister, Elizabeth, died at 21 from a combination of a painkillers and alcohol.
In her 1995 autobiography \u201cAfter All,\u201d Moore admitted she helped her terminally ill brother try to commit suicide by feeding him ice cream laced with a deadly overdose of drugs. The attempt failed, and her 47-year-old brother, John, died three months later in 1992 of kidney cancer.
Moore herself lived with juvenile diabetes for some 40 years and told of her struggle in her 2009 book, \u201cGrowing Up Again.\u201d She also spent five weeks at the Betty Ford Clinic in 1984 for alcohol abuse.
In 1983, Moore married cardiologist Robert Levine, who survives her. Her marriage to Tinker lasted from 1962 to 1981. Before that, she was married to Dick Meeker from 1955 to 1961.
___
AP writers Frazier Moore in New York and Jeff Baenen in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
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