A superfluously meticulous exploration of the Minneapolis of the “Mary Tyler Moore Show”
Mary Tyler Moore was first approached by writer/producers James L Brooks and Alan Burns about doing her television show; she was far from enthusiastic to the idea. She had been on The Dick Van Dyke Show for five years and had won two Emmy for lead actress. The show had been highly popular and critically acclaimed, and Moore was concerned that they could never top the show’s success. Another concern was that her character was divorced which was still risque back in the late 1960’s and there was a concern that people might think she was divorcing Rob Petrie her TV husband on her previous show, The writers changed the storyline to her character breaking up with her fiance. After reading some preliminary scripts, MTM was impressed with the quality of the writing and agreed to do the series. The writers chose to set the comedy in a newsroom because they liked the idea of being able to use current events in their writing. The primary reason Minneapolis was selected as the venue for the show was that one of the writers was a fan of the Vikings football team.
The show was set primarily at Mary’s apartment and her job at the newsroom for the fiction station WJM channel 12 and interaction between her co-workers and at home between her landlady Phyllis and neighbor Rhoda.
The house is now known as “The Mary Tyler Moore House.” In an episode of the show, Mary says her address is 119 N. Waverly Apt D (an address that doesn’t exist in Minneapolis) In truth, the house can be found at 2104 N Kenwood. Even with the phony address, the original owner grew tired of fans coming by the house and asked the producers to ‘have Mary Richards move”. The writers were reluctant to change the storyline, so the owner made a huge “Impeach Nixon” sign and placed it in front of the house. The ploy worked, and in the next season, Mary Richards did move to an apartment.
The television station Mary worked for WJM channel 12 is fictional. The external shots for the building that housed the WJM newsroom are the RSM Plaza. In 1970, when the series began, the Plaza at 20 stories was one of the tallest buildings in the city. It has been surpassed many times over since then.
I was only six when the show first aired. I had never even heard of the city of Minneapolis until the show. The place became the mythical place “where Mary lived.” I especially loved the opening sequence and the Sonny Curtis song “Love is all around’ that played over the sequence. I wanted to break down the opening shots the best I could.
One of the most memorable scenes in the opening sequence is where Mary is grocery shopping and looks at the price of some meat, sighs and throws it into her shopping cart. This was filmed at Kowalski’s Market.
The opening sequences varied by season, but every one of them featured Mary Richards flinging her hat up into the sky. As she does the song crescendos with the line “You might just make it after all.” After the second season (and the show being a hit) the line was changed to the more optimistic “You’re gonna make it after all” This shot was filmed at Nicollet and 7th Street and today, a statue stands in her honor.
This is totally unrelated to this story, but downtown Minneapolis also has this really cool mural of Minnesotan Bob Dylan. And I wanted to share this with you, but couldn’t find a home for it.
The spirit of Mary Richards lives on in Minneapolis. All of these sights are free to visit. If you are a classic TV junkie like me, they are definitely worth the effort.
Just thought you might like to know that Mary’s 2nd apartment complex recently underwent a whopping $132 million renovation. It’s also on the National Register of Historic Places and is actually pretty nice, despite people still thinking its a “ghetto.” Perhaps it’s because a lot of people don’t like the architectural style of Brutalism.