Mary Tyler Moore

Background

Mary Tyler Moore was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 29, 1936, to George Tyler Moore and Marjorie Hackett. She was raised in an Irish-Catholic family in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn with a younger brother and sister, who unfortunately passed away ahead of her at 21 and 47 years old respectively. She attended Brooklyn’s Lima Parochial School until third grade before her family relocated to Los Angeles, California when she was eight. Moore resumed her study at Saint Ambrose School and continued to Immaculate Heart High School in the Los Feliz neighborhood. Her first television appearance took place in the 1950s when she worked for Hotpoint appliances’ T.V. commercials. She received around $6,000 after being featured in 39 commercials within five days. In 1955, the 18 years old Moore married salesman Richard Meeker, who was 10 years older than her. She was let go from her work at Hotpoint due to her pregnancy with her first and only child, Richard Carleton Meeker, Jr. The couple was only together until 1962.

Moore made her film debut with a small role as a nurse in Jack Lemmon’s 1957 “Operation Mad Ball.” Her first regular appearance on a T.V. show was when she played a mysterious, yet glamorous phone receptionist whose face was never shown in Richard Diamond’s 1959 “Private Detective.” She received her first speaking part in a movie with “X-15” in 1961. Moore found her breakthrough after landing a role in the legendary sitcom “The Dick Van Dyke Show” as Laura Petrie. Dubbed as one of the funniest and most sophisticated sitcoms in American T.V. history, the show ran for five seasons from 1961 to 1966. The couple founded the MTM Enterprises in 1970, a T.V. production company that produced Moore’s next best-known work, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Throughout its seven seasons from 1970 to 1977, the program hoarded no less than 29 Emmy Awards. Moore also earned herself three Emmys and a Golden Globe. She also appeared on Broadway several times.

Moore made her comeback to the big screen with “Ordinary People” on September 19, 1980, where she played the role of a mother grieving over the accidental death of her son. Moore married Robert Levine, a cardiologist, at the New York City’s Pierre Hotel on November 23, 1983. She received her star at the 7021 Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame on September 8, 1992. She appeared as a guest star in Ellen DeGeneres’ “The Ellen Show” in 2001 and was reunited with her former co-stars from “The Dick Van Dyke Show” on a reunion special in 2004. She had a bronze statue standing at the Minneapolis intersection since May 8, 2002. The actress has been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes since 1969. She wrote and published two memoirs in 1995 and 2009. The first one, titled “After All,” talked about her admittance to being a recovering alcoholic, while the second one, “Growing Up Again: Life, Loves, and Oh Yeah, Diabetes,” focused on her life after being diagnosed with type one diabetes. Moore passed away on January 25, 2017, at Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut. She was 80 years old at the time. Her cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest. The actress was buried in a private ceremony at Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield, Connecticut.