SUMMARY: Ron Howard has cultivated a long, storied career in show business, beginning with “The Andy Griffith Show” in the 1960s and continuing to his present success as a director. His latest work is a documentary about opera legend Luciano Pavarotti. Jeffrey Brown caught up with Howard earlier this summer to discuss his professional evolution, his excitement about his newest subject and politics in film.
SUMMARY: She had an iconic smile and laugh, but actress and comedian Mary Tyler Moore was also a revolutionary. The Oscar-nominated actress famously played a single career woman next door and a quirky housewife, changing how women were portrayed. Jeffrey Brown reflects on her life with Cynthia Littleton of Variety; and Dick Cavett, a former friend of the late television icon, who died at the age of 80.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):It was sitcom television that signaled and helped push larger cultural change, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in the 1970s, in which the actress played a single, 30-something working woman, Mary Richards, a TV producer at a local Minneapolis station, here with her boss, played by Ed Asner.
ED ASNER, Actor: You know what? You have got spunk.
(LAUGHTER)
MARY TYLER MOORE, Actress: Well …
ED ASNER: I hate spunk.
(LAUGHTER)
ED ASNER: I'll tell you what. I will try you out for a couple of weeks and see how it works out. If I don't like you, I will fire you.
MARY TYLER MOORE: Right, right.
ED ASNER: If you don't like me, I will fire you.
(LAUGHTER)
MARY TYLER MOORE: That certainly seems fair.
I will get a towel from the kitchen.
JEFFREY BROWN:In the '60s, Moore had been a beloved figure in a more traditional role for women, as the frazzled, but often hilarious wife of Dick Van Dyke on the show bearing his name.
MARY TYLER MOORE: Snow White lived.
(LAUGHTER)
DICK VAN DYKE, Actor: Oh, what a day.
(LAUGHTER)
JEFFREY BROWN: Over the years, she won seven Emmy Awards for her television roles, and an Oscar-nominated performance in the 1980 film “Ordinary People,” the story of a disintegrating family following a son's death.
Moore wrote and spoke of her own struggles, a battle with alcoholism, and with the diabetes she lived with for some 40 years. She was also a champion for animal rights.
Mary Tyler Moore was 80 years old.
A short time ago, I spoke with Dick Cavett. He interviewed Mary Tyler Moore a number of times over the years, and was a good friend.
As I traveled home I heard word my old girl Rebar was fading fast
I read in the newspaper that morning how a new quantum mechanics study proved entangled particles react simultaneously no matter the distance
Rebar was born crooked but that was OK with me
She lived a long life she had two beautiful babies
She was a natural and loving mother
and she nurtured many orphans after her babies grew up
This last year she had a best friend named Smitty he was a retired old guy, a big beautiful bay gelding
He shared Rebar's last meal with her, senior feed, alfalfa and carrots which I carefully bit into small enough bites for their old teeth
Smitty whimpered audibly, when after her meal, Rebar lay down in the tall grass in their pasture
I laid down with her while the sunset faded caressing and kissing her
Until she relaxed and eventually took her last breath
While I was laying in the grass crying and saying my goodbyes their caretaker, Buffy, took Smitty to his corral where he normally slept next to Rebar
I heard him screaming and stomping
I didn't realize he wasn't still in the pasture
I got up and we quickly returned him to the pasture realizing he needed closure
By now it was dark, the half-moon hanging low in the sky
We turned him loose into the pasture and he galloped wildly, hooves pounding so hard he flung off his shoes. He was screaming, not whinnying, but screaming for Rebar
We took the blanket off of Rebar so that he could see her and led him to where she lay
he instantly calmed
Put his nose to her nose
Then stood there over her Guarding her the rest of the night without moving
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
* Any attempt to suppress human or Constitutional rights.
* Any law or policy that supports discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, race/color, gender, sexual orientation, or any law that does NOT support Equal Treatment under the law.
*Any law or policy that attempts to suppress Freedom of the Press or Free Speech.
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