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Mary: The Mary Tyler Moore Story
MARY delivers pertinent insights and unique behind-the-scenes perspectives and recollections of the multi-talented performer/humanitarian that Mary Tyler Moore was and will always remain in the eyes of millions of her fans the world over. In covering Moore’s personal and professional life, MARY features all-new commentary from exclusive interviews with many of her co-stars over the years, including Ed Asner, Gavin MacLeod, and Joyce Bulifant; Larry Matthews; Carol Channing, and many others.
422 pages, Hardcover
First published January 25, 2019
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82 people want to read
About the author
Herbie J. Pilato
22 books13 followersHerbie J. Pilato is a TV host, writer, producer, performer, and entertainment executive who has worked on several television shows including Bravo’s hit five-part series, The 100 Greatest TV Characters, Bewitched: The E! True Hollywood Story (the seventh-highest rated True Hollywood Story in E!’s history), A&E’s Biography of Lee Majors, TLC’s Behind the Fame specials on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Hill Street Blues, and L.A. Law, among others. Herbie J has also served as a consulting producer and on-screen cultural commentator on various classic TV DVD documentaries for Sony, NBCUniversal, and Warner Bros., including The Six Million Dollar Man boxed set, Kung Fu, and CHiPs.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 27, 2023
I usually do not read many books about celebrities, unless they have done something extraordinary like Hedy Lamarr, Rod Serling, James Steward, or Shirley Temple. It's not that I have anything against actors or actresses, movie executives, writers, and directors because I don't. I was simply around them all the time.
Back a very long time ago, I read a couple of reviews for "Ordinary People," which won the best picture, director, and supporting actor awards at the Academy awards (beating out the great "Raging Bull). Mary Tyler Moore also received a best actress nomination but did not win.
A number of reviewers who praised her performance also went out of the way to say that the Mary Tyler Moore we saw in the movie, a stand offish and unlikeable mother, was more like the real Mary Tyler Moore in real life. I thought to myself, at that time, that that was pure bullshit. That Mrs. Moore in real life was more like Mary Richards on the great, "Mary Tyler Moore Show or more like Laura Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show." The reason I came to this conclusion was because of the authenticity Mrs. Moore brought to both those roles. The Mary Tyler Moore in "Ordinary People," was an actress giving a great performance.
For nearly 25 years of my life I lived right down the street from 'MTM' in beautiful Studio City, Ca.
'MTM' was the very successful company started by Mrs. Moore and her husband at the time Grant Tinker. MTM was a very small studio compared to studios like Warner Bros. or Disney but it had a charm and beauty and closeness about it that no other studio I had ever been on possessed. In a way, it was representative of the many wonderful T.V. sitcoms that were shot there.
"Mary, The Mary Tyler Moore Story," by Herbie J. Pilato did clarify one thing for me and that was that Mary Tyler Moore in real life was more like Mary Richards and Laura Petrie, and not the mother in "Ordinary People."
Mrs. Moore also exemplified the one principal that President Teddy Roosevelt often talked about in his speeches. The principal that if one is fortunate in life to possess large sums of money or notoriety, one has an obligation to give back and Mrs. Moore not only gave back with large contributions of money to the causes she believed in, such as animal rights, stem cell research, women's rights, juvenile diabetes (which she suffered from) and childhood diseases but she also gave of her time, despite working all the time.
I enjoyed Mr. Pilato's book but I'm certain there are better books out there about this amazing woman and icon.
Back a very long time ago, I read a couple of reviews for "Ordinary People," which won the best picture, director, and supporting actor awards at the Academy awards (beating out the great "Raging Bull). Mary Tyler Moore also received a best actress nomination but did not win.
A number of reviewers who praised her performance also went out of the way to say that the Mary Tyler Moore we saw in the movie, a stand offish and unlikeable mother, was more like the real Mary Tyler Moore in real life. I thought to myself, at that time, that that was pure bullshit. That Mrs. Moore in real life was more like Mary Richards on the great, "Mary Tyler Moore Show or more like Laura Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show." The reason I came to this conclusion was because of the authenticity Mrs. Moore brought to both those roles. The Mary Tyler Moore in "Ordinary People," was an actress giving a great performance.
For nearly 25 years of my life I lived right down the street from 'MTM' in beautiful Studio City, Ca.
'MTM' was the very successful company started by Mrs. Moore and her husband at the time Grant Tinker. MTM was a very small studio compared to studios like Warner Bros. or Disney but it had a charm and beauty and closeness about it that no other studio I had ever been on possessed. In a way, it was representative of the many wonderful T.V. sitcoms that were shot there.
"Mary, The Mary Tyler Moore Story," by Herbie J. Pilato did clarify one thing for me and that was that Mary Tyler Moore in real life was more like Mary Richards and Laura Petrie, and not the mother in "Ordinary People."
Mrs. Moore also exemplified the one principal that President Teddy Roosevelt often talked about in his speeches. The principal that if one is fortunate in life to possess large sums of money or notoriety, one has an obligation to give back and Mrs. Moore not only gave back with large contributions of money to the causes she believed in, such as animal rights, stem cell research, women's rights, juvenile diabetes (which she suffered from) and childhood diseases but she also gave of her time, despite working all the time.
I enjoyed Mr. Pilato's book but I'm certain there are better books out there about this amazing woman and icon.
February 10, 2019
This is a detailed, extremely well-researched, and sensitive look at the life and career of the woman who could “turn the world on with her smile.”
Herbie J. Pilato examines Mary Tyler Moore’s great successes and dramatic failures, as well as the personal tragedies in her life. He weighs the conflicting reports about her warmth, her aloofness, her insensitivity, her kindness and generosity, and deals honestly with her lifelong struggle with diabetes, and her addictions to alcohol and eventually cosmetic surgery. In the end, Pilato produces a startlingly real and moving portrayal of an extremely complicated woman whose talents (like her comic timing) seemed to come very naturally while the skills she worked incessantly to develop (like her dancing) would never measure up to the standards she set for herself.
What are especially interesting and new are reports from extended interviews with friends and coworkers on the films and TV shows Mary made in addition to her first two highly successful TV Series, (The Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore Shows) and her award-winning performance in the Academy Award Winning Best Picture, Ordinary People.
Perhaps best of all, though, is Pilato’s portrayal of Mary’s 30-year-plus love story. Her third husband, Robert Levine, a medical doctor, gave her a sense of safety and security, a feeling of unconditional love, as well as the dedication and medical guidance that let her to live far longer than her life long health problems normally would have allowed.
Herbie J. Pilato examines Mary Tyler Moore’s great successes and dramatic failures, as well as the personal tragedies in her life. He weighs the conflicting reports about her warmth, her aloofness, her insensitivity, her kindness and generosity, and deals honestly with her lifelong struggle with diabetes, and her addictions to alcohol and eventually cosmetic surgery. In the end, Pilato produces a startlingly real and moving portrayal of an extremely complicated woman whose talents (like her comic timing) seemed to come very naturally while the skills she worked incessantly to develop (like her dancing) would never measure up to the standards she set for herself.
What are especially interesting and new are reports from extended interviews with friends and coworkers on the films and TV shows Mary made in addition to her first two highly successful TV Series, (The Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore Shows) and her award-winning performance in the Academy Award Winning Best Picture, Ordinary People.
Perhaps best of all, though, is Pilato’s portrayal of Mary’s 30-year-plus love story. Her third husband, Robert Levine, a medical doctor, gave her a sense of safety and security, a feeling of unconditional love, as well as the dedication and medical guidance that let her to live far longer than her life long health problems normally would have allowed.
February 5, 2019
Mary isn't the first show biz bio I've read from Herbie J Pilato, a founder of the Classic TV Preservation Society. I first learned about the depth of Herbie's TV expertise when I read his 2007 The Bionic Book: The Six Million Dollar man and the Bionic Woman Reconstructed. After that, he produced several adoring books about Bewitched star, Elizabeth Montgomery.
Now, Pilato has presented us with a in-depth, exhaustive bio of a star he clearly also adores, a star most of us out here in TV-Watcher land love as well. Mary Tyler Moore, and her more iconic roles like Laura Petrie and Mary Richards, certainly did turn the world on with her smile. If that number includes you, then this is a book for you.
To greater and lesser degrees, most of us know quite a bit about the biography of Mary Tyler Moore, her career, her private life, her struggles, her successes and failures. There's so much in the public record, including the autobiographies Moore wrote.
What Herbie J. Palato has given us is a one-stop tome that covers everything one could ask for about Moore herself, her colleagues, her relationships, her misfires and triumphs, her self-consciousness and lack of self-esteem in terms of her looks, not to mention her causes like diabetes research and animal rights.
When an author devotes this much attention to a beloved subject, there can be some excesses in the text. In this case, there's a lot of repetition, notably the countless references to the importance of Ordinary People in Moore's career. There are numerous paragraphs summarizing the careers and roles of those Moore worked with at one time or another. Of course, this makes Mary an easy book to skim. But keep your eyes open to catch the streams of nuggets Pilato gives us. We get a portrait of a woman in 3-D, including her shortcomings, talents, work ethic, parental skills (or lack of them) and her insights an perspectives regarding her important and influential career. And surprises--I didn't know her animal rights activism extended to protecting lobsters. Books like these are also good for reviewing lesser known projects like talk show appearances, guest-starring and cameos on TV series, and public speaking. For the first time, I got the story to what happened to the short-lived1985 Mary series co-starring John Astin from Addams Family fame. I got the insider stories behind the sad attempts to reunite the Dick Van Dyke cast and especially the dreary Mary and Rhoda TV movie.
Naturally, you got to have some real interest in the biography of Mary Tyler Moore to want to dive into this very detailed and balanced tribute. Someone needed to write this book, and who better than Herbie J. Pilato. He knows how to do it.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Feb. 5, 2019:
https://waa.ai/oCZ1
March 22, 2019
Absolutely wonderful! Will take you through your emotions and bring you inside the life of this wonderful woman. When I finished I felt as if I knew her personally, and who wouldn't want to know Mary? Herbie J lovingly tells her story without glossing over the bad but instead showing us the human, fragile soul within. I love Mary even more after this phenomenal read. I recommend this highly as well as any of Herbie J's other fantastic work. You will not be sorry.
March 17, 2019
I liked this telling of the life of Mary Tyler Moore very much. I knew, of course, of the Dick Van Dyke and "Mary Tyler Moore Show" years, but knew little of her early years, or her life after the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" other than I knew she had Type I Diabetes and worked very hard with the Juvenile Diabetes organization. This filled in the blanks nicely & gave me a greater understanding of the woman "who could turn the world on with her smile".
January 5, 2021
The Mary Tyler Moore Story is another impressive work by Herbie J Pilato. Paying respect to the iconic star, the author divides his book into eight acts, each of which he opens with a photo of Mary Moore. The biography is lively written and easy to read. While reading this book I experienced the feeling that for Herbie it was important to show Mary’s humanity more than her undeniable talent. Herbie brings to us numerous dialogues and opinions. Most people, whether those who worked with Mary daily or occasionally found common features in her personality – she was regarded as generous and lovable by all. Silverman’s words are convincing when we read in the book: “One thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that this episode, along with many others, couldn’t have been done without Mary’s generosity. Very often a star – particularly a star whose name is the title of the show – will insist on having more lines of being more the center of attention. With Mary, it didn’t matter to her who got the spotlight that week. All she wanted was for each actor to shine, and for the show to be good.” We can find plenty of opinions in this book that outline Mary’s philanthropic nature.
“A delightful person and performer,” who was “sexy as hell, but…vulnerable…” when she fought with the heartache over the loss of her son. She was devastated that she couldn’t spend more time with him while he was alive, although she realized that her career came with a lack of free time – family time.
I liked the fact that this book is not just a biography. It is also an informative source of interesting views on TV production and consumers. A socio-psychological portrait of a TV consumer is given in the course of describing Mary’s career as it developed relying on people’s actual needs (as the Mary Richards character in The Mary Tyler Moore Show as she stood for women’s rights in terms of equal pay and career opportunities) and common preferences. The choice of programs and what the audience expects from them – as in the case of a film or a show – was an interesting piece for me. “The TV audience is different from the film audience. It won’t take a change in characters. In the film, people are expected to grow because of external pressures. But the TV audience wants to know what to expect, and when you try something different it upsets them.” Compelling, entertaining, and a touching read. I would encourage anyone interested in American culture to find a place for this book on their bookshelf.
“A delightful person and performer,” who was “sexy as hell, but…vulnerable…” when she fought with the heartache over the loss of her son. She was devastated that she couldn’t spend more time with him while he was alive, although she realized that her career came with a lack of free time – family time.
I liked the fact that this book is not just a biography. It is also an informative source of interesting views on TV production and consumers. A socio-psychological portrait of a TV consumer is given in the course of describing Mary’s career as it developed relying on people’s actual needs (as the Mary Richards character in The Mary Tyler Moore Show as she stood for women’s rights in terms of equal pay and career opportunities) and common preferences. The choice of programs and what the audience expects from them – as in the case of a film or a show – was an interesting piece for me. “The TV audience is different from the film audience. It won’t take a change in characters. In the film, people are expected to grow because of external pressures. But the TV audience wants to know what to expect, and when you try something different it upsets them.” Compelling, entertaining, and a touching read. I would encourage anyone interested in American culture to find a place for this book on their bookshelf.
June 11, 2022
It’s a running joke in my family that I never appreciate the gifts my husband gives me, which is why we’ve had a “no-gifts” policy in our household for several years now. Before my birthday last year, though, he started getting very excited and told me he’d found a book he just knew I would love.
A biography of Mary Tyler Moore seems like a no-brainer for me, it’s true, but sadly, this book misses the mark. When I opened it up and saw that it was printed on flimsy typing paper in single-spaced Times New Roman, it didn’t give me a hopeful feeling. Learning that he’d paid extra to get an autographed copy directly from the author was another yellow flag. (Dear, sweet, silly hubby!) So I told him I’d read it one day and put it on the shelf, which seemed like the kindest thing I could do.
Lately, though, we’ve been watching a lot of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Hulu, and I’ve been full of behind-the-scenes questions, so I decided to pull this book off the shelf. I opened to a random page and found this passage about the death of MTM’s son Richie: “Death is always tragic for anyone, celebrity or not. A death in the family is worse, whether it be a parent, child, uncle, aunt, or cousin. But when a parent dies young or a a child dies in general, that beggars words.” There’s no way I can slog through 400 pages of that kind of writing in single-spaced Times New Roman!
Ok, so I’ll just look in the index and find the sections that answer my questions. Nope, because there’s no index. Well, maybe the table of contents will do. Nope, because this 400-page book is divided into only 6 parts. As far as I can tell, though, only about 50 pages of the book have to do with the show, so it’s not really what I wanted anyway.
Sorry, dear hubby. I know you tried, but I won’t be reading this book.
A biography of Mary Tyler Moore seems like a no-brainer for me, it’s true, but sadly, this book misses the mark. When I opened it up and saw that it was printed on flimsy typing paper in single-spaced Times New Roman, it didn’t give me a hopeful feeling. Learning that he’d paid extra to get an autographed copy directly from the author was another yellow flag. (Dear, sweet, silly hubby!) So I told him I’d read it one day and put it on the shelf, which seemed like the kindest thing I could do.
Lately, though, we’ve been watching a lot of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Hulu, and I’ve been full of behind-the-scenes questions, so I decided to pull this book off the shelf. I opened to a random page and found this passage about the death of MTM’s son Richie: “Death is always tragic for anyone, celebrity or not. A death in the family is worse, whether it be a parent, child, uncle, aunt, or cousin. But when a parent dies young or a a child dies in general, that beggars words.” There’s no way I can slog through 400 pages of that kind of writing in single-spaced Times New Roman!
Ok, so I’ll just look in the index and find the sections that answer my questions. Nope, because there’s no index. Well, maybe the table of contents will do. Nope, because this 400-page book is divided into only 6 parts. As far as I can tell, though, only about 50 pages of the book have to do with the show, so it’s not really what I wanted anyway.
Sorry, dear hubby. I know you tried, but I won’t be reading this book.
January 26, 2024
Sloppy, messy, scoff-inducing book that's filled with mistakes and absurd claims by the author. It's an unsatisfying attempt to pull together all the major things written about the star and her shows, but it doesn't work under Herbie Pilato's horrible writing skills.
I could go page-by-page and tear this apart. His inept writing is due to being overwhelmed by the incredible amount of secondhand resources he compiles but the author also insists on inserting self-assured conclusions about things he knows little about. He puts thoughts in the minds of Mary and others to try to explain her feelings or actions, but often fails as a writer to give any proper notations to explain his conclusions.
There are a few inclusions that are interesting or somewhat unique. A few paragraphs honor That Girl as the series that birthed The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but Pilato needed to do interviews with Marlo Thomas and others involved in That Girl (one of the biggest flaws in the book is the lack of fresh interviews). There's also a funny aside where one performer admits that Moore looked nothing in person like she did on screen (when I met Moore that was the first thing that hit me--her deep undereye gauges and imperfect face were so different from her photos with heavy makeup and her well-lit TV appearances).
The mistakes in the book are laughable. He has the wrong title for one of the books he quotes. He misspells the last name of one of the biggest TV programmers in CBS history. He says that Mary Richards was from "Rosenburg, Minnesota" when in truth it was Roseburg.
Then he includes all sorts of stuff that has nothing to do with Mary Tyler Moore, such as biographical asides of people she worked with and bizarre statements about "coincidences" that were no such thing!
Try this one out: "The pilot for The Dick Van Dyke Show was filmed on January 20, 1961, the same day as President John F. Kennedy's inauguration. JRK's subsequent Inauguration Ball was directed by Bewitched producer/director William Asher, who was also married Elizabeth Montgomery, that show's star. This was one of a number of eerie life and career overlaps between Mary and Montgomery." HUH? What eerie overlap? There is none! Read it carefully--MTM's shooting the pilot had zero to do with Asher or Montgomery. The book is filled with these kind of oddball mistaken connections that truly are meaningless.
He'll also make bold statements that are patently false. The "Van Dyke (show) proved to be one of TV's first sitcoms for grown-ups." Totally wrong--what about The Honeymooners or I Love Lucy (whose first years were about four aging adults), December Bride or I Married Joan, Our Miss Brooks or Love That Bob, Mister Peepers or Life with Elizabeth (you get the idea!). He wrongly slams Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver as being less realistic, then tries to say the Van Dyke Show was also more realistic than Bewitched! Duh! There was zero reality on that fantasy sitcom about a witch that can move things with her nose! Hey, Herbie, the Van Dyke Show was more realistic than I Dream of Jeannie, The Munsters, Addams Family, and Gilligan's Island too!
As I said, it's a mess. In the hands of a skilled TV historian and writer this could have given true perspective to Mary Tyler Moore's impact on media and society; instead, what we get is an error-filled mishmash of warped praise that is about as big a failure as Moore doing a Breakfast at Tiffanys musical on Broadway.
I could go page-by-page and tear this apart. His inept writing is due to being overwhelmed by the incredible amount of secondhand resources he compiles but the author also insists on inserting self-assured conclusions about things he knows little about. He puts thoughts in the minds of Mary and others to try to explain her feelings or actions, but often fails as a writer to give any proper notations to explain his conclusions.
There are a few inclusions that are interesting or somewhat unique. A few paragraphs honor That Girl as the series that birthed The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but Pilato needed to do interviews with Marlo Thomas and others involved in That Girl (one of the biggest flaws in the book is the lack of fresh interviews). There's also a funny aside where one performer admits that Moore looked nothing in person like she did on screen (when I met Moore that was the first thing that hit me--her deep undereye gauges and imperfect face were so different from her photos with heavy makeup and her well-lit TV appearances).
The mistakes in the book are laughable. He has the wrong title for one of the books he quotes. He misspells the last name of one of the biggest TV programmers in CBS history. He says that Mary Richards was from "Rosenburg, Minnesota" when in truth it was Roseburg.
Then he includes all sorts of stuff that has nothing to do with Mary Tyler Moore, such as biographical asides of people she worked with and bizarre statements about "coincidences" that were no such thing!
Try this one out: "The pilot for The Dick Van Dyke Show was filmed on January 20, 1961, the same day as President John F. Kennedy's inauguration. JRK's subsequent Inauguration Ball was directed by Bewitched producer/director William Asher, who was also married Elizabeth Montgomery, that show's star. This was one of a number of eerie life and career overlaps between Mary and Montgomery." HUH? What eerie overlap? There is none! Read it carefully--MTM's shooting the pilot had zero to do with Asher or Montgomery. The book is filled with these kind of oddball mistaken connections that truly are meaningless.
He'll also make bold statements that are patently false. The "Van Dyke (show) proved to be one of TV's first sitcoms for grown-ups." Totally wrong--what about The Honeymooners or I Love Lucy (whose first years were about four aging adults), December Bride or I Married Joan, Our Miss Brooks or Love That Bob, Mister Peepers or Life with Elizabeth (you get the idea!). He wrongly slams Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver as being less realistic, then tries to say the Van Dyke Show was also more realistic than Bewitched! Duh! There was zero reality on that fantasy sitcom about a witch that can move things with her nose! Hey, Herbie, the Van Dyke Show was more realistic than I Dream of Jeannie, The Munsters, Addams Family, and Gilligan's Island too!
As I said, it's a mess. In the hands of a skilled TV historian and writer this could have given true perspective to Mary Tyler Moore's impact on media and society; instead, what we get is an error-filled mishmash of warped praise that is about as big a failure as Moore doing a Breakfast at Tiffanys musical on Broadway.
September 24, 2020
If you loved Mary Tyler Moore as much as I did, you must read this book! The author has extensively researched Mary’s life and provided an extremely detailed history. From childhood on, he used interviews, quotes, other books, and TV shows to paint a very accurate picture of Mary’s life. Friends, family, co-actors, producers, and talk show hosts to name a few, relate different parts of her story, private and public. Very well put together, you will find out everything you have always wanted to know about Mary Tyler Moore in Mary
December 12, 2020
A magnificent work about a wonderful and talented actress, dancer, woman and humanitarian in summary an icon in the entertainment business. The author carry us to her journey, the glorious and not so happy moments. I enjoyed her work in the Dick Van Dyke Show because I began to see the series during this pandemic on Hulu. I really recognized that she was a multifaceted actress and entertainer. Previously to this and some years ago I owned her Mary series on DVD 📀 so I only knew her work through this time. But know I can say that Mary Tyler Moore is one of my favorite actress.
November 7, 2020
This had the potential to be a good book, but it could have been trimmed by about 100 or so pages - the author cited so many sources that it felt like a thesis. Also, who proofread this thing? At least twice I saw "Tex Baxter", along with many other grammatical and formatting errors. I ended up breezing through the latter half of the book. Glad I didn't buy this, but I feel bad for asking my library to.
July 6, 2020
So many people grew up watching Mary Tyler Moore, and this book does an admirable job of telling her story. A complex but dedicated person, she worked hard at and for what she believed in.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews