BRATTLEBORO — I'm sad today because I just heard that Valerie Harper has passed. And I'm glad, because for a while I got to know her a little.
Among the highlights of my almost 24-year CBS career was my assignment to sell shows produced by Mary Tyler Moore's company, MTM Enterprises, to audiences and advertisers.
On more than one occasion, more than one person actually compared me to Mary Richards, Moore's character on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. (Go figure - but I could have done worse!)
Oddly, I was never compared to Valerie Harper's character on the show, Rhoda Morgenstern, even though Rhoda was a Bronx girl and I was a Brooklyn boy. Maybe it's because Rhoda reveled in her Bronx-ness and I did what I could do to downplay my Brooklyn thing, even trying feebly for Minneapolis-midwestern. Didn't work.
But back to Rhoda. And back to Val.
* * *
When the MTM people recognized what a hot property the Rhoda Morgenstern character had become, they decided to spin her off onto her own show and to marry her off. And guess who was given the job of making sure the wedding of the year would be a TV boffo occasion.
Val taught me kindness. When I decided to use her for an exterior promotion shoot - what they called an “on-camera” - I booked it at UCLA, near her house in Westwood, for noon on a sunny day. Nobody had ever warned me that the sun, straight up at that hour, would beam its light straight down, causing the subject's eyes to become black holes.
As they did with Val's.
She looked, if not terrible, then surely not her best. Remember - for all her comedic mien, she was a gorgeous woman. I knew she wasn't thrilled when she saw the footage, but she let it stand, not wanting to expose me as the novice I was at the time.
And to show me how little that gaffe had mattered to her, she asked me to decorate her dressing room - a trailer on the MTM lot. The only instruction she gave me was not to make it too “kissy.” Too girlish.
There was nothing “ish” about Val. And nothing “girl,” either. She was all woman. All style. All unique. She'd never “think pink” when black and rust would do. And it did.
When the show started developing scripts and needed a cover page for them, she asked me to do the show logo. I thought that, as a professional window display designer, Rhoda would have had to sign off on stuff, that her signature would speak for her.
So in my finest Italian hand and using my best black marker, I penned “Rhoda.” I can still remember the thrill of seeing it on all the scripts, at least until they developed the show's opening title sequence and switched to the now-familiar logo.
I can never forget creating the invitation to Rhoda's wedding for on-air promotions. I designed a classic invite, on an off-white card stock with raised-embossed Spencerian script. (“Classy, heh, Mair?” I imagined Rhoda would say.) I wanted only the classiest for Rhoda. For Val. Because they were both classy dames.
When the show debuted, I sent Val flowers. Only the most exotic would do. Cactus. Spike. Birds of Paradise. In a black china vase. Dynamic stuff for a dynamic woman.
She understood when folks said they'd never seen anything like them, because they'd never seen anything like her.
* * *
The intensity of our relationship waned with the years. Once Rhoda was underway and on the air, my role wasn't as critical and my interaction with Val not as frequent. We'd see each other at est (Erhard Seminars Training) sessions on occasion, and there was always that warmth of having gotten “it” together.
But life went on for both of us.
I watched her with amusement and affection and, well, awe as Valerie took on other roles, from Rhoda Morgenstern to Golda Meir to Tallulah Bankhead. In each of these parts, I could see Val, my friend, shining through. And I could let her go.
Valerie was 80 when she left us. We were the same age.
I'm dreaming of her smiling, telling me “Nothing kissy, Jerry.”
I'm dreaming of the flowers I'd send her now, to say goodbye.