Premise
The series starred Diana Rigg in her first American television series, as Diana Smythe, a recently divorced British fashion designer who moves to the States in the hopes of becoming more noticed in the fashion world by relocating to New York City. As the series begins she has landed a high-profile job as a fashion coordinator at Buckley's Department Store. Since her city-dwelling brother is out of the country indefinitely she moves into his apartment, which to her bemusement becomes the site of many unannounced visits by her brother’s numerous girlfriends.
Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, is an English actress. She is best known for playing Emma Peel in the TV series The Avengers (1965–68), Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, wife of James Bond, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), and Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones (2013–17). She has also had an extensive career in theatre, including playing the title role in Medea, both in London and New York, for which she won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She was made a CBE in 1988 and a Dame in 1994 for services to drama.
Each episode finds Diana trying to adjust to American life with help from her next door neighbor Holly Green (Carole Androsky), copywriter Howard Tollbrook (Richard B. Shull), window decorator Marshall Tyler (Robert Moore) and new pal Jeff Harmon (Richard Mulligan), while dealing with her boss Norman Brodnik (David Sheiner) and his wife Norma (Barbara Barrie).
Richard Bruce Shull was an American character actor.
Robert Moore was an American stage, film and television director and actor.
Richard Mulligan was an American television, film and character actor known for his role as Burt Campbell, the loving, protective husband of Cathryn Damon's character, in the sitcom Soap (1977–81). Later he had a starring role as Dr. Harry Weston in Empty Nest (1988–95). He was the younger brother of film director Robert Mulligan.
Production
Prior to being picked up by NBC, the series had the working title The Diana Rigg Show with Rigg playing Elyse Smythe. Also in the pilot was Nanette Fabray as Norma Brodnik, but after it was changed to Diana, Fabray was replaced with Barrie in the Norma role.
Nanette Fabray was an American actress, singer, and dancer. She began her career performing in vaudeville as a child and became a musical-theatre actress during the 1940s and 1950s, acclaimed for her role in High Button Shoes (1947) and winning a Tony Award in 1949 for her performance in Love Life. In the mid-1950s, she served as Sid Caesar's comedic partner on Caesar's Hour, for which she won three Emmy Awards, as well as co-starring with Fred Astaire in the film musical The Band Wagon. From 1979 to 1984, she appeared as Katherine Romano on the TV series One Day at a Time.
NBC was hoping to capitalize on the success of single and independent women sitcoms by using Rigg, given her credentials in film and TV, with this attempt to copy The Mary Tyler Moore Show . However, it would turn out to be a mistake as it wound up trailing both Gunsmoke and The Rookies on Monday nights, eventually leading to its cancellation on January 7, 1974.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show is an American television sitcom starring Mary Tyler Moore and created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns that originally aired on CBS from September 19, 1970 to March 19, 1977. Moore starred as Mary Richards, an unmarried, independent woman focused on her career as associate producer at the fictional WJM news program in Minneapolis. A central female character who was not married or dependent on a man was a rarity in American television in the early 1970s, leading to numerous publications citing The Mary Tyler Moore Show as groundbreaking television in the era of second-wave feminism. Edward Asner co-starred as Mary's boss Lou Grant, alongside Valerie Harper as her friend and neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern and Cloris Leachman as her landlady Phyllis Lindstrom. Other co-stars throughout the series' run included Gavin MacLeod, Ted Knight, Georgia Engel, John Amos and Betty White.
Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman Macdonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West. The central character is lawman Marshal Matt Dillon, played by William Conrad on radio and James Arness on television. When aired in the UK, the television series was initially titled Gun Law, later reverting to Gunsmoke.
The Rookies is an American police procedural series that aired on ABC from 1972 until 1976. It follows the exploits of three rookie police officers working in an unidentified city for the fictitious Southern California Police Department (SCPD).
Mary Tyler Moore was an American actress, known for her roles in the television sitcoms The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977), in which she starred as Mary Richards, a single woman working as a local news producer in Minneapolis, and The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966), in which she played Laura Petrie, a former dancer turned Westchester homemaker, wife and mother. Her film work includes 1967's Thoroughly Modern Millie and 1980's Ordinary People, in which she played a role that was very different from the television characters she had portrayed, and for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
The year 1973 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of television-related events in that year.
Rhoda is an American sitcom starring Valerie Harper which aired a total of 109 half-hour episodes and one hour-long episode over five seasons from September 9, 1974 to December 9, 1978. The series was a spin-off of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in which Harper between the years 1970 and 1974 had played the role of Rhoda Morgenstern, a spunky, weight-conscious, flamboyantly fashioned Jewish neighbor and native New Yorker in the role of Mary Richards' best friend. After four seasons, Rhoda left Minneapolis and returned to her original hometown of New York City. The series was the winner of two Golden Globe Awards and two Emmy Awards.
Betty Marion White Ludden is an American actress and comedian, with the longest television career of any female entertainer, spanning 80 years. Regarded as a pioneer of television, she is one of the first women to have control both in front of and behind the camera and is recognized as the first woman to produce a sitcom, which contributed to her receiving the honorary title Mayor of Hollywood in 1955.
Nancy Walker was an American actress and comedian of stage, screen, and television. She was also a film and television director. During her five-decade long career, she may be best remembered for her long-running roles as Mildred on McMillan & Wife and Ida Morgenstern, who first appeared on several episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and later became a prominent recurring character on the spinoff series Rhoda.
Cloris Leachman is an American actress and comedian. In a career spanning over seven decades she has won eight Primetime Emmy Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award, and an Academy Award for her role in The Last Picture Show (1971).
Diana Charlton Muldaur is an American film and television actress. Muldaur's television roles include L.A. Law's Rosalind Shays and Dr. Katherine Pulaski in the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She has been nominated for an Emmy three times: twice for L.A. Law and once for Born Free. She was also nominated twice for a Q award for L.A. Law.
Tracee Ellis Ross is an American actress, model, comedian, director and television host, best known for her lead role as Joan Clayton in the comedy series Girlfriends (2000–2008) and Dr. Rainbow Johnson in the comedy series Black-ish (2014–present).
Phyllis is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from September 8, 1975, to March 13, 1977. Created by Ed. Weinberger and Stan Daniels, it was the second spin-off of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The show starred Cloris Leachman as Phyllis Lindstrom, who was previously Mary Richards' landlady on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
James Edward Burrows, sometimes known as Jim Burrows, is an American television director who has been working in television since the 1970s. Burrows has directed over 50 television pilots and co-created the long-running television series Cheers.
Sheree North was an American actress, dancer and singer, known for being one of 20th Century-Fox's intended successors to Marilyn Monroe.
Linda Jean Kelsey is an American actress. She is best known for her role on the CBS drama television series Lou Grant (1977–1982), which earned her three Golden Globe Award nominations and five Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
The Mary Tyler Moore Hour is an American sitcom-variety show starring Mary Tyler Moore, Dody Goodman, Michael Keaton and Joyce Van Patten that aired on CBS from March 4, 1979 to June 10, 1979, with a total of 11 episodes spanning over one season.
Mary is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from December 11, 1985, to April 8, 1986. The series stars Mary Tyler Moore in her return to series television after an absence of over six years, during which time she appeared on Broadway in Whose Life Is It Anyway? and in the dramatic film Ordinary People. After The Mary Tyler Moore Show, her subsequent ventures into series television on the variety shows Mary (1978) and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour (1979) had been short-running ratings disasters, and Moore decided to return to the sitcom format which had brought her the greatest television success; the sitcom nonetheless met the same fate as the variety shows.
Olive Dora Sturgess is a Canadian former actress of American television and three films. Though most of her appearances were in westerns, her longest-running role was as the model Carol Henning in 12 of the 155 episodes of NBC's situation comedy The Bob Cummings Show, which aired between 1956 and 1959.
First, You Cry is a 1978 American made-for-television biographical drama film starring Mary Tyler Moore, Anthony Perkins, Jennifer Warren, Richard Dysart and Don Johnson, directed by George Schaefer. It is based on the 1976 autobiography First, You Cry written by NBC News correspondent Betty Rollin in which she recalls her battle with breast cancer. The film was broadcast on CBS on November 8, 1978.
