It’s an excruciating moment. Mary Tyler Moore being subjected to the troglodyte sexual politics of David Susskind in her appearance on his show in 1966.
Her gentle, genteel response – to cite Betty Freidan – is measured, restrained, but pointed, and it’s a perfect encapsulation of the very public struggles of the actress who changed television’s perception of women.
In James Adolphus’ SXSW-selected documentary Being Mary Tyler Moore, there’s an intent to re-establish Moore as a feminist icon, a status that has become unfortunately diminished for no good reason. Maybe it’s because people look back at her breakout and Emmy-winning run as Laura Petrie on The Dick van Dyke show as just another 60s cute sitcom, rather than a timely depiction of modern women. Maybe it’s that people forget that Laura wearing capri pants could have sparked cancelation in Evangelical corners if it wasn’t for Moore’s captivating wit. Maybe it’s because people forget that she was Dick van Dyke’s equal in the scripting, even if not in the credit. And then maybe people forget that her own show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was flat-out revolutionary by showing a single woman – not a widow or fiancee – being successful.
The woman Adolphus depicts and celebrates is a complicated one exactly because she lived and worked on the cusp of cultural change, and never seemed comfortable with being seen as a revolutionary. This self-described daughter of impoverished nobility becomes the narrator of her own live through archive footage, much of it surprisingly open and earnest about her need for approval. It’s Moore’s urge to prove herself, like the way she describes her Broadway success in Whose Life is it Anyway? as exonerating (her term) from her failure in the abortive stage version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Moreover, it’s Adolphus reminding audiences how effortlessly great she was, holding her own with comedy black belts for decades. She wasn’t just America’s favorite housewife with the signature Flip, but also a pioneer as a woman production executive, even if the film glosses over the monumental impact of Mary Tyler Moore Entertainment (no MTM, no Hill Street Blues or St. Elsewhere).
But it’s at its most interesting when it truly lets Moore be complicated, especially in her relationship to feminism – a label she often shunned even as her life and on-screen personas were the epitome of women’s lib. Maybe that’s why she has been somewhat shunned in recent years, because she was an agent of change between white-picket-fence homemaker and independent career women, but she was still ok with white picket fences.
Adolphus homes in on one perfectly descriptive moment from The Mary Tyler Moore show, a scene between Ed Asner as Lou Grant (who got his own starring vehicle under MTM) and Mary as Mary Richards. Her reticence to call him Lou, and not Mr. Grant, was seen as setting women back, rather than how the scene plays: as a depiction of the inner challenges of being the first across the barricades. That was Moore, and maybe this film will remind audiences of what she achieved – and how damn funny she was doing it.
Being Mary Tyler Moore
Documentary Spotlight, World Premiere
Wed 15, 7pm, Alamo South LamarCatch up with all of The Austin Chronicle‘s SXSW 2023 coverage.
This article appears in March 10 • 2023.
