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| Valerie Harper, Mary Tyler Moore, and Cloris Leachman. |
Most teenage boys in the mid 1970s spent weekends doing fun stuff. Where I grew up, in suburban Philadelphia, getting your driver's license meant parties. The drinking age in New Jersey was eighteen so there was always someone who could supply a house with a keg of beer while the parents were out of town.
Not that I know this first hand. I was an outcast, partly by choice, partly due to fear, partly because of my peers. I had no sisters and went to an all boys school where all of my teachers were men. What little I knew of girls was from books, magazines and television. As deep an understanding you get of people from books, television has an immediacy that makes you think you're seeing something truer to life.
My girlfriends when I was sixteen were Mary Tyler Moore, Valerie Harper, and Cloris Leachman. Since Friday, only Cloris—Phyllis—remains. Mary Tyler Moore died in January of 2017, Valerie Harper August 30 of this year. Leachman is 93 years old.
They were my female role models. Carol Burnett would be in there someplace too, but she was a comedy role model of a different kind.
You liked your girlfriends shapely, attractive, smart, verbal, sassy, funny, and independent...I take it Sue Ann Nivens wasn’t your type? You could have done a lot worse.
ReplyDeleteI'd put their looks as secondary factors. They all had a kind of charisma actors need, but only Mary Tyler Moore was a real head turning beauty. If I'd been interested in only looks, I'd have been watching "Charlie's Angels." I liked Sue Ann. I liked Georgette. But they were tertiary characters.
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