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

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.