Mary Tyler Moore revealed that this episode of ''The Dick Van Dyke Show'' changed her career

Before this episode, nobody thought that Mary Tyler Moore could be funny.

We all have moments in our lives that seem to change us beyond recognition, even if it's only noticeable to ourselves. Sometimes when something notable happens, Your life shifts into categories of "Before" and "After" with nothing separating the two beyond a seemingly inconsequential moment where your life was forever altered.

A lot of people are only afforded a handful of these moments in their lifetime. Mary Tyler Moore was given many throughout her long and storied life. This makes sense when you consider the amount of lives she was able to change during her career, as well as her meteoric rise to fame on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

While Moore does consider her casting on The Dick Van Dyke Show to be a wonderful event, there was one specific episode of the series that she was quick to proclaim had changed the trajectory of her career.

In her memoir, After All, Moore explained, "It was an early episode in which Laura bleaches her hair blond because she thinks that Rob isn't excited by her anymore." You might remember the season one episode, "My Blonde-Haired Brunette," and a particularly humorous scene in which Laura, after a hair-dye mishap, cries to Rob with half of her hair brown and half dyed blonde.

Moore wrote, "It's powerful helping someone else get a laugh, standing next to him or her, helping to fill the time as you wait for the laugh to almost, but not completely, subside before speaking again. And then, knowing the audience is with you, you construct the foundation for the next one."

Early on in The Dick Van Dyke Show, the expectation was for someone like Van Dyke and others to provide the laughs, but few had faith that Laura Petrie could be a funny character. Moore was aware of these standards, and wrote, "No one expected the role of Laura Petrie to be more than a cute straight man for Dick Van Dyke's genius."

After that point, the writers began giving Laura Petrie more funny moments, beginning Moore's journey as a comedic heavyweight who, no doubt, earned every laugh she got.

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8 Comments

Jimtypes 7 months ago
Dick Van Dyke Show proves that funny is funny.
sagafrat69 7 months ago
Forgot about "Diagnosis Murder" FloridaTopCat. We know they both liked and respected each other personally and professionally. One of those great mysteries of classic television. You know when actors work together in multiple t.v. shows or movies it's assumed they enjoy working together. Hard to understand this one.
FloridaTopCat 7 months ago
I've always wondered why Mary Tyler Moore was not a guest star on Dick Van Dyke's "Diagnosis Murder" series, which ran 8 years, 178 hour long episodes which featured hundreds, multiple hundreds of guest stars from the 1990's TV business. Dick even did the "ottoman" joke from the original show on Diagnosis Murder, but no Mary over the 8 years of the show.
MaryMitch FloridaTopCat 7 months ago
That would have gotten huge ratings! Maybe they just never were able to work out their schedules.
sagafrat69 7 months ago
I have always wondered why the great Dick Van Dyke didn't get a guest appearance on " The Mary Tyler Moore" show? He could've been a friend of Lou or Ted. Would've been a great kind of wink wink to the audience. Would love to hear what DVD has to say.
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