Mary was cute, but as you say, Valerie was gorgeous. Penny was not a conventional beauty as you said, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve noticed what a great figure she had. A good dancer and athelete, too.
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Gorgeous? I don't know. Not overweight though
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This may have been stated earlier in the thread, but I believe the original concept was for Mary Richards to be a divorcee but the censors wouldn't allow it, so they changed it to she had broken up with someone she'd been living with - but of course that couldn't be spoken aloud either.
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I can't remember when or where, bit that is my understanding
Network people supposedly told MTM that people will think she divorced Dick Van Dyke.
As if people can't tell the difference between reality and fiction.
On the other hand...LOL
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There were a couple of reviews here at the time that called MTM a spin-off of DVD, so they must have thought that, too.
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Strangely enough, a percentage of the public cannot distinguish between real life and fiction. Just ask anybody who's been in movies or TV for six months, let alone played the same role for years.
Yes, she was to be a divorcee. And the network freaked about it in the way networks always freaked-out over the wrong things (while ignoring things that mattered, like Donna Reed and Pam Ewing's Dream years later).
Divorces were only seen as routine for movie stars, like naughty home wreckers Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor. Yes, "regular people" got divorced also, but it was always with a vague odor of disapproval or discussed with discomfort.
I'm just old enough to remember how references to "divorce" and "cancer" were, in impolite society, uttered literally in hushed tones. That was still somewhat the case as the '60s collided into the '70s. (I still jump a bit when Leo G. Carroll mentions "cancer" near the end of REBECCA in 1940!)
Barbara Parkins made a really good point during an interview about VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, and she described how any kind of scandal in the '60s, especially sex scandal, was seen "as being really dirty." And it was. And in a way quite difficult to effectively articulate today, the nuance of the zeitgeist at that time. (If you want to appreciate the utter moralistic shock/titillation that arose and surrounded the Burton/Taylor romance, where the biggest star on the planet stole two husbands, place it in the context of the era). It's not just because it "was a more innocent time," which it certainly was not, but an era of seismic transitions that felt more dramatic than they even were on paper.
That atmosphere was, more or less, still mostly in place when the stark, volatile ambiance of the late-'60s became the deeply melancholy early-'70s.
Within just a couple of years, there was little or no prohibition of lead characters in TV series from being divorced at all; in fact, by the mid-'70s, it was almost a prerequisite.
Yes, she was to be a divorcee. And the network freaked about it in the way networks always freaked-out over the wrong things (while ignoring things that mattered, like Donna Reed and Pam Ewing's Dream years later).
Divorces were only seen as routine for movie stars, like naughty home wreckers Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor. Yes, "regular people" got divorced also, but it was always with a vague odor of disapproval or discussed with discomfort.
I'm just old enough to remember how references to "divorce" and "cancer" were, in impolite society, uttered literally in hushed tones. That was still somewhat the case as the '60s collided into the '70s. (I still jump a bit when Leo G. Carroll mentions "cancer" near the end of REBECCA in 1940!)
Barbara Parkins made a really good point during an interview about VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, and she described how any kind of scandal in the '60s, especially sex scandal, was seen "as being really dirty." And it was. And in a way quite difficult to effectively articulate today, the nuance of the zeitgeist at that time. (If you want to appreciate the utter moralistic shock/titillation that arose and surrounded the Burton/Taylor romance, where the biggest star on the planet stole two husbands, place it in the context of the era). It's not just because it "was a more innocent time," which it certainly was not, but an era of seismic transitions that felt more dramatic than they even were on paper.
That atmosphere was, more or less, still mostly in place when the stark, volatile ambiance of the late-'60s became the deeply melancholy early-'70s.
Within just a couple of years, there was little or no prohibition of lead characters in TV series from being divorced at all; in fact, by the mid-'70s, it was almost a prerequisite.
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Not relevant to a discussion of MTM but a famous example of this inability to distinguish comes from a plot twist on The Edge of Night in 1960. For four years, Teal Ames had played Sara Karr, wife of the show's lead character Mike Karr. "Sara" got hit by a car and killed when Ames opted not to renew her contract. The day the (live) episode aired, the CBS switchboard was inundated with callers, most of whom were devastated and asking where they could send condolences. The producers had to get Teal Ames to appear in a segment at the close of a subsequent episode speaking directly to the camera to prove she had not died IRL, explaining that she was moving on to other roles in television.