Mary Tyler Moore

Was a descendant of Confederate Lt. Col. Lewis T. Moore. While commanding the 4th Virginia Infantry, Moore offered his home in Winchester, Virginia, to be the headquarters for Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. From there, Jackson planned his Shenandoah Valley Campaign 1861-1862. In the 1960s, the house was purchased and converted into a museum and includes much of Stonewall Jackson's memorabilia. Mary Tyler Moore helped pay for the restoration, which is now a National Historic Landmark.

Daughter of George (1913-2006), born in the state of New York, and Marjorie (née Hackett) Moore (1916-1992), born in the state of Michigan. Both died in Los Angeles, California.

Mary Tyler Moore was born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on December 29, 1936. Moore's family relocated to California when she was eight. Her childhood was troubled, due in part to her mother's alcoholism.

The eldest of three siblings, she attended a Catholic high school and married upon her graduation, in 1955. Her only child, Richard Meeker Jr. , was born soon after.

A dancer at first, Moore's first break in show business was in 1955, as a dancing kitchen appliance - Happy Hotpoint, the Hotpoint Appliance elf, in commercials generally broadcast during the popular sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952).

Her sister, Elizabeth Moore, was born 3 months earlier than her own son. Elizabeth was born March 20, 1956, and Richard was born July 3; both in Los Angeles at Queen of Angels Hospital.

She then shifted from dancing to acting and work soon came, at first a number of guest roles on television series, but eventually a recurring role as Sam, Richard Diamond's sultry answering service girl, on Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1957), her performance being particularly notorious because her legs (usually dangling a pump on her toe) were shown instead of her face. Although these early roles often took advantage of her willowy charms (in particular, her famously-beautiful dancer's legs), Moore's career soon took a more substantive turn as she was cast in two of the most highly regarded comedies in television history, which would air first-run for most of the '60s and '70s.

In the first of these, The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), Moore played Laura Petrie, the charmingly loopy wife of star Dick Van Dyke. The show became famous for its very clever writing and terrific comic ensemble - Moore and her fellow performers received multiple Emmy Awards for their work. Meanwhile, she had divorced her first husband, and married advertising man (and, later, network executive) Grant Tinker.

After the end of The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), Moore focused on movie-making, co-starring in five between the end of the sitcom and the start of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), including Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), in which she plays a ditsy aspiring actress, and an inane Elvis Presley vehicle, Change of Habit (1969), in which she plays a nun-to-be and love interest for Presley.

Was paired with Richard Chamberlain for "Holly Golightly" (1967), a musical adaptation of Truman Capote's earlier novel (and film), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). When it became obvious during pre-Broadway tryouts that no amount of play-doctoring was going to save a potentially disastrous show, producer David Merrick announced that he was closing the show one week prior to its scheduled Broadway opening, as he put it, "out of consideration for the audience.".

Also included in this mixed bag of films was a first-rate television movie, Run a Crooked Mile (1969), which was an early showcase for Moore's considerable talent at dramatic acting. After trying her hand at movies for a few years, Moore decided, rather reluctantly, to return to television, but on her terms.

Moore was diagnosed an insulin-dependent diabetic in 1969, and had a bout with alcoholism in the early 1980s.

The result was The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), which was produced by MTM Enterprises, a company she had formed with Tinker, and which later went on to produce scores of other television series. Moore starred as Mary Richards, who moves to Minneapolis on the heels of a failed relationship. Mary finds work at the newsroom of WJM-TV, whose news program is the lowest-rated in the city, and establishes fast friendships with her colleagues and her neighbors. The sitcom was a commercial and critical success and for years was a fixture of CBS television's unbeatable Saturday night line-up. Moore and Tinker were determined from the start to make the sitcom a cut above the average, and it certainly was - instead of going for a barrage of gags, the humor took longer to develop and arose out of the interaction between the characters in more realistic situations. This was also one of the earliest television portrayals of a woman who was happy and successful on her own rather than simply being a man's wife.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) is generally included amongst the finest television series ever produced in America.

Despite the opening credits of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), in which she throws a package of meat into her shopping cart, Moore was a vegetarian and a proponent of animal rights. She was an active spokesperson for both diabetes issues and animal rights.

Moore ended the sitcom in 1977, while it was still on a high point, but found it difficult to flee the beloved Mary Richards persona - her subsequent attempts at television series, variety programs, and specials (such as the mortifying disco-era Mary's Incredible Dream (1976)) usually failed, but even her dramatic work, which is generally excellent, fell under the shadow of Mary Richards.

Both of her siblings predeceased her, her sister Elizabeth of a drug overdose in 1978 and her brother John of cancer in 1991 after a failed attempt at assisted suicide, Moore having been the assistant.

With time, however, her body of dramatic acting came to be recognized on its own, with such memorable work as in Ordinary People (1980), as an aloof WASP mother who not-so-secretly resents her younger son's survival; in Finnegan Begin Again (1985), as a middle-aged widow who finds love with a man whose wife is slowly slipping away, in Lincoln (1988), as the troubled Mary Todd Lincoln, and in Stolen Babies (1993), as an infamous baby smuggler (for which she won her sixth Emmy Award).

Moore's troubled son Richie shot and killed himself in what was officially ruled an accident in 1980.

Divorced from Tinker in 1981 after repeated separations and reconciliations, she married physician Robert Levine in 1983. The union with Levine proved to be Moore's longest run in matrimony and her only marriage not to end in divorce.

The kitten that was the mascot for Mary's company, MTM Enterprises, would meow at the end of all MTM shows. In addition, it would even "wear costumes" reflecting the theme of the MTM show: At the end of each St. Elsewhere (1982) episode, the kitty is seen wearing a surgical mask and it had a policeman's hat tilted on its head at the end of Hill Street Blues (1981) and Sherlock Holmes's trademark deerstalker hat and pipe at the end of Remington Steele (1982).

She appeared in the Broadway play "Sweet Sue" (1988) with Lynn Redgrave and a fully nude Barry Tubb.

Her brother, John Moore, died on December 26, 1991 in Los Angeles, California, at age 47.

Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California, on September 8, 1992.

She also inspired a new appreciation for her famed comic talents in Flirting with Disaster (1996), in which she is hilarious as the resentful adoptive mother of a son who is seeking his birth parents. Moore also acted on Broadway, and she won a Tony Award for her performance in "Whose Life Is It Anyway?"Widely acknowledged as being much tougher and more high-strung than her iconic image would suggest, Moore had a life with more than the normal share of ups and downs.

That '70s Show (1998) was filmed on the same soundstage as The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) was in the 1970s. When she played Christine St. George on "That '70s Show," she arrived for her first day's filming to find a huge WELCOME BACK MARY! banner waiting for her.

Celebrity sponsor of the Great American Meatout. [March 2001]

Bronze statue capturing her character Mary's signature hat-toss went on display May 8, 2002, at the Minneapolis intersection where the scene for The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) was originally filmed. On hand for the ceremony, Moore tossed her tam, but this time, into an appreciative downtown crowd.

Walked out of the Neil Simon play "Rose's Dilemma," citing problems with the playwright. Reportedly, he sent her an insulting note prior to an appearance regarding her failure to memorize lines. The problem was that he had kept rewriting her lines and expected her to learn them on the spot. She was replaced by actress Patricia Hodges, but the play closed two months later to poor reviews. [December 2003]

Received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award on January 29, 2012, in Los Angeles, California.

Wisconsin artist Gwendolyn Gillen, the creator of the bronze sculpture of Mary Tyler Moore, died on January 27, 2017, at age 76. Her passing in a Madison, Wisconsin, hospice happened just two days after Ms. Moore's death.