Happy 50th anniversary to The Mary Tyler Moore Show!

Paste Magazine

"On September 19, 1970, the face of television changed forever with the premiere of The Mary Tyler Moore Show," says Tom Keiser of the 16-time Emmy-winning sitcom. "America grew to embrace Twin Cities news producer Mary Richards and her close circle of friends and co-workers over seven seasons, as the show came to define the workplace sitcom. Its legacy is both ubiquitous through its successors and obfuscated by its imitators, but on its own merits, Mary Tyler Moore holds up as both an evolutionary step between the 1960s and the 1970s, and a hilarious sitcom with an all-star cast and crew. The Mary Tyler Moore is remembered today for being one of the first 'grownup' sitcoms, featuring characters who acted and spoke to each other like actual adults. It was also a groundbreaking show in how it focused on a woman who chose her career over marriage. Its greatest strength, though, and the reason it remains one of the best sitcoms ever produced 50 years later, was always its cast. The cast was simply stacked, from top to bottom. Cloris Leachman would win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar while still giving her all on the small screen as feminist landlady Phyllis Lindstrom, while Valerie Harper became an icon as Mary’s best friend, Rhoda Morgenstern. Ted Knight found his signature role in newscaster Ted Baxter, the quintessential himbo of his era, and Gavin MacLeod portrayed the most catty heterosexual male of all-time as writer Murray Slaughter. Ed Asner was gruff but loveable, an accidental icon of the bear community, while John Amos was the best part of the handful of episodes he was in as Gordy the Weatherman. While most people know Betty White today as the naive Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls, her choice to play Rose was a direct response to how viewers saw her as sex-positive homemaker Sue Ann Nivens on Mary Tyler Moore, which in turn played on White’s original typecasting as a saccharine TV personality. And a lot of Moore’s own spectacular performance as an icy mother in 1980’s Ordinary People played on the audience’s perception of her from MTM and The Dick Van Dyke Show."

ALSO:

• Here are 50 reasons to love The Mary Tyler Moore Show, from female writers to serious laughter to frenemies
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show's memorable theme song, written and performed by Sonny Curtis, has been covered by everybody from Sammy Davis, Jr. to Hüsker Dü