The Sunday Memory Drawer - Happy 50th Birthday to the Mary Tyler Moore Show

Last night was a momentous date in television history.  Fifty years ago...on a Saturday night...just like yesterday, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" premiered on CBS.   Forever changing the sitcom world.

And me.

"The Mary Tyler Moore Show" came around about the time I could actually tell the difference between a great television show and a bad one. Smack in the middle of CBS' Saturday night block of the best shows ever telecast together in one single night, MTM, in its own quiet way, raised television comedy writing to a level that has never been achieved since. Forget "Seinfeld" and "Cheers" and "The Office." This was the pinnacle of it all and will never be topped again.

Although I personally try. Because this show has stayed with me so deeply that it cuts into my own work. There are many times when I am working on something with my writing partner and he will chirp "You can't do that line. It was on Mary." Or I will resort to what I call a Ted Baxter moment. You know, somebody says a line about something being stupid and in walks Ted. Big laugh. Ha ha. Then I hear it all over again.

"That's what they would do on Mary."

I usually take out the reference, but now wonder what's so bad about that. Is using "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" as your writing textbook such a negative? Especially these days when one lousy sitcom is a direct and unfortunate copy of another lousy sitcom.

Okay, maybe I have gone too far with my reliance on the MTM world. Actually, I started doing that at a much younger age. Apparently, imitation and borderline plagarism has no age restrictions. I'll splain....and, yes, there I am copying a line from another great comedy.

When I was going to Fordham University in the Bronx, I hung out at the college radio station WFUV which has been previously heralded in this blog. I didn't really have a focus or a concentration there. I did a little celebrity interviewing. I tried baseball play by play. I did some on-air news reporting. None of it provided a solid niche. Some of it I was downright awful at. I was a little lost. I needed something I could take my own personal pride in. And I hit on an idea that was perfect for me.

A radio version of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

Well, not really a direct copy. But so many elements of "Diploma City" were lifted from the MTM show that I realize there's a very fine line of difference between heist and robbery. I created characters and locations very similar, but placed them as college students in a Philadelphia college. 

Character names were derived from the writing staff of the MTM Show. There was a male version of Rhoda and a female version of Lou Grant. I had a girl Murray and a resident advisor like Phyllis. The only non-gender switch was in the Ted Baxter character. My version was named Milton Harper and the buffoon transferred intact. I even mimicked the format of the MTM show. Scenes switched from the dorm to the newspaper office back to the dorm and then maybe to the local college hangout. If anybody from MTM Enterprises had cause to put on their car radio while driving through the Bronx, there would be a certain lawsuit.

Of course, while the TV show had such pros as Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachman, and Edward Asner, my casting coups rotated around my circle of friends. 

"Hey, you wanna be on a comedy show?" 

Before long, the weekly party was on. Intially, we would try to rehearse prior to taping. Eventually, we realized that rehearsal didn't really make a difference as that is reserved for professional actors of which I had none. Zip. Nada. Now, several of those cast members are still in my world to this day. A few even post comments here on this blog. They are all dear friends.

And lousy actors. Indeed, revisiting some of these tapes today, I could easily publish a book entitled "When Bad Actors Happen to Good Scripts." On second thought, perhaps that should be "When Bad Actors Happen to Mediocre Scripts." Yeah, I wasn't exactly the comedic hotshot I thought I was.

But, for three seasons of 90 episodes, we sure as hell had a lot of fun. The same merging of talent that happens over time on an ensemble comedy TV show also happened on "Diploma City." The acting and writing did improve the more we did it. And the tapings were great weekly gatherings for a great bunch of friends. Several started to date each other. If somebody in the cast started dating, we'd cast the new girlfriend or boyfriend as...the character's new girlfriend or boyfriend. Nepotism was rampant, just like in Hollywood.

There was one time where we absolutely had no episodes in the can and we needed one for the following week. But there was no studio time booked. We rolled a ton of equipment over to the dorms and actually taped it in somebody's living room. We flew by the seats of our pants. And, at least for me, it was pure exhilaration.

In the first year, our little half hour show usually came in a lot shorter than that. No one paid attention to time and I had no concept of how scripts should be paced or moved along. But, eventually, I got my creative chops down and then often had trouble confining the plot and dialogue to 30 minutes. We just got so good at what we were doing that we paid little attention to time constraints, which was fine if you weren't the host of the rock music show that followed. 

To tighten the MTM connections even further, I hit on a 150 watt light bulb of an idea to promote our show during the station's annual fundraising marathon. What if I got somebody from the MTM Show to be on our show and make a pitch for WFUV? I called MTM's publicist in Hollywood and this was surprisingly easy to set up. Per my specific request, I was given the appropriate time and phone number so I could engage Ted Knight for the task.

We awaited the appointed day and time as if it were Christmas morning. In advance, I fashioned a scene of dialogue that would break the fourth wall between one of our cast members and Ted. Then, Ted would go into his plug for listeners to send dough to WFUV. 

At the hour of our reckoning, I called Ted and he was incredibly gracious. I essentially explained to him what we were doing and I recited the dialogue so he could copy it over the phone. We rolled tape and it went well. 

For about a minute. 

Suddenly, Ted's mind veered off the road as if he was trying to avoid hitting a deer with his car. He started to ramble about WFUV and Fordham, which made virtually no sense in the context of the show. Amazingly, my actor followed Ted down into Confusionville and what resulted was a hilariously funny but impromptu conversation that I ran virtually unedited. Besides, I felt I had no creative license to ask Ted Knight for a second take.

We were very proud of "Diploma City," but I now realize we could never hold a candle to the work they were doing on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." There are comedic moments in the body of that series that could only be crafted in heaven. Witness below excerpts of perhaps the best written episode in television comedy history. Chuckles The Clown bites the dust.  Famed writer and blogger Ken Levine was actually at the taping of this episode.   This scene was done in only two takes.   Mary was flawless in both.

God, I wished I could write like that.  As much as I try, I can't.

How about a birthday curtain call for the show that is #3 on my personal list of My Top 25 Favorite TV Programs of All Time.

Dinner last night:  Hot and sour soup, Tangerine beef, and egg fried rice from Chin Chin.