The Girl With Three Names

Mary Tyler Moore turned 76 today. That's right Laura Petrie aka Mary Richards is 76 years old! America's career girl and favorite wife is Mary Tyler Moore and has been since 1961 when Carl Reiner cast her in The Dick Van Dyke Show. Ms Moore had played some small roles and "Happy Hotpoint" a dancing elf before the role of Laura Petrie. She had auditioned for the role of Danny Thomas' daughter on the Danny Thomas show but was turned down as Thomas thought no one believe that a girl with such a small nose could be his daughter. Thomas did remember her and when he was producing the Dick Van Dyke Show he suggested the girl with three names to Carl Reiner. Mary Tyler Moore went on to play the role of Laura for five years.

In 1970 Mary Tyler Moore and her then husband Grant Tinker formed MTM Enterprises and they pitched the idea of The Mary Tyler Moore Show to CBS. The character of Mary Richards was the first single career woman to be an independent and happy woman. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was one of the most successful sitcoms of the 1970's. MTM Enterprises also produced the spin-off series Rhoda and Phyllis along with The Bob Newhart Show, Hill Street Blues, WKRP in Cincinnati and Newhart.
Married three times Mary Tyler Moore had only one child during her first marriage,a son named Richard. Her son died at the age of 24 from an accidental gun shot wound. Her second husband Grant Tinker was her partner in MTM Enterprises and eventually became Chairman of NBC. They divorced in 1981. Moore met her third husband a doctor when he treated her mother and made a house call.
She will always be Laura and Mary in the eyes of the television watching public even though she did play one of the coldest mothers ever in the film "Ordinary People". One of her other film roles more fitting to the perception of her persona was that of a nun in the Elvis movie "Change of Habit".