Book examines 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' under the microscope

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Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, author of 'Mary Lou and Rhoda and Ted.' (Photo: Jesse Jiryu Davis)

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, 38, has spent much of her professional life covering TV and social issues in entertainment. So who better to offer a definitive look at The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77), the classic comedy about a young woman making it in the world of TV news? Armstrong does just that in her new book Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted (Simon & Schuster), out May 7. The L.A.-based author chatted with USA TODAY's Craig Wilson.

Q: What was it about The Mary Tyler Moore Show that captured American viewers so? At its height, a quarter of the total TV viewers in the country were watching.

A: It was the characters in the most basic way. Nobody cares about issues if the characters aren't great. And you can see it in the very beginning with that show. They were great.

Q: So you think it was a perfect storm of people -- as you say, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted?

A: Yes, absolutely. It's those characters and the people who played them, and the people who cast them. It turned into the story of a perfect storm. All these things and all the special combinations.

Q: But don't you think Mary could be a little too sweet at times?

A: Yes. But they were reflecting her personality in the character. My feeling is that in order to be this independent woman, which was a new, mind-blowing thing at the time, she in some ways had to be an exceptionally good girl to be acceptable to the audience.

Q: And that's why you say Mary needed a more earthy Rhoda (Valerie Harper) upstairs?

A: I really think that. I identify with Rhoda. Most of us identify with her. Especially younger women.

Q: And Cloris Leachman, "Phyllis," could be a bit needy at times, a bit pushy, always wanting to be in the game?

The book jacket for 'Mary Lou and Rhoda and Ted' by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong.

A: Cloris is her own special creature and she knows that. She works that. She's brilliant and wacky and unique and her own person. She's a force. She loved being in the action. That's her gift.

Q: One of Lou's lines about Mary has become TV legend -- "You've got spunk...I hate spunk." Why did that seem to sum everything up so?

A: I think it does sum up everything but I'm not sure they knew that at the time. That line gave Ed Asner a lot of trouble. He was too aggressive about it at first, and then he nailed it. He had to be gruff, but also show that his bark was worse than his bite. That's the magic of him. It turned out being very special and unique.

Q: Is it true that Walter Cronkite would sail his boat back into harbor on Saturday nights just to watch the show?

A: Isn't that nice? Who knows, but that's the story and I don't think he would have done the show otherwise. He hardly needed to do a cameo appearance. Why would he bother to be on a sitcom unless he loved it?

Q: So, Mary was very hands on. Rarely retreated to her dressing room? Hated when people were late?

A: It was a very classy, no-nonsense operation. That's why they could handle Phyllis, for instance. Everyone was on point.

Q: There was a bit of jealousy between the guys and the girls, the guys thinking the girls got more attention. And that actually drew them all closer together?

A: They were all good people. They had such a good healthy relationship they dealt with it. They weren't mad at the girls. My theory was that the men were not used to not being the main character. The women got more media attention, so that could have fostered more tension. But they were a tight little unit.

Q: Still, Ted (Knight) got tired of being the butt of jokes.

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong examines the classic sitcom in 'Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted.' Here, Ed Asner, Mary Tyler Moore and Ted Knight star in a scene from the CBS show. (Photo: CBS)

A: Yes. It makes me sad I couldn't talk to him. I think he would have been so interesting. It's this strange balance of hubris and total insecurity. He's full of himself because he's so insecure. But he was very sensitive to the fact people identified him with his character. He struggled a lot.

Q: You talk a lot about the writers. What was going on there? They were bold enough to "divorce" Lou and his wife.

A: How many crazy factors does it take for a show to become iconic? The time was right. You have to be at the point where America was ready for it but didn't know it yet. The writers sneaked into things backwards and made people love these characters and then had Lou get a divorce, for instance. They also had actors who had the talent to pull this off.

Q: Maude, Archie Bunker. They all pushed the envelope back then. Mary was a bit slower.

A: Yes, they just kind of crept up on issues. I got obsessed with the difference between the various shows. It's either let's yell about the issues of the day, be in your face, let's work this deal, or The Mary Tyler Moore Show where the issues come from the characters.

Q: And Oprah credits Mary with much of her success?

A: Yes. I love the idea that Oprah was obsessed with the show. She dressed like Mary. She wanted to know how to get a job like Mary's.

Q: The famous last scene when Mary turns out of the lights of the newsroom had to be shot over and over. Why?

A: The lighting guy forgot to do it (lower the lights), he was so wrapped up in the emotion of the moment. That's one of my favorite details. I love it.

Q: Why wouldn't this show work today?

A: Actually I think it might. I do think a lot of shows today do what it did. The question is, would it be as special now? It invented so many other things that we now take for granted. It wouldn't be as much a giant national experience as it was. It's not as brash as things today. But it's held up very, very well. I'm not sure I would have written the book if it hadn't. You can still identify with all the characters.

View the original article here

Review-a-Day for Sat, Sep 24: Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

by Jon Krakauer A review by Doug Brown

On July 24, 1984, two fundamentalist Mormon brothers brutally murdered their sister-in-law and her baby girl, believing they were fulfilling a revelation that one of the brothers had received from God. Today they reside in federal prisons. The older brother, Ron (who had the revelation), is on death row and following every avenue for appeal. The younger brother, Dan, is serving a life sentence and seems okay with it (Krakauer says he refers to prison as a "monastery"). Krakauer spoke to Dan for the book, but not Ron. Under the Banner of Heaven tells in parallel the story of the Lafferty brothers and their descent into fundamentalism alongside the history of the Mormon Church.

The modern Mormon Church is quick to distance itself from fundamentalists; most are excommunicated from the Latter-Day Saint (LDS) community. The church downplays the history of plural marriage (polygamy) in Mormonism, to the point of maintaining that Brigham Young was monogamous (history says otherwise). Polygamy is a central point of contention with fundamentalists -- they feel the church went astray when it cooperated with U.S. law and renounced the practice in the late 1800s. A practice that is still a part of the church, though, is revelation. Mormons are encouraged to listen for messages from God, and much of the basis of Mormon dogma is a sequence of revelations that Joseph Smith and later church leaders have had. One doctrine of Mormonism that has terrible consequences is "blood atonement"; if acts are committed against Mormons, Brigham Young said this could sometimes only be rectified if the "sinners have their blood spilt upon the ground." Fundamentalists are naturally drawn to blood atonement, and this element of Mormonism became a focus for the Lafferty brothers.

A fundamental point of Ron's trial was whether he was insane. The defense argued he was; the prosecution argued no. As Krakauer details, if Ron Lafferty is insane, it could be argued that so are most religious people. He believed he was receiving revelations from God, but revelation is a tenet of Mormonism. Despite carrying out horrible crimes, he felt he was doing the right thing, and was thus divorced from reality. But so is everyone who goes to war with a cross or a star or a crescent around their neck. Ron did what he did because of his faith. Sure, the motive seems self-serving -- Brenda Lafferty (the victim) had convinced Ron's abused wife to leave him, so naturally Ron said that God wanted her "removed." But there was much discussion between the brothers and their circle about whether the "removal revelation" was legitimately from God; the final decision, for Ron and Dan anyway, was yes. This discussion is a particularly sore point for Brenda's family -- several people knew about the revelation months before it was carried out, and no one warned her. Krakauer maintains one of these people was Allen Lafferty, Brenda's husband. Ron had shown him the revelation and asked what he thought of it. Allen spoke against it, but never felt inclined to say, "Hey, honey, I had the creepiest talk with my brothers..."

Even before Under the Banner of Heaven was on the shelves, the LDS church preemptively attacked it. In a five-page screed that is reprinted in an appendix for the paperback, Krakauer is taken to task for focusing on the negative aspects of the church. It emphasizes that the Lafferty brothers weren't members of the LDS church, having been excommunicated. Krakauer responds to each of the charges. In a few cases, he acknowledges having gotten facts wrong in the initial release (which were subsequently corrected for the paperback edition). But, for the most part, he defends the points made in the book.

Events have happened in the history of Mormonism that the church would rather sweep under the rug, like the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre (detailed in the book). And while the Laffertys had been excommunicated from the LDS church, their beliefs were rooted in the church. They believed they were being better Mormons than the LDS church leaders. To me, that was an important take-away lesson of the book -- religious fundamentalists don't necessarily believe something completely different from the mainstream; they just interpret the same texts more inflexibly and believe in their interpretation more deeply. In the hands of fundamentalists, religious belief is by definition intolerant, and often used for brutal ends. Under the Banner of Heaven is a scary book about the dark fringe of extremist religion and believers who are willing to lethally impose their dogma.

View the original article here

Review-a-Day for Sat, Sep 24: Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

by Jon Krakauer A review by Doug Brown

On July 24, 1984, two fundamentalist Mormon brothers brutally murdered their sister-in-law and her baby girl, believing they were fulfilling a revelation that one of the brothers had received from God. Today they reside in federal prisons. The older brother, Ron (who had the revelation), is on death row and following every avenue for appeal. The younger brother, Dan, is serving a life sentence and seems okay with it (Krakauer says he refers to prison as a "monastery"). Krakauer spoke to Dan for the book, but not Ron. Under the Banner of Heaven tells in parallel the story of the Lafferty brothers and their descent into fundamentalism alongside the history of the Mormon Church.

The modern Mormon Church is quick to distance itself from fundamentalists; most are excommunicated from the Latter-Day Saint (LDS) community. The church downplays the history of plural marriage (polygamy) in Mormonism, to the point of maintaining that Brigham Young was monogamous (history says otherwise). Polygamy is a central point of contention with fundamentalists -- they feel the church went astray when it cooperated with U.S. law and renounced the practice in the late 1800s. A practice that is still a part of the church, though, is revelation. Mormons are encouraged to listen for messages from God, and much of the basis of Mormon dogma is a sequence of revelations that Joseph Smith and later church leaders have had. One doctrine of Mormonism that has terrible consequences is "blood atonement"; if acts are committed against Mormons, Brigham Young said this could sometimes only be rectified if the "sinners have their blood spilt upon the ground." Fundamentalists are naturally drawn to blood atonement, and this element of Mormonism became a focus for the Lafferty brothers.

A fundamental point of Ron's trial was whether he was insane. The defense argued he was; the prosecution argued no. As Krakauer details, if Ron Lafferty is insane, it could be argued that so are most religious people. He believed he was receiving revelations from God, but revelation is a tenet of Mormonism. Despite carrying out horrible crimes, he felt he was doing the right thing, and was thus divorced from reality. But so is everyone who goes to war with a cross or a star or a crescent around their neck. Ron did what he did because of his faith. Sure, the motive seems self-serving -- Brenda Lafferty (the victim) had convinced Ron's abused wife to leave him, so naturally Ron said that God wanted her "removed." But there was much discussion between the brothers and their circle about whether the "removal revelation" was legitimately from God; the final decision, for Ron and Dan anyway, was yes. This discussion is a particularly sore point for Brenda's family -- several people knew about the revelation months before it was carried out, and no one warned her. Krakauer maintains one of these people was Allen Lafferty, Brenda's husband. Ron had shown him the revelation and asked what he thought of it. Allen spoke against it, but never felt inclined to say, "Hey, honey, I had the creepiest talk with my brothers..."

Even before Under the Banner of Heaven was on the shelves, the LDS church preemptively attacked it. In a five-page screed that is reprinted in an appendix for the paperback, Krakauer is taken to task for focusing on the negative aspects of the church. It emphasizes that the Lafferty brothers weren't members of the LDS church, having been excommunicated. Krakauer responds to each of the charges. In a few cases, he acknowledges having gotten facts wrong in the initial release (which were subsequently corrected for the paperback edition). But, for the most part, he defends the points made in the book.

Events have happened in the history of Mormonism that the church would rather sweep under the rug, like the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre (detailed in the book). And while the Laffertys had been excommunicated from the LDS church, their beliefs were rooted in the church. They believed they were being better Mormons than the LDS church leaders. To me, that was an important take-away lesson of the book -- religious fundamentalists don't necessarily believe something completely different from the mainstream; they just interpret the same texts more inflexibly and believe in their interpretation more deeply. In the hands of fundamentalists, religious belief is by definition intolerant, and often used for brutal ends. Under the Banner of Heaven is a scary book about the dark fringe of extremist religion and believers who are willing to lethally impose their dogma.

View the original article here

Review-a-Day for Thu, Sep 1: Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness Signed Edition

by Alexandra Fuller A review by Sarah Cypher

Alexandra Fuller returns to the African landscape in her memoir, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness. It accepts the curious task of being both a prequel and a sequel to her 2001 debut, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood. With a love of landscape, a historian's lens and a knack for laugh-out-loud satire aimed at her mother's narcissism, Fuller tells the broader story of her family's participation in the Rhodesian civil war.

Fuller's mother is a "one million percent Scottish" descendant of ancestors to whom "land is good; blood-soaked land is better; and land soaked in the blood of one's ancestors is best." The sentiment seems odd, though, when we see the fervor with which Nicola embraces Africa, and later defends her part of it with an Uzi. She thinks of herself as "Nicola Fuller of Central Africa," a designation repeated so often that it becomes a humorous refrain. It is typical of the memoir's humor, in fact, rising from the author's sustained shock at her mother's gauche, imperial attitudes: Nicola behaves "as if she were a third-person participant in a movie starring herself, a perfect horse and a flawless equatorial light. The violence and the injustices that came with colonialism seem -- in my mother's version of events -- to have happened in some other unwatched movie, to some other unwatched people."

In widening its angle, Cocktail Hour transcends a criticism that Dogs, by being limited to a child's perspective, went too soft on colonial racism. Fuller tackles the curious tension between the two narratives: Nicola's skewed version of her place in history, and the self-aware memoir that encompasses Nicola and the simmering conflicts that erupted across Africa as colonies became nations. What unites the two narratives is a fierce love of land. Neither succumbing to white self-hatred nor stooping to colonial apologia, Fuller begins to explore the crumbly moral ground of being attached to a place that does not belong to you. She writes about the inevitable negotiation of belonging, the claims and counterclaims on land, the cultural and personal memories at stake, and the debts paid in work and blood.

Like the rest of Rhodesians, the Fuller family found itself on the wrong side of history, but in losing the war, a series of farms and three of five children, they tell a complex story of adaptation and reconciliation. Fuller reminds us what peace actually looks like. It is not the silent peace of an absolute victory, but the humble and constant negotiation of one existence among others.

The Oregonian is the online source for comprehensive coverage of the Northwest literary scene. Its daily books report includes news, reviews, and poetry, as well as essays and opinions from local authors.

Plus: The paper's award-winning books section, published on Sundays, strips the buzz from national bestsellers and directs readers to little-known regional gems in a concise package.

New subscribers can receive four weeks of home delivery free as part of a trial offer.

View the original article here

Review-a-Day for Thu, Jun 9: The Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction

by Marjorie Sandor A review by Nancy Rommelmann

There's news from the halfway point, and Marjorie Sandor is here to tell us: it's not good. Friends will die of brain tumors, you will cheat on your husband and divorce, you will in your 40s still doubt your chops as a writer and developers may bulldoze the ancient elms that shade your bedroom window just so. But wait! There's also good news: you will marry your new love, your child's wisdom and grace will astound you, other friends will survive cancer and you will use all of it, as well as your obsession with your garden and its cyclical regeneration, as material and metaphor.

In The Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction, Sandor takes the quotidian of her life and tries to sow it into narrative. Her chosen form is that of journal entries from 2000 and 2001, accounts that include what her new husband dreamed the night before, letters to a planning board, uterine fibroids and where the cat likes to sleep. They are the ruminations of an educated, liberal, middle-aged woman, and as such are not without useful information. There is, for instance, a recipe for Vietnamese chicken broth, and reflections on authors that Sandor, who teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Oregon State University, admires. It may have been Sandor's intent to make readers feel as though they are sitting at a kitchen table with her, discussing the ebbs and flows of the universal life. But sentences that begin, "Come to think of it," "First of all," and "In other news" do not, to this reader, convey intimacy, but a laxity in construction.

The author of several books, including The Night Gardener, which won the 2000 Oregon Book Award for literary nonfiction, Sandor recognizes what the writer needs to do, and states as much by quoting author John Berger: "[W]ithout mystery, without curiosity and without the form imposed by partial answers, there can be no stories -- only confessions, communiques, memories and fragments of autobiographical fantasy." Most of the material in The Late Interiors consists of what comes after that dash.

There are grace notes, in particular Sandor's observations of climate and what it's meant to her life. In the book's finest section, "Capistrano Days," she wonders, "How could I have ever left Southern California? And for western Oregon, my god ... the Oregon winters and overheated classrooms of my new life have made me yearn for the salt air, the hot light of my childhood." That "hot light" really makes it sing. This chapter, too, is where Sandor turns reporter, writing an incisive, sly and subtle essay about nostalgia. She is supposed to be helping her aged mother pack up a house, but she simply does not want to take that next bend in the road, and so keeps her exasperated mother waiting while she detours to see the swallows return to Capistrano; this, though she knows the swallows have stopped returning to the eaves of the city's old mission churches. Instead, Sandor encounters a kitsch pageant that includes the book's most provocative image, that of "kindergartners in brown Franciscan habits ... their waists bound with rough rope belts."

Sandor tries, on the page, to come to terms with what most people fortunate enough to reach middle age will: to understand where one is on the continuum, what is within one's power to save and what must be let go. While she heads to the garden (and there is a great deal of gardening, a dozen trips to nurseries and three times as many into the soil behind her home) for succor and solace, for joy and distraction, we do not feel its grip; it does not sustain us.

The Oregonian is the online source for comprehensive coverage of the Northwest literary scene. Its daily books report includes news, reviews, and poetry, as well as essays and opinions from local authors.

Plus: The paper's award-winning books section, published on Sundays, strips the buzz from national bestsellers and directs readers to little-known regional gems in a concise package.

New subscribers can receive four weeks of home delivery free as part of a trial offer.

View the original article here

Review-a-Day for Thu, Jun 9: The Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction

by Marjorie Sandor A review by Nancy Rommelmann

There's news from the halfway point, and Marjorie Sandor is here to tell us: it's not good. Friends will die of brain tumors, you will cheat on your husband and divorce, you will in your 40s still doubt your chops as a writer and developers may bulldoze the ancient elms that shade your bedroom window just so. But wait! There's also good news: you will marry your new love, your child's wisdom and grace will astound you, other friends will survive cancer and you will use all of it, as well as your obsession with your garden and its cyclical regeneration, as material and metaphor.

In The Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction, Sandor takes the quotidian of her life and tries to sow it into narrative. Her chosen form is that of journal entries from 2000 and 2001, accounts that include what her new husband dreamed the night before, letters to a planning board, uterine fibroids and where the cat likes to sleep. They are the ruminations of an educated, liberal, middle-aged woman, and as such are not without useful information. There is, for instance, a recipe for Vietnamese chicken broth, and reflections on authors that Sandor, who teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Oregon State University, admires. It may have been Sandor's intent to make readers feel as though they are sitting at a kitchen table with her, discussing the ebbs and flows of the universal life. But sentences that begin, "Come to think of it," "First of all," and "In other news" do not, to this reader, convey intimacy, but a laxity in construction.

The author of several books, including The Night Gardener, which won the 2000 Oregon Book Award for literary nonfiction, Sandor recognizes what the writer needs to do, and states as much by quoting author John Berger: "[W]ithout mystery, without curiosity and without the form imposed by partial answers, there can be no stories -- only confessions, communiques, memories and fragments of autobiographical fantasy." Most of the material in The Late Interiors consists of what comes after that dash.

There are grace notes, in particular Sandor's observations of climate and what it's meant to her life. In the book's finest section, "Capistrano Days," she wonders, "How could I have ever left Southern California? And for western Oregon, my god ... the Oregon winters and overheated classrooms of my new life have made me yearn for the salt air, the hot light of my childhood." That "hot light" really makes it sing. This chapter, too, is where Sandor turns reporter, writing an incisive, sly and subtle essay about nostalgia. She is supposed to be helping her aged mother pack up a house, but she simply does not want to take that next bend in the road, and so keeps her exasperated mother waiting while she detours to see the swallows return to Capistrano; this, though she knows the swallows have stopped returning to the eaves of the city's old mission churches. Instead, Sandor encounters a kitsch pageant that includes the book's most provocative image, that of "kindergartners in brown Franciscan habits ... their waists bound with rough rope belts."

Sandor tries, on the page, to come to terms with what most people fortunate enough to reach middle age will: to understand where one is on the continuum, what is within one's power to save and what must be let go. While she heads to the garden (and there is a great deal of gardening, a dozen trips to nurseries and three times as many into the soil behind her home) for succor and solace, for joy and distraction, we do not feel its grip; it does not sustain us.

The Oregonian is the online source for comprehensive coverage of the Northwest literary scene. Its daily books report includes news, reviews, and poetry, as well as essays and opinions from local authors.

Plus: The paper's award-winning books section, published on Sundays, strips the buzz from national bestsellers and directs readers to little-known regional gems in a concise package.

New subscribers can receive four weeks of home delivery free as part of a trial offer.

View the original article here