The Making of Season One - The Mary Tyler Moore Show |
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This video is the 2002 documentary The Making of Season One - The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It was one of the special features when the DVDs of Season 1 came out.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show is my favorite situation comedy of all-time, created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns and starring Mary Tyler Moore. It originally aired on CBS from 1970 to 1977. Moore, who several years earlier had achieved fame as Laura Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show, starred as Mary Richards, an unmarried, independent woman focused on her career as associate producer of the fictional WJM news program in Minneapolis. Ed Asner co-starred as Mary's boss Lou Grant, alongside Gavin MacLeod (Murray Slaughter), Ted Knight (Ted Baxter), Georgia Engel (Georgette Franklin), and Betty White (Sue Ann Nivens), with Valerie Harper as Rhoda Morgenstern and Cloris Leachman as Phyllis Lindstrom, friends and neighbors of Mary. What a cast! It's hard to believe that they've all passed on, but what memories they left us every Saturday night on CBS. The show is remembered for its complex, realistic characters and storylines, in contrast to what was usually seen on TV at that time. In addition to the goings-on in Mary's home life, this budding journalist loved the scenes in the newsroom, which were hilarious, and as I later found out, very realistic. TMTMS enjoyed high ratings and critical acclaim in its original run, earning 29 Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series from 1975–1977. In this documentary, the actors/actresses, writers, and producers give us a look inside how the show began, how each performer came aboard, and the many obstacles it faced through its first season. Casting director Ethel Winant has some great stories about getting who she wanted on the show (and she batted 1,000!). Overall, I was in awe, and extremely grateful, that it all happened the way it did. There are short clips, but if you haven't seen the first season, or the rest of the episodes, they're elsewhere on YouTube!. This documentary was written and directed by Matthew Asner and Danny Gold. Ed Asner was executive producer, Matthew Asner and Gold were producers, and Jonathan Oakes was associate producer. Copyright Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Endless Classic Television, or any other party. I don't claim the rights to, and don't profit from, this video. I just posted it for historical and educational purposes, and for those who will enjoy it as much as I did. NOTE: This is the video I posted last year, but so many people were bothered that they chose to play music nearly throughout, I re-edited it to take the music out. I do and I do and I do for you people; hope you appreciate it! |