TV icon and women’s rights advocate Mary Tyler Moore died today after being hospitalized in Connecticut. She was 80 years old. Her representative, Mara Buxbaum, told the Huffington Post in a statement:
“Today, beloved icon, Mary Tyler Moore, passed away at the age of 80 in the company of friends and her loving husband of over 33 years, Dr. S. Robert Levine. A groundbreaking actress, producer, and passionate advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Mary will be remembered as a fearless visionary who turned the world on with her smile.”
That statement isn’t hyperbole either. Without Tyler, the way women are portrayed in media–and treated in real life, especially at work–would not be the same. “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” was the first show to give serious attention to independent working women. Moore, who initially got her big break on the 1960s sitcom “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” started her own show in the ’70s, where she played a 30-year-old working woman who never married–something unheard of on TV at the time.
Here are three reasons Mary Tyler Moore was a feminist icon:
1. Moore’s character, Mary Richards, famously asked for equal pay to her male co-worker in Season 3, episode 1. The fact that equal pay for women is still largely up for debate is, well, depressing.
2. There’s also that episode where Mary goes on the pill. Hello, women’s lib. You can watch it here on Hulu.
3. Moore ran the show. Literally. Moore was a boss lady. “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” director Alan Rafkin recalled in his autobiography how this was the case, stating:
“First and foremost Mary was a businesswoman and she ran her series beautifully. She was the boss, and although you weren’t always wedded to doing things exactly her way, you never forgot for a second that she was in charge.”
Even Oprah famously said in a PBS documentary celebrating the actress that Moore “has probably had more influence on my career than any other single person or force.” Moore herself identified as a feminist–and she told Larry King on his show that her character certainly was:
“She wasn’t aggressive about it, but she surely was. The writers never forgot that. They had her in situations where she had to deal with it.”
The show itself ran for seven seasons and held the record for most Emmys won at a whopping 29, until “Frasier” broke it in 2002. Besides her acting, Moore was also an animal rights activist, as she founded Broadway Barks 15, an annual homeless cat and dog adoption event in New York City, and fought for legislation to protect farm animals from inhumane suffering.
But that’s not it either. Moore was also an advocate for researching cures for diabetes and served as the international chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Moore herself suffered from type 1 diabetes (and was diagnosed at age 33), and nearly became blind from it in recent years.
Moore is survived by her husband Robert Levine. She and Levine (who is Jewish) were married for 33 years. She was a mother to her son, Richard, who died in 1980 of an accidental gunshot.
We will miss you, Mary Tyler Moore.
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