Igrew up watching “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” reruns after school and wishing I could have an apartment like hers. And of course I’d have to have a best friend/neighbor like Rhoda Morganstern (Valerie Harper) to go with it. Mary Richards lived on the third floor of an old Queen Anne Victorian in Minneapolis, Minnesota, behind those signature Palladian windows with the iron balcony. We get a glimpse of the house here as she drives her white Ford Mustang up to it during the first season:
In real life, those Palladian windows at the top of the house led to nothing but an unfinished attic space. Later owners reportedly finished it and turned it into a media room.
The owners of the house got so tired of drive-by gawkers when the show was in its heyday that they hung an “IMPEACH NIXON” sign across the front of the house so the show couldn’t shoot new exterior shots to use in later seasons. That’s why producers had Mary move to a high-rise apartment in 1975.
Mary walks outside and you can see the ugly fence that surrounded the old house. It has since been removed, thank goodness, as you’ll see tomorrow in my post about the house as it looks today:
In the first script, there was a description of what the writers had in mind for Mary’s apartment, including “ten-foot ceilings” and “a wood-burning fireplace,” which the set designers brought to life:
In the first episode of the series, Mary Richards has just arrived in Minneapolis and her friend Phyllis shows her the apartment she’s going to rent to her on the third floor:
It was fun to see it as an empty space, before Mary moves in. Note that they even put ugly drapes up for the scene, which are never seen again:
When they open the drapes, it reveals Rhoda Morganstern, who is washing the windows of hernew apartment (so she thinks):
After Mary moves in, we see where she plans to sleep in this one-room apartment–on a sleeper sofa in the middle of the room. This always made the idea of sleeper sofas seem so glamorous to me. That is, until I had to sleep on one and realized how uncomfortable they are!
This shot shows the wall next to the door, with her famous “M” on the wall.
A view of the wall with the tiny kitchen to the left, the wood-burning fireplace, and the door to the walk-in closet and bathroom to the right:
I love this shot because you can see that the ceilings are vaulted and beamed:
In this shot you can see that there are hardwood floors in the apartment, and that the shag carpeting is an area rug, not wall-to-wall as it sometimes appeared (at least on the “lower level” of the room). The furniture moves around a lot from scene to scene. Sometimes the sofa has its back to the window. Other times it is off to the right, like it is in this scene with Phyllis (the hilariousCloris Leachman):
I was always kind of fascinated by this cute little kitchen:
It could be open to the main room, or Mary could pull down this window to close it off:
Here’s a look inside the teeny kitchen, with the window closed. Mary and Rhoda are looking in the mini fridge, hoping to find something to feed their guests who came expecting dinner. They find a carrot.
Here’s another view into the kitchen from the dining area, with the window up. There’s a pot rack that wasn’t there during the earlier kitchen scenes (the little girl is Bess, Phyllis’s daughter):
Can someone explain to me how Rhoda managed to live upstairs from Mary, even though Mary’s on the third floor? Never figured that one out. Another head-scratcher: where is that octagonal window, which you can see in this shot, on the front of the house?
Here’s a cast photo from a later season that shows bookshelves on another wall (the door to the hall is to the left of Gavin MacLeod and Betty White):
Mary Tyler Moore Show Trivia:
- Test audiences hated the show. Rhoda was “too New York.” Mary was “a loser.” And Phyllis was “too abrasive.”
- CBS originally gave “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” a terrible time slot on Tuesday nights against “Mod Squad,” which was the #1 show on TV at the time. It was later “rescued” and moved to Saturday nights, where it thrived, but it wasn’t a big hit right away.
- The writers intended for Mary Richards to be divorced and leaving a bad marriage behind. In 1970, this was deemed too controversial, so CBS made them change it. Instead, she comes to Minneapolis after her boyfriend of 2 years refuses to marry her.
- Gavin MacLeod was originally considered for the role of Lou Grant, but he asked to read for the part of Murray Slaughter instead. Murray was going to be Mary’s nemesis at the news room, but after Gavin was cast and the writers could see the friendly chemistry between the two, his character was rewritten.
To see photos of the house today: Inside the Queen Anne Victorian from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
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