Thu 26 Jan 2017 In: International News View at Wayback View at NDHA
Film, stage and TV actress Mary Tyler Moore, whose TV sitcom broke new ground for glbti people in the late 1970s has died, aged 80. Lesbian actress and comic Rosie O'Donnell with Mary Tyler Moore Hailed today as a gay icon by the likes of gay fellow actors Rosie O'Donnell, Jim Parsons and George Takei, Brooklyn-born Tyler-Moore began her TV career co-starring with Dick Van Dyke in the 1960s as a slightly flakey but undeniably intelligent housewife. In the 1970s her portrayal of a plucky TV reporter lacking in confidence but with emerging determination to have a career in an otherwise man's world without worrying about not being married presented a not frequently seen on TV liberated female character. It was in that series, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, which also featured Betty White and over which she had significant creative control, that the subject of homosexuality was raised on prime-time US TV. In the 1973 episode her character's room-mate told their landlord that her brother was gay. It was one of the first positive portrayals of homosexuality on American family-oriented TV. Along the way Tyler-Moore also starred in several movies including the musical romp Thoroughly Modern Millie with Julie Andrews and the much darker Ordinary People with Donald Sutherland in which she portrayed an icily emotionless mother. She received an Oscar nomination for Ordinary People and also won a Tony and seven Emmy awards. Tyler-Moore had been ill for some time after having a brain operation four years ago. She died in the company of friends and her husband of 33 years.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 26th January 2017 - 11:55am