‘Being Mary Tyler Moore’ Boss on Showing the Joy & Pain of TV Legend’s Career

Diane Snyder April 30, 2023, 1:00 pm

She wore pants and flats as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show when other 1960s TV housewives were in dresses and heels. In the ’70s, she starred as happily single Mary Richards, whose Mary Tyler Moore Show family consisted of her friends and her TV station coworkers.

In both decades, Mary Tyler Moore, who died in 2017 at age 80, was a funny, winning blend of poise and vulnerability that viewers—especially women—connected to.

One of those women, groundbreaking TV producer Lena Waithe (The Chi), spearheaded the new documentary Being Mary Tyler Moore (streaming this May on HBO Max) with help from Moore’s husband, Dr. Robert Levine. It chronicles the star’s highs but also her lows, including her struggle with alcohol and her son’s untimely death.

“Mary’s known as the woman with the eternal smile,” says director James Adolphus, “but if you truly want to get to know your heroes, you have to be comfortable with their joy and their pain.”

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The two-hour film devotes 30 minutes to her self-titled show and includes home movies and interviews with those she knew and inspired. (A clip of Betty White speaking at Moore’s 1983 bridal shower is a highlight.) As Julia Louis-Dreyfus says, “She fundamentally shifted in our culture how we perceive women in entertainment.” No wonder she’s an icon.

Being Mary Tyler Moore is executive produced by S. Robert Levine, Michael Bernstein, Nancy Abraham, and Lisa Heller, with producers Ben Selkow, James Adolphus, Lena Waithe, Rishi Rajani, Debra Martin Chase, Andrew C. Coles, and Laura Gardner. It’s a product of HBO Documentary Films, Fifth Season, Hillman Grad, The Mission Entertainment, and Good Trouble Studios. It originally premiered at SXSW on March 13, 2023.

Being Mary Tyler Moore, Original Documentary, May, HBO Max

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