No one was harder on Mary Tyler Moore than Mary Tyler Moore. “I was raised to be a perfect person, or to look like a perfect person,” she admitted in her first memoir, “After All” (1995). Her sitcoms convinced audiences that she was the best girl in the world – and the pressure to measure up to her characters kept her grinning.
“Being Mary Tyler Moore”, a charming documentary directed by James Adolphus, tries to peek under the smile. We get a glimpse of her grief and frustrations, of disappointments and deaths (and yes, that stinker where she played a nun who swoons for Elvis). But the film itself is so impressed with Moore that it skips over the worst of her self-inflicted wounds. Like, for example, Moore’s discussion in her book about when she got drunk and played Russian roulette with her car before finally embracing sobriety, and with it the relief of admitting her flaws.
Reasonable. There’s plenty to talk about if you’re just touring Moore’s career, though the compliments of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Reese Witherspoon are just quick celebrity hits. The film is constructed from archive footage of two television interviews with Moore. The first, from 1966, is sexist and condescending. The second, performed 15 years later, is empathetic and poignant. Together, Moore had changed the way women were treated on the small screen.
She would call herself a realist rather than a feminist. Still, it strikes us how little of her TV persona used to be Real. America’s favorite loner hadn’t been single since high school—and his favorite gutsy careerist had actually lost jobs because he was pregnant or asked for a raise. The irony is that Moore’s perfect image has advanced the culture while hindering her own joy.
being Mary Tyler Moore
Not judged. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms.