1971: Mary Tyler Moore & Minneapolis

By Corinne H. Smith

1971:  I turned fourteen years old.  I was in ninth grade at Hempfield High School.  Daddy was 42, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom worked as a nurse at a local clinic.  We lived on Dale Avenue in West Hempfield Township.  The #1 most popular song on the radio on my fourteenth birthday was “Theme From Shaft” by Isaac Hayes.  Mom snapped this photograph.  It must have been taken on New Year's Eve, and Daddy must have been on his way to performing somewhere.  We obviously still had our tree up and most of our opened presents beneath it.  Once again, we missed taking the photo on the exact day of my November birthday.

     My mother was an extrovert:  a boisterous and often opinionated person who freely spoke her mind.  She had recently returned to the nursing profession and was working at a local clinic for women.  She may have been a registered Republican, but she was a moderate conservative.  She was in favor of most women’s rights, including the availability of birth control pills and legalized abortion.  I’m not sure what path her life would have taken if she hadn’t had a husband and a daughter to attend to.  We were hardly high-maintenance housemates, but still.  My mother lived within some self-imposed and cultural limitations.

     For inspirational role models of younger and more independent women, I had to turn to the ones I saw on TV.  When I was turning fourteen, That Girl was just ending its five-year run.  Marlo Thomas’s character, Ann Marie, was somewhat interesting to watch because she was making every attempt to succeed on her own as an actress in New York City.  I never wanted to live there, or to live in any big city -- or to become an actress -- but I certainly could identify with the way she still called her father “Daddy.”  And his name was the same as my father’s was, too. (Although technically, the writers spelled his name as “Lou,” and my father’s given name is “Lewis.”)

     But Ann Marie seemed to get only so far in her escapades.  Then she’d have to confront her father, who usually complied with a gruff version of “tough love” before the practice even had a name.   And then he’d soften.  Or worse:  Ann would go whining to her boyfriend, Donald Hollinger.  “Oh, Donald!” she’d exclaim with a pout, at least once during an episode.  Why couldn’t she solve her problems on her own?  Whenever I see these shows repeated now, I think less of her than I used to.  Really, Ann.  Grow up.  Trust your gut.  Rely on your own instincts.  You shouldn’t have to be rescued by these guys.

     By the time of my fourteenth birthday, The Mary Tyler Moore Show had been on for more than a year.  It was set in Minneapolis.  Since many of our favorite TV shows were based in New York, Minneapolis by comparison seemed … exotic.  They got snow there, lots of snow, and large annual snowfall was something I always longed for.  And Mary Richards was certainly a far more independent woman than Ann Marie was.  I immediately liked her.  I admired her.  When I grew up, I wanted to be pretty much like Mary.  Land a decent job in a nice place that gets snow.  Pal around with great people at work.  Have a quirky friend living upstairs in an attic apartment.  Maybe go out on occasional dates.  Maybe not.  And it wouldn’t matter, anyway.  I would be able to take care of myself just fine.  I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to hang a big letter “C” my living room wall, though.  But I put Minneapolis on my shortlist of cool places where I would consider living, along with Buffalo, New York.  Because of snow, of course.

     At fourteen, I was only a month older than Lisa Gerritsen, who played Bess Lindstrom on the show.  What a lucky kid she was!  She was able to hang out with Mary and Rhoda on a regular basis.  She just had to put up with Phyllis’s nonsense as a progressive mother.

     I loved The Mary Tyler Moore Show and was sorry to see it end, even with its classic finale when everyone in the newsroom got fired except for Ted Baxter.  I am sure that the show’s portrayal of a successful independent woman had an influence on me and what I expected of women’s roles in society.  Back then I wouldn’t have considered it a landmark series in the history of television, but I’m glad that people see it this way now. 

     I recently read Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s terrific book, Mary and Rhoda and Lou and Ted: And all theBrilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic.  It’s a behind-the-scenes look and analysis of the show.  You learn a lot about the writers – especially the female writers – and the intricacies of launching a sitcom and keeping it going.  You even find out how they filmed the orange-tiger shelter kitty (“Mimsie”) to portray the meowing MTM logo at the end of the credits.  A fun read.

     I finally got a chance to visit Minneapolis for myself in December 1996, when I drove seven hours north from my apartment in northern Illinois to see John Denver’s Christmas concert at the Orpheum Theatre.  (This was the last time I saw John in person.  It’s a story for another time.)

     I was busy walking from my downtown hotel to a restaurant and then to the theater, when it dawned on me:  I’d forgotten to wear a hat!  How could I walk into the middle of a Minneapolis street and toss a hat into the air when I didn’t even have one to throw?  Mary Richard’s hat toss was the iconic symbol of the independent woman.  Like her theme song said:  by smiling and twirling around and flinging that hat in the air, she showed that she was gonna make it after all.  And here I was, sans hat!  How could I have failed this crucial test? 

     I passed another one, though.  I was already armed with directions on how to find the house that Mary and Rhoda were supposed to live in.  That weekend I drove past the house twice and stopped to take photos of it.  Back then in 1996, it was painted dark brown.  That’s why I drove past it twice.  Other than the distinctive attic window, the house didn’t really look quite right.  I wasn’t sure it was the same building.  In the opening credits of the 1970s show, the exterior was bright white.  (Just like the snow that appeared in some of the shots.)  Here’s my really grainy photo from that day.  It’s a photo of an inkjet printout.  I couldn’t find the original.  I usually have this paper tucked inside a customized snow globe that sits on my bedside table.  That’s real snow in the picture, too.

A really grainy photo of the Mary Richards house in Minneapolis, on a day in December 1996.

      As I prepared this piece, I looked online for better images of the house.  Surprise:  it’s for sale!  The property at 2104 Kenwood Parkway was listed with a local realty office in June 2012, and as of this writing (September 2013), it still hasn’t sold.  Its current price is $2.645 million.  The price tag is not due to its TV connection, but because of its size (7 bedrooms) and the excellent neighborhood it sits in.  It’s not far to walk from there to Lake of the Isles and Cedar Lake, just like Mary did in the opening credits of the show.  Click here to see the Realtor’slisting, which includes lots of interior and exterior photos.  The house is now beige and looks much more inviting.  And yes, if I had a few more dollars in my pocket, I’d be tempted to finally take the plunge and adopt this trendy Minneapolis address.  I’d have to find a quirky chick from New York to rent the upstairs apartment.

     Naturally, I had no clue that Minneapolis would come back into my life in a different way.  I’ve since visited the city a number of times during my research following Henry David Thoreau’s 1861 trip from Massachusetts to Minnesota.  I’ve spoken on the topic in the city and its suburbs a few times.  And even though a statue of Mary tossing her hat was installed on a downtown Minneapolis street in 2002, I still haven’t had a chance to fling my own hat in the air at that spot.  I almost always wear a hat these days, however.  Next visit, for sure.