Why Did ‘Valerie’ Become ‘The Hogan Family’? Inside the Legal Battle That Changed the Show
Remember the TV sitcom Valerie? Or was that Valerie’s Family: The Hogans? Or maybe it was just The Hogan Family? Actually, the TV series went by all three titles as NBC and production company Lorimar Telepictures navigated a messy and expensive breakup with onetime lead star Valerie Harper.
Harper, an Emmy-winning alum of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda, was initially the namesake star of the show, playing a career woman raising her sons — including one played by a young Jason Bateman — during her pilot husband’s absence. But the offscreen drama following Season 2 didn’t have anyone laughing…
Lorimar Telepictures fired and then sued Valerie Harper.
In the summer of 1987, Harper and Tony Cacciotti, her husband and business manager, reached an impasse with Lorimar over the money she was earning from the show. Amid the disagreement, the couple moved out of their offices on the Lorimar lot, and Harper missed the filming of Valerie’s Season 3 premiere, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Harper later returned to set to film the next episode, but Lorimar then fired her and made plans to replace her with actor Sandy Duncan. On screen, Valerie Hogan died in an accident, and sister-in-law Sandy Hogan, played by Duncan, moved in to become the boys’ new caretaker.
Lorimar later filed a breach-of-contract suit against Harper for $70 million, claiming she had displayed erratic behavior, made unreasonable demands, and threatened to quit the show. And Harper filed a breach-of-contract suit against Lorimar and NBC, arguing she was ready, willing, and able to continue starring in the sitcom.
L.A. Superior Court sided with Harper in the dispute, awarding her $1.8 million plus profit money.
In September 1988, following five weeks of testimony, the Los Angeles Superior Court awarded Harper $1.4 million in compensatory damages and a profit share that was worth as much as $15 million, per the Times. A jury had decided that Lorimar treated her with “oppression and malice,” as People reported at the time.
Donald Engel, an attorney for Lorimar, told People that Harper’s testimony endeared her to the jury. “We felt we had a strong case that her disruptive behavior was sufficient grounds for terminating her. We felt she walked out on us.” Engel said. “The guy in charge [of the jury] was a postal worker. I don’t think anybody on the jury was anything but an employee in their entire lives. They’re going to be sympathetic to an employee, and particularly one who is famous. When [the jurors] were discharged, they ran to get her autograph.”
Despite the loss, Engel claimed Lorimar was “very happy” with the result, saying the production company feared the court would award Harper “the profits plus 10, 25 million bucks.” He claimed Harper’s court-ordered award was little more than what Lorimar offered her in settlement negotiations, but Barry Langberg, an attorney for the actor, told People that Lorimar’s settlement offer “wasn’t 1/100th” the amount Harper got.
The money wasn’t as important to Harper as her reputation.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times 24 hours after the court decision, Harper was celebrating her legal triumph. “My major plan, desire, wish was that the truth of the situation be exposed and be exposed broadly,” she said. “There were so many half-truths and out-and-out untruths about me, my performing, about my stability as a person, my psychological state. It’s so nice to see ‘wrongfully fired’ after all I’ve seen is ‘fired, fired, fired.’”
Harper told the Times she cared less about the money than about the perception of her, after Lorimar claimed to have worried she was verging on nervous breakdown on the Valerie set. “Things in print have a great deal of power,” she said. “Only time will tell [if there has been any permanent damage to her career]. There are probably people who still believe that here is a greedy actress who quit her show. … It’s good copy, a hysterical woman — particularly with the sexism that’s rampant out there.”
Harper went on to make dozens of guest-starring TV appearances on shows like Melrose Place, Sex and the City, That ’70s Show, Desperate Housewives, and 2 Broke Girls. She also returned to Broadway and earned a Tony Award nomination for her performance in the play Looped. She died at age 80 in 2019.
Remind