I never know how to react to showbiz hagiography docs, which always seem to explore and celebrate the life of a famous person in the same way. They all say “this person didn’t lead an easy life and endured his/her share of challenges, sorrows and setbacks, but he/she was nonetheless fascinating and lovable and certainly admirable, hence this tribute doc about what an vivid and nourishing life he/she led…nourishing for all of us, really.”
I’m not saying that Being Mary Tyler Moore (Max, 5.26), a two-hour doc about the beloved star of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the early to mid ’70s and costar of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the early to mid ’60s, is dishonest or banal or sugar-coated — it’s a somewhat open-hearted, reasonably honest piece of polished portraiture as far as it goes. But it sure plays and feels like dozens of other such docs that I’ve seen over the years.
The intention is to make the longtime fan feel good about Moore’s life, and to reassure them that the person she seemed to be (or that she had been reported to be) all those years was more or less genuine, and confirm that the typical fan’s emotional investment in Moore was sensible and sound.
It succeeds in this effort, and I was more or less fine with the final import. I didn’t believe some of it. I knew it was downplaying the dark and thorny and emphasizing the sunny side-up, but that’s what docs like this do. But I believed a fair amount of it, and that was enough.
From my 1.25.17 obit: Poor Mary Tyler Moore has passed at age 80. Nine people out of ten will fondly recall her 16-year run (with a three-year gm my 1.25ap) in two hugely popular TV sitcoms, first as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show (’61 through ’66) and then Mary Richards in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (’70 through ’77). She was especially perfect in the latter series, doing that sunny, wholesome and vulnerable thing to full perfection and winning three Lead Actress Emmy awards in the bargain.
But to me Moore will always be Beth Jarrett, the emotionally frigid mom of Timothy Hutton and wife of Donald Sutherland in Robert Redford‘s Ordinary People (’80) — one of the greatest screen villains in history and surely Moore’s finest role. If she had never done anything before or since, her portrayal of Beth the bitch (which resulted in a Best Actress nomination) would entitle her to a place of eternal honor in the annals of American cinema.
Feature-wise, Ordinary People was pretty much Moore’s career peak. She costarred in the not-so-hot Six Weeks (’82) and then Just Between Friends (’86). But then she rebounded as another high-strung bitchy type in David O. Russell‘s Flirting With Disaster (’96). Moore also costarred in Elvis Presley‘s last scripted film, Change of Habit, in which she played a work-clothes-wearing nun who allowed herself to develop romantic stirrings for The King.