RIP Mary Tyler Moore, Butch Trucks, and Mike Connors
The girl who could turn the world on with her smile has passed away, and a big part of pop culture is gone too.
Mary Tyler Moore, famous for playing Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show and Mary Richards on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, died Wednesday at the age of 80. She had been dealing with many health problems for decades, including type 1 diabetes and brain surgery in 2011.
Moore also earned an Oscar nomination for her role in Ordinary People and had a memorable role in the comedy Flirting with Disaster. She also appeared in movies like Thoroughly Modern Millie, the Elvis Presley movie Change of Habit, and TV shows like the miniseries Lincoln, 77 Sunset Strip, The George Burns Show, Hawaiian Eye, Frasier, Hot in Cleveland, and other shows where she was the lead, including Mary, The Mary Tyler Moore Hour, Annie McGuire, and New York News. Only her legs were seen in the ’50s series Richard Diamond, Private Eye, where she played David Janssen’s secretary. She won seven Emmy Awards and graced the November 19, 1966, cover of The Saturday Evening Post.
Her production company, named MTM Enterprises and famous for its mewing kitten logo, was responsible for shows like Rhoda, The Bob Newhart Show, Lou Grant, Remington Steele, Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, WKRP in Cincinnati, and many others. She got her start playing Happy Hotpoint in commercials that ran during The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet.
Many costars and friends are paying tribute to Moore, including Van Dyke, Carl Reiner, Rose Marie, Ed Asner, Cloris Leachman, Larry Mathews (who played little Ritchie Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show), CBS chairman Les Moonves, and many others. Fans are also gathering at many of the Minneapolis locations seen in the opening of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Butch Trucks was the co-founder of and drummer (along with Jai Johanny Johanson) for The Allman Brothers. He played on such classic songs as “Ramblin’ Man,” “Whipping Post,” “Trouble No More,” and “One Way Out.” He passed away Tuesday at the age of 69. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of The Allman Brothers in 1995.
Trucks was part of a big musical family. His son Vaylor plays guitar for The Yeti Trio. His nephew Derek Trucks played guitar with The Allman Brothers and also plays with The Tedeschi Trucks Band. And Derek’s brother Duane plays drums for the bands Widespread Panic and Hard Working Americans.
Actor Mike Connors, who passed away Thursday from leukemia at the age of 91, was best known as Joe Mannix on Mannix, the detective drama that ran on CBS from 1968 to 1975. He also appeared in a number of movies, including The Ten Commandments, Sudden Fear, Five Guns West, Day the World Ended, and in TV shows like Tightrope, Gunsmoke, The Untouchables, M Squad, the miniseries War and Remembrance, and Murder, She Wrote. He also portrayed the Mannix character on Here’s Lucy and Diagnosis: Murder and in the 2003 comedy film Nobody Knows Anything. His last role was a 2007 episode of Two and a Half Men.
His real name was Kreker Ohanian, and early in his career he went as “Touch” Connors.
The Last Jedi
That’s the title of the next Star Wars movie. Actually, the official title is Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I don’t want to face the wrath of hardcore Star Wars fans by getting it wrong. Those Trekkies can be unforgiving.
But what does the title mean? Does it mean that Luke Skywalker is that Jedi and he’s going to die? Does it mean that he’ll die and then Rey will be the last Jedi? Is Rey related to Luke? Does it actually refer to Kylo Ren? Does it refer to a character we haven’t even seen yet? Can I ask anymore questions in this paragraph?
As The Telegraph explains, the term “the last Jedi” was used to describe Luke in the opening crawl in The Force Awakens, so it’s a pretty good bet it refers to him. Unless it doesn’t!
Star Wars: The Last Jedi will hit theaters in December. I’d get in line right now.
It's official. STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI is the next chapter of the Skywalker saga. This December. #TheLastJedi https://t.co/ySkVwQcMTP pic.twitter.com/eHrPgbsRJq
— Star Wars (@starwars) January 23, 2017
And the Nominees Are …
I don’t want to rehash all of the news this week about the Oscars. You can see all the nominations here and read about the 14 nominations La-La Land received, which ties the record set by Titanic and All About Eve, here. It’s more fun to talk about the snubs!
A lot of people thought that Martin Scorsese would get a Best Director nomination for Silence, but neither he nor the film were nominated. Clint Eastwood (Sully) and Denzel Washington (Fences) didn’t get director nominations either (and some are upset that the Academy instead gave controversial Mel Gibson a nomination for directing Hacksaw Ridge), though Washington did get a Best Actor nomination. Taraji P. Henson wasn’t nominated for her role as real-life NASA computer scientist Katherine Johnson in Hidden Figures, though her co-star Octavia Spencer got a Best Supporting Actress nomination. Many people thought that Annette Bening would get a nomination for 20th Century Women, but maybe that movie is getting lost in all of the award talk. Even Tom Hanks wasn’t nominated this year. Isn’t that against the law?
I haven’t yet seen any of the movies nominated, but I’m going to make a bold Oscar prediction anyway. He’s going to be really messy while Felix is going to be really neat.
The Real Story behind McDonald’s
Last April I posted the trailer for The Founder, the movie released last week that stars Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc, the man who made McDonald’s into an international fast food powerhouse. But the title is sort of a nudge-nudge, wink-wink joke, because, as this story from this week’s CBS Sunday Morning explains, Kroc wasn’t really “the founder.”
By the way, Keaton didn’t get an Oscar nomination either.
How Are You Doing with Your New Year’s Resolutions?
We’re almost a full month into 2017. Given up yet?
According to a 2015 poll, 60 percent of people who make resolutions give up on them by the time February rolls around.
Maybe we should start our resolutions in December instead of January, so we won’t have that “new year” pressure and feel like we have to get better and get better quickly. But that wouldn’t work either. You can’t resolve to save money or get in shape at Christmas, when you have to buy new phones for the kids and you’re eating 19 pieces of pumpkin pie.
I can’t say that I’m eating healthier so far this year (I had nachos for dinner the other night), but I’m actually sticking to a couple of other resolutions I made. Yeah, I’m shocked too.
This Week in History
Elizabeth Blackwell becomes first woman M.D. in the U.S. (January 23, 1849)
The British-born Blackwell was also the first woman on the U.K. Medical Register.
Sir Winston Churchill dies (January 24, 1965)
A lot was made recently of the fact that a bust of the former British prime minister was returned to the White House when President Trump took office. Here’s the real story.
This Week in Saturday Evening Post History: “Former Figure” (January 26, 1957)
Here’s the cover for the January 26, 1957, issue of The Saturday Evening Post. It’s by Amos Sewell, and it’s called Former Figure. This woman seems to be remembering when she could fit into a dress that could fit on that dress form. Maybe she couldn’t stick to her New Year’s resolution either.
Today Is National Chocolate Cake Day
As Rob explains to Laura in the “Lady and the Babysitter” episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, chocolate cake is milk cake. You can’t eat it with coffee or grape juice. So make sure you have some milk handy while you make this One Bowl Chocolate Cake, this Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake from Hershey, or this Childhood Chocolate Cake from Alex Guarnaschelli.
And if chocolate cake doesn’t fit into those New Year’s resolution plans mentioned above, but you still really, really want to eat chocolate cake, try this recipe for Chickpea Chocolate Cake. Sure, it still has chocolate chips and sugar and frosting, but it’s gluten-free and made with chickpeas, so you can at least convince yourself that it’s a little healthier.
Next Week’s Holidays and Events
American Heart Month begins (February 1)
February is American Heart Month. And while we should think about our health every month of the year, we have to start somewhere, so it’s a good time to concentrate on our cholesterol numbers, our sodium intake, our stress levels, and having a healthy heart in general.
Groundhog Day (February 2)
You really can’t trust that little critter to give an accurate reading of how many more weeks of winter we have left, or anything else, according to this investigative report from the January 31, 1948, issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
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Comments
Part II. It’s interesting and telling how some women are given credit for their accomplishments, and others only given some or…none.
I’m glad Mary Tyler Moore has. She lived at the right time as did her co-stars, writers, producers and everyone involved, including Sonny Curtis who wrote and sang her show’s beloved theme song which made her show that much better and memorable, like the Dick Van Dyke show, Green Acres and so many others.
Imagine her show opening like most today, with just the credits rolling at the beginning and end. Getting back to other TV women not getting proper credit include Eve Arden from ‘Our Miss Brooks’ in the mid-’50s. She was a single, unmarried (and unapologetic about it) career woman. Was it because she was a high school English teacher, considered a “woman’s” career, so she doesn’t rate acknowledgement?
I guess Marlo Thomas of ‘That Girl’ apparently doesn’t either even though she was a 30-ish independent working actress on her series in the pre-women’s liberation era. But let’s just acknowledge her for St. Jude’s only.
When Bea Arthur passed away, she was only acknowledged for ‘The Golden Girls’ and not ‘Maude’ at all, which was/is brilliant. Her latter show may have been ‘groundbreaking’ in that the lead characters were older women, but I never cared for it.
Somehow I got spoiled seeing Betty White in her diverse roles as the edgy, semi-nasty Sue Ann Nivens and Ellen on ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ playing intelligent women. Same thing with Rue McClanahan of ‘Maude’. Seeing Betty and Rue playing one-dimensional stupid and oversexed roles respectively, turned me off. Even Bea Arthur looked like she was only in it for the money. Sorry.
Then we have Lucille Ball who’s really only acknowledged for her role as Lucy Ricardo, almost never for her two later great series, where, by the way, she played a working woman for a difficult boss, much less her real life accomplishments behind the scenes.
Mike Connors of Mannix (1968-’75) who just passed away has the powerful Lucille Ball, the head of Desilu Productions to thank FOR the series, and forced the CBS executives to ‘uncancel’ it—immediately—in the spring of ’69.
Desilu also produced ‘Our Miss Brooks’ and ‘That Girl’. These working women all helped pave the way for The ‘Mary Tyler Moore Show’ who took it to the next logical step: a woman succeeding in a hard core male profession, that’s also lovable and beautiful.
Bob, your tribute above lists so many of Mary’s other accomplishments in addition to The Dick Van Dyke Show, and her own series. Thank you for the link to the Post’s link to their 1966 feature, with that sensational cover. Thanks too for including her vintage Hotpoint commercial. She was a born entertainer and deserved her success, but not the tragedies she had to endure.
Sadly, she had to endure one more Thursday night on CBS with “The Tribute to Oprah” with “guest” star, Mary Tyler Moore. It was terrible. It has been a WELL KNOWN FACT that Mary had been very ill the last several years, and in fact was remarkable she even lived into 2015, much less 2016 and ’17!
13 years in total at CBS, and THAT was the tribute her network came up with??! An ego trip for Oprah? Well, yes! 3-4 minutes, fine. But a half hour? It reeked of being a last minute production. Friday’s tribute on ’20/20′ was far superior. I could tell they did not want theirs to be the mess CBS came up with!
ABC’s started out with her childhood/teen years, her parents and their problems. She knew from age 3 she wanted to be a star. In addition to her 2 famous series, there was coverage of her time on Broadway, mixed success in films before her own series, triumph in ‘Ordinary People’ and life imitating art with the death of her son shortly afterward.
It was frank on her marriage, drinking problems and diabetes. There were important clips of interviews with Barbara Walters and Charlie Rose. Mary was a strong force in juvenile diabetes and was the face of the ASPCA, an organization I strongly support also. I hope she was knew, in her very last days, the news of circus animals no longing to have to suffer in the name of entertainment.
Thank you Suzanne!
Hi,
My name is Suzanne Dilthey and I live in North Carolina. Being a great admirer of Norman Rockwell, I do have a subcsription of the magazine. I have attended the museum dedicated to Mr. Rockwell, and being an artist myself, gave a slide program about this famous & admired gentleman.
Your articles are informative and entertaining. Keep up the good work !
Sincdrely, Suzanne