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This is a picture of Mary Tyler Moore on the set of her 1988 CBS sitcom Annie McGuire. The sitcom ran from October until December 1988.
Mary Tyler Moore had been one of CBS's biggest stars in the 1960's ( The Dick Van Dyke Show), and the 1970's ( The Mary Tyler Moore Show). Although she had considerable later sucess in both films ( Ordinary People) and on Broadway she seemed unable to repeat her earlier triumphs on the small screen. Annie McGuire was her 4th consecutive tv failure. This 1988 sitcom lasted just 8 episodes after changing titles ( it was to have been called Mary Tyler Moore), and leading men ( Edward J. Moore was scheduled to play the husband) just weeks before the premiere date.
Annie and Nick( Mary Tyler Moore , Denis Arndt) were newlyweds, each with children from their first marriages. She was a divorceeworking as Deputy Coordinator of Human Relations for the Manhattan borough president's office, and he was a recently widowed structural engineer. She had a son named Lewis( Bradley Warren), and he had 2 children, Lenny and Debbie( Adrien Brody, Cynthia Marie King). Stories revolved around the adjustments made by both the adults and the children in this merged household as well as the additional conflict caused by Annie's flaming liberal mother Emma( Eileen Heckart), and Nick's ultra-conservative father Red( John Randolph).
Annie McGuire was one of a number of sitcoms that was part drama and part comedy ( dramadies), that aired in the late 1980's and it did not contain a laugh track.
An Article From The New York Times
TELEVISION; Mary Tyler Moore Tosses Her Hat Up Again
By SASHA ANAWALT; SASHA ANAWALT IS A WEST COAST WRITER WITH A SPECIALTY IN THE ARTS.
Published: October 23, 1988
Mary Tyler Moore plants her feet on the ground like a traffic cop and with an outstretched hand diverts the galumphing of her golden retriever aptly named Dash. The bold reach exposes some of her jewels. Diamonds encircle her wrist, hug the face of her wristwatch and surround the tremendous emerald ring, an anniversary present from her third husband. Two even pinch her ears.
Burdened by the weight of her glittery past, Ms. Moore, at 51 years of age, is meeting a challenge: Long known as America's sweetheart, she has been the most believable woman in sitcom history. Lucille Ball may have towered over bombast, but the characters Mary Tyler Moore has portrayed were real. They represented Everywoman, vacuuming up the underlying insecurities of the perfect housewife in the 1960's as Laura Petrie on ''The Dick Van Dyke Show'' and wooing viewers into feminist consciousness in the 70's as Mary Richards on ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show.''
Now, the actress is steeling herself for what she sees as a new, more mature episode in her career with ''Annie McGuire,'' which will make its debut Wednesday evening at 8:30 on CBS. Her co-stars are John Randolph and Eileen Heckart. Ms. Moore is striving to mold a different image.
''Always with me,'' she says, her face brightening into that familiar smile, broad and toothy, ''is the ghost of Mary past.'' Three years ago, Ms. Moore launched a personal campaign at MTM Enterprises to find herself a new prime-time series. And more than ever before, she asserted control. Whatever the gist of the show, she insisted, it could not copy the personality and habits of her previous characters. No more larger-than-life behavior, spending the weekend with her foot stuck in a hotel bathtub drain. No more careful attitudes, repressing outrage while a selfish dinner guest gobbles three portions of her veal Prince Orloff. And finally Ms. Moore thinks she's found the solution in ''Annie McGuire.''
''Annie McGuire is the first character I've played who is occasionally going to have some stains on her clothes,'' Ms. Moore said on a recent afternoon in her home high in the Los Angeles hills. ''She will take a nap every now and again. Screw something up in the house. Make a really bad decision with her child, regret it. And have a sexual vitality that needs to be paid attention to, because I don't want to play somebody who is so concerned with appearances that sexuality takes a second seat.''
Ms. Moore has mapped out the dynamics of her new character for one simple reason: She is on the rebound. Her most recent television series in 1986 was a fiasco. ''Mary'' was almost plot-for-plot, character-for-character identical to ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show.'' She was still a journalist, this time, though, not for a television station but a third-rate newspaper, staffed by losers.
For Ms. Moore, the similarities were unexpected and somewhat maddening. If ''Mary'' lacked a fresh approach, she reasoned, it must have been partly her fault. Couldn't she have used her power? As co-founder of MTM Enterprises, with Grant Tinker, her second husband, she had every right to intervene, but the successes of her previous series had lulled her into complacency.
''I'd always been so lucky with my work, surrounded by strength and stability,'' she said. ''It never occurred to me to second-guess Jim [ Brooks ] and Allan [ Burns ] on 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show.' Or to ask, 'How did Carl Reiner want me to read that line?' on 'The Dick Van Dyke Show.' We were just scrambling to keep up as actors.''
With ''Annie McGuire,'' she is determined to take control, within reasonable limits. Another flop could possibly crush her desire to work on a television series ever again, she said, while simultaneously acknowledging that her infamous failure on Broadway with ''Breakfast at Tiffany's'' in 1966 didn't prevent her from stepping into ''Whose Life Is It Anyway?'' 13 years later in triumph. Nor did her initially ill-fated film career - once portraying a nun opposite Elvis Presley - seem to impede her will to play the cold-hearted mother in Robert Redford's 1980 Oscar-winning film ''Ordinary People.''
''I want to go down knowing I said what I wanted to say and not what somebody else wanted,'' she continued. ''Through the last TV experience I came to realize I had to protect myself. Work is my sanctuary, the place I can hide. That's why I'm much more involved with this show.''
In 1986, Arthur Price, president of MTM Enterprises, finally located a writer he believed was suited to the job, a man sufficiently experienced in situation comedy to be malleable without losing spine. Elliot Shoenman had earlier worked successfully with another forceful television star, Bill Cosby, and he was brought to Los Angeles to be the executive producer of ''Annie McGuire.'' Along with Paul Wolff, formerly a staff writer for NBC's ''Remington Steele,'' the pair fashioned a scenario centering on a 50-year-old, recently remarried mother who works in the office of the Borough President of Manhattan.
''Mary begged and pleaded with us not to write her character with a comparative eye, but to come up with someone distinct,'' says Mr. Wolff, ''The television audience knows her in a certain light, but she's a better actress than she was 20 years ago. She's been through an incredible amount in her life. We're working much more closely to Mary Tyler Moore the person than to her persona as Laura Petrie and Mary Richards.''
''We are dealing with who she is,'' says Mr. Shoenman. ''The main thing is tone.'' And listening to Ms. Moore. Beyond helping to set the parameters for Annie McGuire's ego, Ms. Moore demanded that the show be filmed with a single camera and decided to forgo a laugh track - an approach characteristic of the so-called dramedies currently pervading television.
These conditions ultimately push her into greater intimacy with the viewer. The camera takes an active role, tagging along behind the performers, tracking their movements in detail. Scenes are shot in bits and pieces, inside four-walled sets that are strictly off-limits to anyone but the cast and crew. By contrast, ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show'' was shot from beginning to end on a proscenium stage in plain sight of a studio audience. Three cameras were statically poised, and canned laughter filled in the dead spots - a combination that distanced viewers at home, as if they were watching people watch a show.
David Steinberg, the comedian, has directed the first two episodes of ''Annie McGuire''; he admits that the kinks in this new technique have yet to be worked out. ''In this form, you can get a reality base. But the question is how real to how light and buoyant. This is comedy after all, and the writers want people to laugh.'' Mr. Price also voices concern. ''The single-camera form looks good on paper,'' he says. ''But we'll see.''
For her part, Ms. Moore is concentrating only on the single camera's benefits. ''It's what captivated my interest in television comedy again,'' she said. ''With the single camera, the attitude is different, the lens is sharper. I am able to find humor in facial expressions that mirror my thoughts, that are new to me. I'm doing some of my best work with David. We're going in a more real direction. Those quiet moments'' - without a laugh track - ''are what I call real.
''I don't mean to imply that I want 'Annie McGuire' to be serious comedy, when I talk about a reality base for this humor. But I want it to be a valid, noble and worthy try,'' she continued. ''I guess that is a result of my life. But I am not unique, I am not alone. Every one of us has gone through, if not all the pain that I have, certainly something similar. None of us gets away scot-free.''
Ms. Moore is a diabetic and is reasonably open to discussing the hard time the condition gives her. But otherwise she avoids talking about the saddening details of her past, saying frankly that ''everyone knows [ them ] by now, and enough is enough.'' Still, she believes that the death of her 24-year-old son, who accidentally shot himself eight years ago, has given her a fortitude relevant to playing Annie McGuire. ''I think of myself as a stack of experiences and feelings and qualities that travels forward. If a few of those slabs fall out, it doesn't mean I have failed.''
Ms. Moore is the first to admit that she cannot rid herself entirely of herself. The recognizable mannerisms will be part of Annie McGuire; it's another way of hedging her bets against failure. ''There are certain things I do that make me feel good,'' she said. The famous smile returns, the voice elevates to an eager-to-please pitch and the spine straightens to a vertical line of perfection under strain. ''It'd be stupid not to allow them to creep in. Yet, I no longer have to worry about making my mark. I can now afford to take chances.''
Her self-confident attitude is a hook for the creators of ''Annie McGuire.'' Though the show unavoidably will be seen as a primer on older working women in America, the writers say they didn't do research along these lines. Sixty-six percent of the women Annie's age have jobs outside the home and earn less than $20,000 a year, according to the National Commission on Working Women. Mr. Shoenman and Mr. Wolff simply examined Ms. Moore's behavior and trusted its reality. Their approach is familiar. On every Mary Tyler Moore series, writers have paid heed to her natural instincts and voice. Few know this better than Mr. Price, who's been a close friend of the actress since 1965.
''Mary Tyler Moore of the Laura Petrie days wasn't terribly different from Laura Petrie. She was a kind of lighthearted, very young girl - smart, but a little too hairspray,'' he said. ''Mary Tyler Moore of 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' lived a cloistered life. She was a brittle person, someone wanting to be self-sufficient and looking for respect from other people.
''The interesting thing about the various Mary Tyler Moore shows and her as a person is that they each - either deliberately or inadvertently, probably inadvertently - were a product of society at that time. I think Annie is what's happening in society today. She's in the work force, but recognizing that she's paying a very high price, accommodating her needs as a woman. Mary is also like Annie, a much more relaxed and well-rounded woman. She stands up for herself.''
The majority of the staff writers on the show are women, and Ms. Moore has insisted they take out subscriptions to Lear's, a magazine for women over 40.
''I'd like to think,'' Ms. Moore said, ''that there are elements of this show written through the perspective of women, but that overall it's an amalgam of many observations seen with a lens that is distinctly ours.''
Concluding the conversation, Ms. Moore did something that deliberately tweaked her own image: She dropped a vulgarity into a sentence. The language was fastidiously chosen. But she hung back from it, watching the explosive impact like a naughty child who's lighted a firecracker. The iconlike memory of Ms. Moore's former TV personas - naive, politic and virtuous - started to shatter. And then she smiled that inimitable smile.
A Review from The New York Times
By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: October 29, 1988
Catching up: Mary Tyler Moore returned to weekly television this week. Her ''Annie McGuire'' is being carried on CBS at 8:30 P.M. Wednesday. A major change in casting, concerning the role of Annie's new husband, Nick McGuire, has left the series discombobulated, eliminating for the moment the initial episode that introduced the principal characters and the basic situation. Annie works in Manhattan as a deputy coordinator of community affairs. She lives in Bayonne, N.J., with Nick (Denis Arndt) and their three children from previous marriages. Annie has a liberal mother (Eileen Heckart) who works ferociously for disarmament and migrant workers. Nick has a conservative father (John Randolph), a bar-and-grill owner who considers West Point the perfect vacation spot.
This week's premiere simply plunged, like Dante, into the middle of things. Returning from work, Annie was held up. As it happened, the mugger was a Vietnam veteran in a wheelchair whom Annie quickly disarmed and brought to the police station. But then, her liberal conscience on the march, Annie set about finding the poor guy not only a job but also a potential romantic involvement. Here once again we had good old Mary Tyler Moore doing the right thing even when it might make her look goofy, not to mention charmingly vulnerable.
Next Wednesday, the series weighs in with what is obviously an earlier episode. Mary has to find a new apartment for her mother, who didn't even put in an appearance this week. The show, written by Lisa Albert and directed by David Steinberg, merits attention simply for dealing with subjects that most prime-time entertainment ignores. Ms. Heckart is wonderfully feisty as Mom, who begins to realize that there is no place in New York City anymore ''for people my age.'' Ms. Moore is predictably charming and just a bit tougher than usual as the kind of woman who goes to the trouble of snipping the fatty skin off roast chicken only to face complaints from the loved ones she is trying to save from cholesterol overdose. ''Annie McGuire'' could sneak up on you, if the show ever manages to straighten out its timetable. *
A Review From USA TODAY
TELEVISION
BY MONICA COLLINS
Mary, as 'Annie,' may make it after all
Sweet, lovely and sweet. Mary Tyler Moore-the one, the only-returns to television in a new series, Annie McGuire, that knocks you over with its optimism. And she bowls you over with her " aw shucks" persona all grown up.
Granted the first episode ( aired Wednesday night on CBS)verges on the sappy. Granted the plot seemed hopelessly-and-insensitively-contrived at the beginning of the show. But as it evolved through a half hour, we got to know Mary again. Only she's not called Mary anymore.
In this as Annie McGuire-middle-aged newlywed , mother and stepmother-Moore does manage a very important thing: she makes your memory of Mary Richards, star news producer in the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, get hazy.
The voice is the same. So's the deliberately hesitant timing. And that genuine comic foll instinct. But she doesn't throw her hat in the air once. The only hat in the air we see in the whole show is the crown on the head of the Statue of Liberty in the New York harbor as Annie sails by.
The filmed comedy opens-boom-with little explanation of Mary's new situation. In virtually the first scene, Annie gets held up by a man in a wheelchair on her way home.
From there, the show unfolds as Annie befriends the disabled man who tried to rob her. Why the producers decided to introduce this man as a common mugger seemed a tastless choice, a sour note in a show that was designed to be a strong statement about the abilities of the disabled.
Annie/Mary spends so much time attending to the friendship, that we see little of her new husband ( Denis Arndt). We barely see her interact with the kids.
It hardly matters though. In this first blush, you're mesmerized by Mary.
How does she look? Great. How does she act? Sort of the same but different, wiser. No more the naif.
Will she make it after all? Oh gee, it would be just terrific if she does.
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