Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: A History of the Mary Tyler Moore Show (39 page)

Finally, Moore recalled an approach her costar Julie Andrews had used on the movie
Thoroughly Modern Millie
when she worked with Alzheimer’s-stricken costar Bea Lillie. Moore stood next to the camera and said each of Ford’s lines, one by one, and had her repeat them: “Hello, Mary?” she began. “This is Betty Ford.” The scene came out just fine on film. Ford recalled the experience of television stardom as “so much fun.”

For the show’s third-to-last episode, the producers figured out an ingenious way to use guest star Johnny Carson to spruce up what could have been a standard “flashback” episode full of clips from previous shows. Mary gives one of her infamous parties and is sure this will finally be a good one; her friend, a congresswoman, is bringing none other than the famous talk show host as her guest. But before Carson arrives, the lights in Mary’s building go out, and the cast sits in the dark reminiscing. When Carson finally makes an “appearance,” it’s still pitch black, and all we hear is his voice before he has to leave. Even though it was a “clip show,” the episode served as the perfect denouement to one of the show’s long-running gags, Mary’s rotten parties.

The Carson appearance was a particular point of pride for Brooks: “a huge guest star, who never guest-starred on anything, and we never showed his face.” Carson agreed to do the show because Weinberger used to write for him, and the writers thought it would be particularly
funny if they reversed what would be the standard reaction to booking such a great cameo in their show’s waning days. For the record, Carson really did come to the stage to shoot the appearance live—but only the studio audience that night, who saw him once the lights came up, knew for sure.

One giant question was imminent for the writing staff: How would they end the esteemed
Mary Tyler Moore Show
? The producers knew the ending would
not
have anything to do with her finding a husband. In the six years they’d been on the air, they’d yet to find a date who was right for Mary to go the distance with, so they weren’t about to start trying now. Every time they’d thought,
Maybe this will be the guy,
they’d see the actor in question on the screen with Mary and think,
No.
They felt more frustrated by Mary’s dating options than Mary Richards herself did. Talented, good-looking, comedic actors in their thirties were hard to come by in television. All the best ones preferred film. The producers finally acknowledged,
This is never going to happen
. Unlike their forced miscasting of Rhoda’s husband Joe, a character intrinsic to that show’s original premise, they never needed to give Mary a love interest if they didn’t find the right one.

Only one gentleman ever had a shot with Mary, as far as the producers were concerned: Lou Grant. During the final seasons, Brooks and Burns purposely built in hints that Mary and Lou might get together in the end. Their relationship tension culminated—or, more accurately, fizzled—in an episode in which Mary asks Lou on a date. (Yes, she calls him “Lou” on their date, without incident.) But they find only friendly feelings between them. The deal is sealed with an attempted kiss that ends in hysterical laughter—and an immediate return to calling him “Mr. Grant.” “That moment when they kissed was a cop-out for me,” Brooks says. “I thought Ed was sexy, I thought people saw him as sexy, and they had great chemistry.”

Moore, however, would have no talk of Mary and Lou as a couple, and the producers respected her wishes. “We thought it would be interesting
to get a Tracy-Hepburn thing going on,” Burns recalls. “It was not far-fetched to us. But it was one of the few times Mary ever told us she couldn’t get behind one of our ideas. She said no, so we wrote the episode where they tried to kiss instead.”

That episode was the show’s second-to-last. Which meant the producers still had no idea what would happen in the finale.

Treva Silverman returned to the States in early 1977, first stopping in her hometown of New York. She called Allan Burns from across the country, just to say hi and tell him she was back on U.S. soil. She was preparing to move back to Los Angeles and return to writing pilots and movie scripts. “We’re doing the last taping in two weeks,” he told her. “Come.” Two weeks later, she was on a plane back to Los Angeles.

Around the same time, Joe Rainone wrote to Carol Straughn, Brooks and Burns’s assistant, asking if he could attend one of the last season’s tapings. He understood that the finale would be a hot ticket and by invitation only, but he’d love to squeeze onto the bleachers for one of the other remaining episodes if possible. Straughn, a glamorous beauty with massive black curls, wrote back with great news: She’d gotten two tickets, so he could come as her date. It wasn’t a
date
date, of course, but he didn’t mind. He set off across the country in his Corvette, timing his arrival a few days before the finale.

Brooks, Burns, Weinberger, Daniels, Lloyd, and Ellison—those who had written the bulk of the episodes of the last few seasons—all gathered to write that last episode, their 168th. They were petrified by the pressure. They knew that whatever they did at work that week would be seen and discussed by all of America. As for plot, they were stumped, mortified at the level of scrutiny. They knew they’d bring Rhoda and Phyllis back one way or another for a final appearance. Beyond that, they weren’t sure.

Meanwhile, as February 1977 began, the cast was gathering for their final week of work together, whether or not they had a script. “It’s been a great seven years,” Sandrich told the cast in a pep talk of
sorts. “And we’ll probably never have another job like this.” They spent all of their time together—no lunches apart, no dance class, no alone time in dressing rooms. Finally, word came down from the office: The final half hour would revolve around massive layoffs at WJM after a new owner takes over. Everyone would be fired except Ted. The final joke would be on everyone
except
the man who’d played the buffoon for so long. A good joke, sure, but also a sly indictment of the local news business, which, in the time that
Mary Tyler Moore
had been on the air, had become as ratings-obsessed as the national network giants. Vincent Gardenia, known best for his role as Frank Lorenzo on
All in the Family,
guest-starred as the new station owner, a thankless role. The cast tried to include him in their lunches and be as friendly as possible, though Gardenia was in an awkward position, crashing the funeral of one of America’s favorite shows.

The writers managed to churn out three-quarters of a final script in time for the scheduled rehearsal on Wednesday that week. The actors struggled not to cry through the whole first reading, they were so charged with emotion. But the script itself didn’t quite work. Betty White wasn’t in it, and neither was Georgia Engel. Jay Sandrich, after reading it through with the cast, called Brooks and Burns to tell them, “Here’s what we on the stage think.” That night, the writers rewrote.

The major problem, however, remained: The writers still didn’t have a killer idea for the final scene. At last, one of them—no one is sure who—came up with having Ted recite the lyrics to the World War I–era marching song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” on the air in a ridiculous effort to be profound. From there, the final scene built: The whole cast could sing it in the end as a poignant-but-funny good-bye. White and Engel could join the newsroom cast in the tearful send-off.

A complete and revised script appeared on Thursday, the day the cast was set to do blocking with the cameras. Sandrich sent the camera operators away anyway, to give the actors private time with the scenes. When Asner said his final line for the first time—“I treasure you people”—he did it so well that everyone on the stage broke up in tears.
Sandrich told Asner, “Don’t do that line reading again until it’s time,” and told Moore, “Hold off on your tears as long as you can.”

The final touch on the scene came from an improvised moment. During the rehearsal, the entire cast embraced in the newsroom, and one of them said they needed a Kleenex, at which point they all shuffled over to the tissue box on Mary’s desk together. Sandrich wanted to put that group hug, complete with Kleenex-shuffle, on the show. Burns thought it was a little maudlin. But after the producers discussed it, they decided it would stay in. Sometimes maudlin worked.

Leachman squeezed in a final clash with Sandrich for her triumphant return. In the scene in which Lou brings Rhoda and Phyllis to Mary’s apartment to cheer her up, Leachman jumped in front of Harper without warning, going off script. Phyllis, Leachman explained, was the one who did it. Cloris didn’t. Sandrich screamed his final,
“Cloris!!!”
Leachman continued to explain: Phyllis could not let Rhoda in front of her, and she would play the scene no other way. It was hard to argue with her logic.

Getting through the taping of the final episode was another matter altogether, one that required periodic sobbing breaks for cast members, crew, producers, and writers alike. Moore felt like she was reliving every moment of the past seven years with every line. It didn’t help that the plot so closely mirrored the real-life situation: Sandrich lost it when Moore’s eyes teared up in the final newsroom scene. So did most of the writers who’d come back to watch the final taping, including Treva Silverman. Treva passed Brooks a note during the taping that said, simply: “Transcendent.” It was the first time Brooks had seen that word; he would go look it up later, but he got the general idea.

Mary gave a tearjerker of a final speech: “I just wanted you to know that sometimes I get concerned about being a career woman. I get to thinking my job is too important to me, and I tell myself that the people I work with are just the people I work with, and not my family. And last night, I thought, ‘What is a family, anyway?’ They’re
just people who make you feel less alone and really loved. And that’s what you’ve done for me. Thank you for being my family.”

In a final scene that would become legendary, Moore is the last out the newsroom door, looking back one more time before turning out the lights. During the taping, the crewman who was in charge of dimming the lights was so enraptured that he forgot to do it, so those final few seconds had to be reshot.

The wrap party, held on the lot in the commissary—cleared of its trays and cafeteria lines for the occasion—was charged with excitement, relief, nostalgia, and grief. Their seven-year-long collaboration was now over. Those seven years had encompassed the most important events of most of the cast’s, crew’s, producers’, and directors’ lives. Their relationships had extended far past the show itself. Those who made
Mary Tyler Moore,
and their families and friends, mingled among dinner, drinks, and a huge, TV-shaped cake. Treva Silverman reminisced about her time on the show, which seemed several lifetimes away at that point. Pat Nardo visited with old friends and filled them in on how things were going on
Rhoda
. She made peace with Joe Rainone for, years earlier, blocking his letters from circulating to the staff.

As the evening wound down, Moore received a steady stream of well-wishers at the door. Rainone said what might be his last good-bye to her, then turned to head back to his hotel for the night. Allen Ludden was standing nearby, waiting for wife Betty White. “Are you the guy who came from Rhode Island?” Ludden asked a startled Rainone. The
Password
host knew who
he
was? “I’ve heard all about you!” It was the perfect end to Rainone’s strange, seven-year trip through Hollywood.