More of Mary, Maude & Marlo (and The Woman Who Gave Them Life)

Carolyn Cochrane 0:00

Hi listeners, and welcome to this encore presentation of episode 84 Mary Maude and Marlo and the woman who gave them life, which, if you guys remember, is Susan silver. And it was one of my favorite conversations that I think, almost that we've ever had. Really well, yeah, because it touched you know me, I like to check a lot of boxes. Kind of kill a lot of birds with one stone. And we have such a great conversation about so many things. We talk about strong women and the women influences we had in TV, the TV characters that influenced us. We talked to Susan silver, the first female writer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and to know that she impacted one of our favorite sitcoms from our growing up. And to talk to that woman in person was pretty meaningful to me. And then also to highlight just some of the women characters again that influenced us and let us know that, you know what, just because we're a woman, just because we have a vagina doesn't mean,

Michelle Newman 1:04

sorry, well,

Kristin Nilsen 1:07

introduce her on a TV news show. Yes,

Michelle Newman 1:09

her contribution, which, I think you're probably repeating ourselves. We haven't listened to this one in a while, but her contributions, then just kept trickling down as the 70s went on. I mean, one day at a time, Alice, you know, we have these powerful single women, yes. And I think a lot of that has to do with Susan Silver's contributions to to the way she wrote Mary and wrote it in those episodes, yeah, and

Carolyn Cochrane 1:35

the way that those episodes were accepted and how people really enjoyed them. It was so great to know that Susan silver was able to deliver and write these really ahead of their time episodes. And I think probably, you know, we maybe weren't quite sure how these episodes were going to hit with the general public, and hit they did. They were hits. And I think that kind of laid the groundwork to some of the characters we see throughout the 70s, female characters, because they knew there was an audience for strong women that didn't have to be attached to a guy. Hello Jamie summers, hello Linda Carter, hello Alice.

Kristin Nilsen 2:14

And yeah, Alice in particular, Alice and Anne Romano from one day at a time. Those were two women that were really reflecting what was happening in the culture, which was that women were having to raise their families on their own. Divorce was really on the table in the 70s, for the first time, women could file for a no contest divorce. No contest, is that what it's called?

Carolyn Cochrane 2:35

I think so, yeah, which blows me away. I know that was for you. It's like our mom.

Kristin Nilsen 2:39

Yeah, that was our moms. And so it was really difficult for those women, and they had to provide for their children and take care of their children and and so Alice is one of these people that I want to talk about, because we do mention Linda Lavin and her role on the show. Alice a little bit in this episode, and we have recently seen a resurgence of Linda Lavin in two shows. The first one being, is it called no good deed?

Michelle Newman 3:02

Yeah, I think so. The Lisa coro and Ray Roman and Ray Roman so good. She

Kristin Nilsen 3:07

has just a tiny role in that. And, my God, she's so good. And then there's a new show. You guys, if you're not watching it, I'm, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the one ringing the bell for this show. It's called mid century modern and this show is the Golden Girls. It is exactly the Golden Girls. Like it's not even a coincidence. It has to be on purpose, because the premise is three men who are living together on the Lanai, except, instead of in Florida, they're living on the Lanai in Palm Springs. And you have even all the characters, including the Bea Arthur characters, mother who lives with them, and that is played by Linda Lavin. And you guys, she is the star of that. She is so good and she's dead. It kills me. And you guys, It's so dumb. I mean, it's dumb in the same way that Golden Girls is dumb it is, but it's really a throwback to a different style of TV making Yes, yes, we don't have today. And so for a lot of people, that's going to be cringey, and for for a lot of people, it's going to be very comforting. You know, they're they have a laugh track. I'm sure kids are going to be like, Why is there pretend laughter on the show? Well, it's

Michelle Newman 4:26

not, it's not made for kids. It's made for our age. It's made for our generation. But, um, yeah. Linda Lavin just died on December 29 of 2024 and I think they were in production of, yes, sure. I remember reading. So what? Me so bad. How many episodes like I wonder, what then are they gonna address that in the show?

Kristin Nilsen 4:44

Very curious, because they released the whole season at once, so there are 10 episodes, and who knows what's gonna happen after that? Will they have to end because there's no mother character, or will they carry on and have that be part of the storyline and have somebody else you know? Does the sister move? In instead, or something like that. Well,

Carolyn Cochrane 5:01

let's not recast it people. Okay, let's just say that now, yeah.

Michelle Newman 5:05

Well, how do you recast an 87 year

Kristin Nilsen 5:08

old, right? And you can't replace Linda Lavin because her lines on this show and her delivery of them are so perfect she is. I'm gonna, I'm gonna say it. She's better than Sophia on Golden Girls. And I love Sophia, and I know people have feelings about Golden Girls, but I prefer this mother character. I just and I'm so bereft when I'm watching it, knowing that she's going on because she steals the show.

Michelle Newman 5:32

And My God, what a resume that woman had, and that in these, this golden this, this final hour, the sunset of her life. She was working, she was doing what she loved. While we can definitely say, oh, but how tragic she was in this new you know, look how long Betty White kept acting. You know, by the time she was close to 100 she was in her 90s, I think, when she was doing Hot in Cleveland and so funny. And so while I wish more than anything, Linda Lavin would have continued to have that into her 90s, because she clearly is still, still has it, right. Kristen, you're saying she still has the timing. She still has that. Yes, it kills me that she didn't, but at the same time, I just have to be really happy for her, that she went out on a high right, and she went out doing what she loved.

Kristin Nilsen 6:21

It allowed this, this resurgence that she's had, and then when she dies, I was gonna say tragically, but it's not tragic. She's She's 87 but when she dies at this moment, when she's, you know, rising like this, it allows us as the viewing audience to take notice of her again and go, my god, she was good. Let's just take, let's just honor this life that lived. And if she hadn't been in these shows, we would have been a headline. It would have just been a headline when you'd be like, Oh yeah, remember when she was on Alice? And think about

Carolyn Cochrane 6:49

again, we talk about how she was inspiring to us in the 70s as this character, Alice, and then has she's inspiring to us now as women in our 50s, almost 60, that you can have a career. You can be 87 and still, as you just said, Kristen, have the delivery, have the chutzpah, all the things you need. It wasn't like, oh, let's give this old lady, you know, no not part with a few lines like I often think, how hard is it for some of the actors that are in their 80s, early 90s, like, do they have to stop the camera a lot because they forget their lines? Or are for Linda Lavin, she had to be spot on. She was

Kristin Nilsen 7:34

She is driving the timing, and she's got it, and the writing is really, really great. I it's true, Michelle, that some people might pull it up and it will feel so stilted and over acted. But this is an old style of show, and so if we were looking at this in the 80s or the 90s, we wouldn't think anything about that. It just doesn't match what we see being made today. So a lot of people are not going to watch it for that reason. But if you are craving something old school. I've been craving an old school sitcom because they really don't make a lot of sitcoms anymore. This is as old school as you can get, and I'm so excited for my parents. I mean, think about it, what do your 80 and 90 year old parents watch on TV? Okay, hi, I'm back. This is an update on how Mid Century Modern went over with my parents. Gordie might not be a fan. It is a little too explicit for Gordy. I underestimated how explicit the show was. And he was like, Yeah, I don't know. And then even Carolyn was like Kristen. It's really explicit. Do you really think your parents are gonna like this? But I did, because of the format of the show. It's just like the Golden Girls. But he will say he was like, but he did say that he really liked, quote, unquote, the lady from the diner show. So that part still holds up. Okay, so now make of that what you will make your own decisions about what you watch, and now please enjoy this encore presentation.

Michelle Newman 9:05

Segue, alert back to this episode that we're encoring. I think we can put Susan silver in this category of older women who were strong and are still working. Because even though, yes, most of her credits are things from the 70s and 80s. You know, besides Mary Tyler Moore, love American style square pegs, new heart mod, you know, the book that we're going to talk about in this episode coming up. She wrote recently hot pants in Hollywood, and it is a gas you guys. She's still out there. She's still just being her sassy self. Susan, if you're listening to this new encore or this new conversation, we love you and we think you're awesome,

Unknown Speaker 9:49

even in this meeting, we love you

Carolyn Cochrane 9:51

and we love this conversation. We have joy. Facile, 84 Mary Martin, the woman because. Even if Phyllis

Speaker 1 10:00

wasn't even in the room, she'd come late. Couldn't stay in her place. She didn't know, she said, and the camera guys would go nuts because they never knew what she was gonna she

Unknown Speaker 10:11

was a genius, though. Hello World, singing,

Unknown Speaker 10:15

come on, get

Carolyn Cochrane 10:22

happy. Bringing we'll make you happy.

Michelle Newman 10:27

Welcome to the pop culture Preservation Society, the podcast for people born in the big wheel generation who got their school supplies at the Ben Franklin for a grand total of one crisp $5 bill. We

Carolyn Cochrane 10:38

believe our Gen X childhoods gave us unforgettable songs, stories, characters and images, and if we don't talk about them, they'll disappear, like Marshall will and Holly on a routine expedition.

Kristin Nilsen 10:50

And today, we'll be celebrating how women's roles on TV changed after a certain someone moved to Minneapolis and threw her hat in the air. And we'll get all the dirt from a very special guest, the writer who brought so many of those stories to life, Susan silver, I'm Carolyn, I'm Kristen,

Michelle Newman 11:07

and I'm Michelle, and we are your pop culture preservationists.

Kristin Nilsen 11:19

Prior to the late 60s, TV was dominated by men, and the women on your screen were mostly wives and mothers, and all women, whether or not they were mothers or wives, maybe they were teachers or secretaries, were written by men who, I think we can all agree, are not historically gifted at knowing what women are thinking or feeling until a wave of women writers Started inching their way into the writers' rooms of Hollywood, changing the landscape of roles for women forever, because famously, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was the first to go out and recruit women to write for their female characters. It's

Michelle Newman 11:52

true. Until the late 1960s women weren't typically ever the main character. Were they? They were playing second fiddle. They were the wives. They were the mothers. There were certainly women characters on TV shows, but rarely were they the main character.

Kristin Nilsen 12:10

They were setting up the joke oftentimes. I mean, even if you look at Mary Tyler Moore herself, who is Laura Petri? Right? Laura Petri, as hilarious as she was, played a vastly different role in society than Mary Tyler Moore did just five years later.

Carolyn Cochrane 12:26

Sure, that's a great a great example.

Michelle Newman 12:28

She you know, she was just another stay at home mom when she was Laura Petri but did you guys know that Mary Tyler Moore refused to give viewers another inaccurate portrayal of being a housewife, and the way she did that is she wore Capri pants a lot. And she said Mary Tyler Moore actually said I had Laura wear pants because I because I said women don't wear full skirted dresses to vacuum in. She told TV guide this in 2004 but Carl Reiner, who was the show's creator, he he said he wouldn't let Mary Tyler Moore wear pants in more than one scene per episode. But Mary Tyler Moore said, Yeah, I went along with that for about three episodes, and then finally I was just wearing the pants. Okay? And

Kristin Nilsen 13:14

think about it, you guys. She was only like 22 so that's pretty ballsy to go to Carl Reiner, who is like a comedy God. He's the big boss. She's, she's a kid at 22 years old, to make that kind of a stand that's pretty big

Michelle Newman 13:28

well, and that was the type of stand in the late 60s. Let's think about it. Because when I just said that women were typically just the wives or the mothers, I mean, this is also all just a sign of the times, right? This is all like, what's happening however, you know women, Mary Tyler Moore is saying no, women aren't wearing their giant skirts to vacuum and to run around the house. That's how they're being portrayed on television. That's

Kristin Nilsen 13:51

right, right? That's right. Think about June Cleaver, who's completely made up. Donna Reed, completely made up. And they even show them like pushing a vacuum, completely made up, right? With jewelry?

Michelle Newman 14:04

Yes, and they're little kitten heels. They're walking around the house with them, you guys. You know, what's funny is how I said that was a sign of the time. So, so progress, right? As obviously, we can say women and TV, as we've gotten older, you know, then we get in to, you know, the different types of clothing, right now, all three of us sitting here, I'm, I don't know about you guys, but I'm in my pajama pants, which I will stay in for the rest of the day. When I'm cooking dinner, all of us have our hair up on top of our hands like, I mean life, right?

Kristin Nilsen 14:31

Oh, that's exactly. You're lucky. I'm wearing a bra today.

Michelle Newman 14:35

Oh, congratulations.

Kristin Nilsen 14:38

Thank you. You know I thought of first you looked a little bit scared. Yeah, now you can see them in the frame. Yeah, they're just hoisted a little bit. So the first person that came to mind when we were talking about the before and after, the women on TV before, the women on the TV after, in the before, I thought of Lucy. I. Course, we all love Lucy. Everybody loves Lucy. And Lucy as again, as groundbreaking as she was, she was at home, and all she wanted to do was be in the show. She just wanted to be in Ricky's show. It's like women weren't allowed to have a purpose outside of being wives and mothers, and so she had a purpose once little Ricky was born. But prior to that, her purpose was to stay home and be Ricky's wife. Despite her begging, she wanted a purpose so bad. Here it is on full display for all of us. I want to be in this show. Notice you have to stay home. And the great irony, of course, is that Lucy was in charge at that show. She ran that show.

Carolyn Cochrane 15:39

That's exactly right. Wow. And I guess, you know, the end of the day back then, it was like, well, our PR is the public ready to see it something differently. So even though Lucy ball, Lucille Ball, might have wanted to do it differently, it was hard to justify that. If she was going to have an if they were going to have an audience for the show? Would

Kristin Nilsen 16:00

anyone watch it? Right? Would anyone watch it? That's exactly

Michelle Newman 16:03

right. The key word that you guys have used, Kristen, you've used, I think we've we've all used, but is portrayed, right? I think that's right. The key word we're talking about here and women in TV is how they're portrayed, and that's going to be important. And our conversation going forward. I think

Kristin Nilsen 16:19

even Carolyn Brady, like, Thank God she had that solo at church on Christmas Eve, because outside of that, what? Who was Carolyn Brady? What did we do?

Carolyn Cochrane 16:29

Right? Well, we had to wait till the or the sequels The movies, because then she was a realtor, but that was almost after the kids were all grown and flown and all of that, could she finally have a career, which that was again, as a realtor.

Kristin Nilsen 16:45

Otherwise her purpose was making cookies, no,

Michelle Newman 16:48

but not really Alice. Made them most of the time. She just, Carolyn always just like was in the kitchen too, like stirring a pot with Alice. But let's actually ponder this question, What did Carolyn Brady do all day? She didn't have to do, I think she went to the grocery store once, the one time where the guy was like, oh, I want to put you guys on commercial. But other than that, you're always seeing Alice coming in with the groceries. And a couple times, I think she showed some costumes, didn't she? I think there's a

Carolyn Cochrane 17:16

couple. She was knitting. Once she was knitting when Oliver came in. We had cousin Oliver, and I just remember the scene where he came in and anyway, she was so she had a hobby. Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 17:28

purpose, yeah.

Michelle Newman 17:29

This is a fun question to throw out to our listeners. You guys send us DMS with your top three things Alice or Carolyn Brady was doing during the day. I bet we'll get

Kristin Nilsen 17:40

because Mike is to be an architect, right? So he gets and he's still taking care of his children and a present father and everything. So it's all about, you know, what is your purpose in addition to being a wife and a mother? It's not that we're saying that these women shouldn't be wives and mothers and they should just be career women. It's that men were able to be well rounded and that they had a purpose outside of their wives and children, but the women didn't have a purpose outside of the children in the husband. Oh, right.

Michelle Newman 18:06

We're certainly not saying Carolyn Brady didn't have a purpose and she wasn't a loving mother. We're just saying the way she was again. I mean, here's word portrayed was that she was always just walking. Oh, hi honey. Like you know when Mike comes in, Honey, I'm home, and she comes walking briskly out of the kitchen in her pantsuit. Hi, honey, and she gives him a kiss and like, what was she doing back there? Like, what was she doing sometimes? Yeah, she's helping Alice, but Alice is the one doing all the housework and that kind of stuff. So just it's how she was portrayed. We're not saying Carol Brady, everybody out there settle down. We're not saying Carolyn Brady didn't have a purpose and she wasn't.

Kristin Nilsen 18:40

Alice is a good Alice is a good example too, because you were allowed to be a teacher on TV, you were allowed to be a nurse or a secretary, and you were also allowed to be a housekeeper. That's right. You can be a house, right? But, and those are all maternal roles. So even if you think about Aunt B, Aunt B wasn't married, but she is the maternal figure in the show. She was the maiden aunt who took care of the orphans.

Carolyn Cochrane 19:03

That's so right. And you know, it wasn't even just live TV. I was thinking even about the cartoons we were exposed to early on when we would watch the Flintstones. I mean, Wilma and Betty. They were just staying at home, I know. And Jane Jetson and and Jane, she even had like people to do this stuff for. She didn't have to necessarily, right. And Judy, the daughter, she kind of just fed right into that same, um, kind of prototype. So we were kind of before Mary Richards. This was the message that we were getting as TV viewers and as young girls

Kristin Nilsen 19:40

and as our special guest, who you'll be hearing our conversation in just a moment, she pointed out, she corrected us. She said, Mary wasn't the first working girl on TV. That was actually Marlo Thomas in that girl, and actually Marlo Thomas was offered several scripts to read, but they all focused on women who were either the traditional girlfriend. Friend or a wife or a secretary to someone else, and she wanted a show in which the main character was a young, modern, focused woman on her focused on her own dreams and aspirations, and over time, so finally, she got that girl, and over time, she became the producer of the show. And so she made a lot of those decisions about what would happen with with Anne Marie,

Michelle Newman 20:20

well. And one really big decision she made was, you know, Susan, who you'll hear in just a moment saying, you know, they pitched an idea to that girl where she would get married, and there was going to be a big engagement party to Don and Marlo Thomas said, no, no. And you're No, no, we're not going to have, we're not going to have her get married. She's going to stay single, independent,

Carolyn Cochrane 20:39

right? And I think we talked about in our it might have been the free to be you and me episode where we talked a lot about Marlo, but that, that last episode, instead, was she takes Don to, like, a women's lib meeting with her. So it was like, instead of getting right, instead of getting engaged and married, that was like, come see my world. Let's see what's going on over here. So okay, do you

Kristin Nilsen 21:00

want to know another really great that girl? Fact, sure, this is so great. So in 1968 after feminist protests were burning bras, Marlo Thomas began to go braless on the show. And she said, I'm going to get this on a shirt, you guys, because I'm seeing people around us going braless now. And I'm like, let's do this. Well, you said yes. And some people would say I should not, but I'm, but I'm going to, this is what she said, and I'm getting this on a t shirt. God created women to bounce. So be it. I love that. Is epic. Michael, often be like, you cannot do that. Chris and I'm like, this is the way they were made. That's right, they bounce. Well, some of

Michelle Newman 21:47

ours don't really bounce.

Carolyn Cochrane 21:52

Speak for yourself, we drag them

Kristin Nilsen 21:57

behind. Only one of

Unknown Speaker 22:02

them. Little on a leash.

Carolyn Cochrane 22:08

My gosh,

Kristin Nilsen 22:09

even after that girl and Mary Tyler Moore, we start to see women being more trade number one in a more realistic fashion, where they're they're able to have purposes outside of their children. And sometimes that's aspirational, right? They're they're showing us a road map. We were the young girls who are watching this show, and now we know that we can envision our futures as something in addition to being wives and mothers. Sometimes it's simply realistic. If you think about Florida, Evans or Bonnie Franklin, what was Bonnie Franklin's name on the show? Name on the show, okay, so Florida, Evans and Anne Romano. Those were women who were working because they needed to put food on the table. And that's a more accurate portrayal of women's lives. Then it. Then is June Cleaver, in her full dress and kitten heels, vacuuming without having anyone go after Oh, for sure. Maybe the market.

Michelle Newman 23:02

You can add Linda Lavin, Alice to that. I mean, these are working class women who are going through all the struggles. I mean, let's not forget it. And Alice, for goodness sake, Tommy, had to sleep on a pull out sofa. Little little Mickey and had to sleep on a pull out sofa. So they're just showing that they they were portrayed as just a very realistic view of in the mid 70s, these working class women and the struggles that we're facing, but still being wonderful mothers and still being caring and supportive mothers, yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 23:31

but also showing us that you don't have to be a wife and a mother to be successful. I mean, Mary Richards, again, a prime example of that, and I'd like to throw out. Do you all remember pepper Anderson? Oh, police woman. That would be police woman, which was one of my favorite shows. So Angie Dickinson was actually that was the first police drama that featured a female lead, and it empowered a generation of women. There was such an it was the biggest increase in females applying to police, to the police force, than any other time in history. I just I remember her and that role, I think I played police woman. And even though Earl Holloman, I was doing a little research, he was her superior. In my mind, thinking back to the show, he was like her assistant, like she was the main when she drove the ship. And I just loved that show well.

Kristin Nilsen 24:26

And let's spin that out into Charlie's Angels, which is often, you know, sort of demeaned as being jiggle TV. But those women went to the police academy. They were catching bad guys, right? Exactly. Jimmy cleaver was not catching any bad guys.

Michelle Newman 24:40

They were empowered, right? They were like, Yes, I feel like the women in post Mary Richards in the 70s, they were strong, they were resourceful, they were self sufficient, self confident, they were educated, they were empowered. And I think we could, I will even argue that, you know, ma Ingles, even though we might, you know, some. People might go, yeah, that's such a traditional role. Okay, of course, the roles were traditional, but ma Ingles was fierce. I mean, she had a strength of physical and just more notable strength of character, right? I mean, I would argue that ma Ingles shared a lot of those same qualities in the 70s too.

Kristin Nilsen 25:20

Yes, she ran into a burning barn to her leg. Yes, she saved all those animals in the burning barn. I mean, that was, that was a moment,

Michelle Newman 25:30

but just written differently, right? So we're now in the 70s, and so they're writing Little House on the Prairie, and of course, they still have to have these traditional roles, because we're in the 1800s but they're writing Carolyn to be all of those qualities that we're seeing in the Alice's or in the, you know, Anne Romanos in the Charlie's Angels. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 25:51

one of my favorite women was, as you've heard me talk about many times before, was Lindsay Wagner as Jamie summers and the Bionic Woman, which was really the first female led kind of science fictiony drama show that really trailblazed for a lot of shows up until now that feature women as leads in this genre, which had never happened before. And I adored Jamie summers. I mean, and you talk about independent and obviously strong, but Steve Austin loved her, but because of her tragic accident that indeed had her become bionic, she had this kind of amnesia, and she didn't remember how much she evidently loved him before, and he was always still pursuing her, but she she didn't ever feel that for him and that she never had really a romantic interest In the show. I mean, she was able to fight Sasquatch and the femme bots and, you know, and we believed it, and we were right there with her, and she wasn't having Boink. Boink, you know, our sex with Steve that I always wanted her to have, but

Kristin Nilsen 26:54

she didn't try to. She didn't have to, because she has enough story on her own,

Michelle Newman 26:58

right? Exactly what episode was that where you said that, and we were talking about, what would the sound effects have been though, if they would have had sex?

Carolyn Cochrane 27:12

And you know what? I am not the only one who started to kind of put these together. Do you know that there is a book that a University of South Carolina English professor wrote, and it's titled The Bionic Woman and feminist ethics. I want to, how about Sam apples?

Kristin Nilsen 27:28

That great taking class. I want to go to college now. Wait, I

Michelle Newman 27:33

had like, I had like, com, 100 or I have three of the world, yep, art history. Another character, though, let me mention quickly that sometimes I think goes, you know, unnoticed, is Elaine from taxi Mary Lou Henner. And don't forget, she was keeping up with and in the boys club in a very male centered occupation at the time. And man she was, she was right there they she was right with him. I mean, Barb for joke for joke, she was just as tough as all of all of them and that she had to put up.

Kristin Nilsen 28:08

It was she, they were realistic about the harassment that she had to put up with, well, in the workplace and from customers too. That is true. No? So they didn't shy away from that, yeah.

Michelle Newman 28:20

But they showed us how she could how she could take, that's right, how she can handle

Kristin Nilsen 28:24

herself, how she didn't succumb, how she wasn't afraid, how she just told people to shove it, yeah, and which also tells us you don't have to put up with that. You tell them to wait exactly, exactly. What about Elaine? That's a really good one. I was thinking about this transition time between, you know, the late 60s, and when Marlo Thomas and Mary Tyler Moore are making, are giving us this, this shift. And so it wasn't an overnight transition. And Carolyn Brady was still sort of a little bit Donna Reed, but she does have her solo at the church. So if you see that, she is a whole woman outside of her children. And then I thought about Shirley Partridge, because she may have worked at the bank, but that wasn't really a strong part of the story. But, and I don't know, maybe, were they living off of the life insurance from the dad who we assume died, that they never talked

Michelle Newman 29:16

about nice house. It's

Kristin Nilsen 29:18

a it's a lovely house. And I think there is something about her working at a bank, but she's still taking care of her children. This is still a family show. She's still she's not a wife, but we don't think she's divorced. God forbid, she wouldn't be divorced, but she still has children to take care of, but she goes back to school, she drives a bus, she sings back up in her children's band, like she becomes a more whole person than somebody that's just serving her children breakfast.

Michelle Newman 29:45

Susan's going to tell us that she wrote an episode for Shirley where she's going to wear some hot pants too. So that's right,

Kristin Nilsen 29:53

yeah, even Laverne and Shirley. You guys think about Laverne and Shirley. Yes, they wanted husbands, and that was like the. Running gag, but it was focused on two single women who worked at a brewery, right?

Michelle Newman 30:07

I mean, you're putting so many of these things that we've just talked about all together. There the occupation they had, which was probably typically thought of as very male centered, working at the brewery. That's a word. Do you guys have words that you have a hard time saying brewery is one of mine. That is a hard so, like, whenever I say it like, oh, we should go tour that brewery. That's how I say it, because it sounds like I can't say my art. I do want to just

Kristin Nilsen 30:31

mention mod, because mod was both the wife and the mother, but she, like you said, Michelle, they often women. Often weren't the focus of the show. Mod was the focus of the show. She was a wife and mother. She came from the June Cleaver era. But it was her intellect and her opinions that the Fauci, Fauci, that the show focused on Fauci, and that was groundbreaking

Michelle Newman 30:55

Fauci. It was, well, yes,

Carolyn Cochrane 30:56

it was. It wasn't just necessarily the character and what they were doing, it was the topics that that they were able to bring to our screens like her, you know, the abortion conversation, the women's rights talk, the things that Maude character was able to bring to the screen.

Kristin Nilsen 31:16

Yeah. So she was a very well rounded character. We knew her really well in ways that we didn't know June Cleaver, right? We didn't know even Carolyn Brady. We didn't know her very well, except for how she took care of her children, but she was in the transitional time

Michelle Newman 31:30

well. And Maude, you know, Walter is not her first husband, one

Carolyn Cochrane 31:33

of the things I thought was super interesting, I recently watched the pilot episode of Maude, because our guest that you're going to hear from. Susan silver was a big part of that episode, and we learned so much about Maude in that probably 25 minutes. I mean, we learned this was her fourth husband. We learned about her upbringing and what her mother was like. I was amazed how great the writing was that we got a very full picture of who Maude was, and

Kristin Nilsen 32:01

there was a lot to know. Unlike previous women in TV, there wasn't much to know. We knew a lot. There was a lot to know about Maude. My

Michelle Newman 32:08

writing was, I was just gonna say, I think the writing was really brave, and I think it was also brave of the people that put these shows on the air. And that brings me to Murphy Brown, because, you know, Candace Bergen was her character, Murphy Brown was the first single mom by choice. If you guys remember that she was very single, very career focused, and Murphy Brown becomes pregnant accidentally, and she decides to keep the baby and raise him alone. And that went on the air. That whole storyline was played out. And if you remember the vice president at the time, Dan potato Quayle, he openly criticized, that's his middle name, as you guys know, he openly criticized that. I mean, he accused the show of mocking the importance of fathers. But yet, Murphy Brown, and I know Candace Bergen. I well, I don't know, Candace Bergen, I call her candy my neighbor. Yeah, I call her candy candy. I don't know, really, if candy wrote this episode, but, you know, Candy had a big hand in the the reaction and the response to Dan Quayle's words. Because if you'll also remember that they put Dan Quayle's comments in an actual episode where Murphy Brown during a news prod broadcast she um, basically says, unfortunately, it seems that for him, the only acceptable definition of a family is a mother, a father and children. And in a country where millions of children grow up in non traditional families. That definition seems painfully unfair. So it was like reality. Mic drop, yes, and it's all like, it all merged, right? And that talked about brave, yeah, and trailblazing.

Kristin Nilsen 33:54

Um Murphy Brown started in what year was that? 1989 88 it was the late

Michelle Newman 33:59

80s. I can look it up while you keep talking. Oh, it was a

Kristin Nilsen 34:03

pretty good time. It was a pretty good time for women like Murphy Brown, if you think about Claire Huxtable, was portrayed as an extremely successful professional woman in addition to being a loving mother with a beautiful home. 1988 1988 for

Michelle Newman 34:22

11 seasons. Yeah? Okay, well, Elise Keaton, that's a good one, yeah, yeah. And

Kristin Nilsen 34:26

she was an architect, right? That's right, yeah. It's like these women were just allowed to be well rounded characters. They weren't limited in who they could be. And help me with this, you guys. This is going backwards into the 70s again. I can't remember. Did we see Jefferson have a job before they moved on up? Did she work in the dry cleaner store?

Michelle Newman 34:48

But it

Kristin Nilsen 34:51

was, it felt to me like, like when they moved on up, she was becoming a woman who didn't have a job. That's what it felt like to me. And. Remember, she wants to do all the work in the house, and George wants to hire a housekeeper, because they moved on up. And she's like, No, no, no, I don't I don't need that because I don't have anything else to do. I'll just clean the house. So it does feel like she's made a transition. Oh, definitely something different.

Carolyn Cochrane 35:15

And I'd like to bring up one other character, and we can cut this if we want to, but I'd like to bring up Abby Bradford, because I think the first moment we meet Abby, when she pulls up in her really cool 1940s mg, we immediately know that she is, we know, we immediately know she's this independent woman, at least that's the feeling I got, professional woman, yes, and coming to do her job. She's tutoring Tommy since he broke his leg and couldn't go to school. So we're introduced to her as, yes, a professional career woman who then, of course, we know, ends up marrying Tom and but at the same time, she's also this conduit between the female care Daughters of the Bradford family and helping stuffy Tom Bradford kind of see, like, these are independent women. Your daughters like they can she, you know, yeah. I mean, you remember the pregnant friend who didn't have a place to live, and she encourages Tom to let her live with them. And just, you know, times that all of the girls were going through something, she was this kind of wise, strong woman, helping them see themselves as strong women, and kind of playing that, yep, place in between.

Michelle Newman 36:35

That's a great one to bring up, because we talked about Abby a lot in our eight. Is enough episode which listeners go back a little over a year. That's a really fun episode because Abby was so non judgmental. Like, Oh, you're right, Carolyn, there were so many storylines that were really, you know, social issues of the time. And traditionally, we had seen a different type of reaction, I would say from like the parent and Abby was very accepting. She was a good listener. She was also a very, you know, her telling wasn't often times, not often, no, he then, he then became that. But she would, she would bring him around, right? Yes, yes. Facilitated that coming into that family so late. They also, they the writers could have chosen to make her kind of plain second fiddle to Tom a lot, and they didn't. She was written to be very equal, a very equal partner in that house and a really important part of that family

Kristin Nilsen 37:32

well. And I think because she, she was very popular in a way that they didn't expect. We all fell in love with Abby Bradford, and I didn't think, I don't think they expected that. And even if you think about the girls, all the girls in that household, every single one of them, we they were all on a vocational journey of some kind, right? Nancy wanted to be an actress. Joni wanted to be a journalist. Mary wanted to be a doctor. I can't remember what a little wanted to do.

Michelle Newman 38:01

Joni wanted to be an actress, remember? And then Nancy wanted to be like a model. Yes, right? Yeah. Nancy wants

Kristin Nilsen 38:09

to be like a mom. They were focused on that. They were vocational stories for them. So they got to be well rounded too. Elizabeth didn't

Carolyn Cochrane 38:15

want to wear wasn't Elizabeth who didn't want to wear a bra at one point. And, yeah, Dad got all so, you know that she, she might not have had a vocation, but she had, you know, ways she wanted. She's

Kristin Nilsen 38:26

exposing herself. That's not she was expressing herself, Meridian slip. My goodness, I know. And so you could compare all of the girls on Eight is Enough to all of the girls on like Petticoat Junction and Petticoat Junction. Those girls, it was not, there was no vocational storyline. It was mostly shenanigans. And I don't know boys,

Carolyn Cochrane 38:47

I don't know, yeah, I was loving boys and trying to get married. Yeah, trying to get married. Yeah, that's a

Michelle Newman 38:52

really good point, because when I'm thinking Eight is Enough, I'm doing the same thing. I'm thinking, How was Abby portrayed? How was Abby written? But you're right, the way those girls were written was, was was just as impactful, yeah? And, I mean, we can even go to family. Look at family where, you know, buddy's character is, you know, written well, and so is Meredith Baxter Bernie's characters written well. Mom is a little traditional, let's all be honest,

Kristin Nilsen 39:13

pretty traditional. But buddy gets to be, she doesn't have to be a girly girl. She gets to be who she wants to be, well. And Meredith

Michelle Newman 39:20

Baxter, Bernie. She's the single mom, you know, living

Kristin Nilsen 39:25

in the guest house.

Carolyn Cochrane 39:27

I just love that little I just wanted

Michelle Newman 39:32

to what's her name in that wait guys, character name. Why is that escaping me? All right, listeners, right now at your device, and 123, I'm

Carolyn Cochrane 39:42

gonna actually do a little research, but so go ahead, you guys, keep talking. I

Kristin Nilsen 39:46

was gonna say Elise, but that's Elise, right,

Carolyn Cochrane 39:49

that's not right, Nancy. Nancy, Nancy.

Michelle Newman 39:53

Okay, she's Nancy. Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 39:56

there were so many stories in the stories. My my grandma. There are so many TV shows in the 60s that were about men. It was Gomer Pyle and Hogan's Heroes and F troop, right? And I so when I'm trying to think about the women and how they were portrayed prior to Marlo Thomas and Mary Tyler Moore, I actually had trouble coming up with more than a handful because it was sort of male dominated stories, and so that's why we just have June Cleaver and Lucy and Laura Petri over and over again, Hazel, but she's a that she was a housekeeper.

Michelle Newman 40:30

See, of course, we're celebrating all of these strong, you know, empowered women, but there were still going to always be ditzy women characters in all of these. And we love them too, for different reasons. But, you know, I came, you know, Chrissy snow and Georgette, Mary Tyler Moshe, you had to have some balance, right? I mean, Chrissy

Kristin Nilsen 40:50

and Janet were, they were single women. They were not focused on getting married and having children.

Michelle Newman 40:56

They were just a little dizzy, but still, as

Kristin Nilsen 40:58

dizzy as she was, she was still not away from her mother. We've got her own. And then you say, Edith, yeah, Edith, bunker, that's, well,

Michelle Newman 41:06

I'm saying because she was a little bit sub submissive. I almost said submersive. She was underwater the whole time. And I think I've done that submissive, yeah, that

Kristin Nilsen 41:15

was part of the story, because meathead and Gloria. Gloria were were trying to pull her out of the 1950s like Mom, you don't have to do what Daddy says, right? That was part of the storyline. So Edith's role had to be that way in order to be a contrast to Gloria, right,

Carolyn Cochrane 41:34

right? Well, one other thing I thought was interesting, I decided I was going to look up who was the first kind of lead female doctor in, like a medical series, or hospital series. Consistently it came up Dr Quinn medicine, like you know, we had Marcus Welby, we had medical center with Chad Everett. We had some other shows, but those were all male dominated. I was even thinking of st elsewhere, and I couldn't think of a female. I mean, the female, I can't think of anything, the nurses. It probably wasn't until er that we maybe finally got some female doctors that at least I can remember. So I thought that was really interesting, although Andy pointed out there weren't a whole lot of female doctors anyway, just in the profession, but that doesn't mean there were zero. Well, exactly, exactly, and wouldn't that have been a good storyline? So it was sad that Dr Quinn medicine woman was

Kristin Nilsen 42:31

the first. That is kind of shocking, because you had Dixie on emergency. Everyone loves Dixie. She was, she was the nurse. Forget Julia. Julia, who was a nurse and she was also a single mom, wasn't she? Right? The first black woman to carry a TV show. She was the star of a TV show, and she Diane Carroll admitted, before she died, she was like, it wasn't perfect. I was being written by white men, and that was super frustrating, but she wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to be the first black woman to carry a TV show, right? Okay, so there's a great book called hot pants in Hollywood, sex secrets and sitcoms by Susan silver. Susan was one of those legendary writers for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and in her book, Susan talks about her life in this world of TV men, and ultimately her role in giving authentic life to these now iconic female characters, and it was our extreme pleasure to talk with Susan silver, the Susan silver, she is feminist TV royalty, even though I know that would totally make her roll her eyes. But still, Susan

Michelle Newman 43:33

has had such an interesting life, and she's so inspirational. Just all the doors she, you know, busted down, and the lessons she learned. Also, another thing about this book, it's a very kiss and tell book. There's a lot of names dropped, which, as a fan girl, I loved reading. Actually, I listened to the book, which, you know, if you are someone who enjoys audibles, I highly recommend it. Susan reads it, and it's like she's telling you this over coffee. It's like she's telling you her life story over coffee. It's very conversational and fun. Please enjoy this fun and lively conversation with the legendary, trailblazing and very unfiltered Susan silver,

Kristin Nilsen 44:25

I would like to formally welcome you to the pop culture Preservation Society. You are looking at the first generation of children to be influenced by The Mary Tyler show, right? And it is, it is because of you and your trailblazing efforts, and the efforts of the other women who were just banging down the doors of the writers rooms, the TV writers rooms in the 1970s that we Gen X women. We we were children at the time, we Gen X women got to grow up with female characters who were funny and nuanced and multi dimensional and authentic. Yes. Real Female TV Characters, people who became our heroes, not just people to set up the joke, right? So we're very happy to have you here today.

Speaker 1 45:09

Thank you. I'm happy to be had I've been in the house for two years now with the pandemic, and I'm really bored, way to get out. Oh my god. And I don't I have a garden which I go out to, but now they're doing drilling in the back of a townhouse, so I can't even sit in my garden. So I'm quite insane by now. Well,

Kristin Nilsen 45:29

we're happy to be your entertainment for the day. So Mary Tyler Moore was really the first attempt to portray a woman who was not a wife or a mother, no something different, that girl, that girl, credit

Speaker 1 45:48

tomorrow, because, and I'll tell you my story about that. I had a writing partner, Iris Rainer Dart, who wrote beaches, who's still my dear friend, and we were trained together under Gary Marshall, who was our mentor, and we had an appointment with the bat girl group. And of course, they were all men, and it wasn't a very good meeting, but we pitched our story about them getting Donald, and she getting engaged and married, and it was the engagement party, and they bought the script, and then Marlo said, no, she loved the script, but she didn't want to get married. She didn't want to make girls think that you had to get married, so they never did. But she really paved the way in a lot of ways.

Kristin Nilsen 46:30

That's a really, really good point, because I was watching that girl at three years old. Oh my god. I mean, you can't tell me that that's not seeping into my skin, right? My parents turned on the TV for me.

Unknown Speaker 46:45

Was the babysitter? Well, we

Michelle Newman 46:48

did have a great podcast episode all about free to be you and me, where we actually did kind of extol Marlowe's just great trailblazing, you know, efforts in that as well, and also just teaching us so much as children, even just through that album, she,

Speaker 1 47:05

she had her own production company too, because we're down everything. So I mean, she, she really was a trailblazer. So I give her the credit, even though Mary was the first time that they hired women well,

Kristin Nilsen 47:15

and that is, that is really what I would like to know about. So we'll say Mary Tyler was like, one of the first times that a woman was portrayed, not just as a wife or a mother, and it was also one of the first shows to purposefully pursue women, to write the show. And you are one of those people that they pursued. Can you tell us about the campaign that that that they had to recruit women's voices, and how did you get involved with the show? Um,

Speaker 1 47:41

I was, I was the casting director of Rowan and Martin's laugh, and which is before your time, but you know, your baby and things like that. And I wanted to write, and they said, You can't write because the guys are all in an apartment in their underwear, and they want to fart and they can't fart if you're there. And I said, no, they can fart if I'm there, but they didn't want to so I was very upset. And I had gone out with some guy, and I run into him, and I was dating somebody else, and he said, oh, you should meet my new girlfriend. She wants to write, and she's being managed by Gary Marshall, the producer of Happy Days and odd couple and all those other things. And he has his own little company that he had set up for his father. He was great with nepotism. With Penny was his sister, his other sister, his father. And he manages writers and so Iris Rainer guard, who wrote beaches and I, she was under five feet tall, and my husband said he never knew I had a partner, because he never looked writing by myself and talking to myself anyway. Um, she and I are still great friends. So we went on our we got a love American style that we sold, and then we got this Bat Girl, which we wrote but didn't sell. And then she took a break to have a baby. And I saw this show called Mary Tyler Moore, and I said, Gary, I can do this show. She's from Minneapolis. I'm from Milwaukee. She, you know, wants to be a career girl. I worked at a small television station in Los Angeles, is one of my jobs. So he said, Okay, I'll get you an appointment. And only because he referred me Did they take me, so I'll back you up. And when I went in there, Trevor Silverman was there. She was the first woman, and she did a lot of the show. She was a friend of Jim and Allen's, and I was the second woman. And for men on they hired 25 women. They really made an effort, and they changed. And that's why the show was so good, because it was the first time, just little things. And I talk about it in my book, yes, where I said at one point they said, and then Mary goes and gets cleaned up. And I said, No, we don't go and get cleaned up. We take a bath or a shower. It's different. They said, Oh, okay, yeah, little things like that that made it more real and more natural. And all the shows I did were for my own life. My first one was how she comes in one day, and twinks is there. We love that. Who was the receptionist, who was your friend in camp? You know, you always get some person that knew you from 100 years ago and thinks you're their best friend, and then you have to stand up to their wedding and wear an ugly dress. Every woman knows that story. They thought I was a junior. Where would you get this idea? Yeah, and I also took that my husband and I were looking for a house, and the real estate guy's name was Arnold fat, and he gave me his card. I said, You can't kill his name with a stick. If you take out the E, it's still fit. Got the D, it's still fit, it's fit. So that was perfect. So I just picked stuff from my own life. And then another show was when Valerie lost her job. Rhoda lost her job. This one, it was a job opening at the station, and Mary didn't want her to have it for like one minute, she said. And Ed said, wow, you're just as lousy as all the rest of us, even though you love your friends and you want to be with them, sometimes you want your own little special nest, and you don't know how it's going to work out. And and of course, Mary immediately said, No, she'd offer the job. And then she said, I don't want and I have a better job? Yeah. But anyway, so I did all the things from my own life and all the writers afterward, the 25 women, I think, changed TV

Michelle Newman 51:11

for us. It was the friendship between Rhoda and Mary that was written so real that we knew that men really couldn't

Speaker 2 51:19

be writing. Why should you pay no matter what it is, because I want to,

Speaker 3 51:25

and because I lied when I said it was filled what? Rhoda? I don't know why I did it. I guess maybe I thought I would have to be responsible for you, or that, you know, maybe it wouldn't be good for our friendship to be working that closely together all the time. You know, we get on each other's nerves, maybe. But anyway, I'm sorry I did it, and it's yours if you still want it. What's mine if I still want

Speaker 1 51:53

the job? Yeah, it was, it was a unique experience, and it was an incredible experience. And also, I didn't know that you could make anything up. That's how ill informed I wasn't I thought I had to only tell the truth. So I had to tell stories from my own life. And if I said I said this before, if I had a meeting on a Wednesday and nothing had happened to me on Tuesday, I would like panic. I'd go through the phone book airport. What I, you know, I thought it had to be my own life. So I only pitched ones from my own life. Partridge Family. I did the hot pants story for Shirley Jones, because I wore hot pants. Well, I did,

Kristin Nilsen 52:31

can you describe that episode for us again? Shirley, Shirley is, is she going to school? Is that right? Well, Shirley

Speaker 1 52:36

Jones, well, I did two different ones. Shirley Jones meets a young guy who has a crush on her, and his parents come to challenge her, and she's wearing hot pants because they decide to do that for the band, because I wore hot pants. And TV Guide wrote an article, which I have up there, said, You know, they don't give you $3,500 that's what we used to get, because you have good legs, and that's from then on, I became the person in hot pants. I actually wore hot pants. I am so sorry, feminist, I don't know why it

Michelle Newman 53:09

works. What can I say if you have good legs, there's no shame in flaunting them. Yeah. So anyway,

Speaker 1 53:14

so that was the beginning, and I also one of the mod I wrote. The first mod was the daughter, Carolyn, was going to therapy and everything on me. Yes, that's what I said to my mother, I'm going to therapy. She's gonna blame me everything. And my mother was kind of mod like I was terrified of her. And I said, Of course, I am gonna blame her everything on you. And so all most of those shows, oh, and then my other Mary, I did, where she's interviewing the guy, and the tape recorder breaks and they go out, oh,

Michelle Newman 53:48

sand,

Kristin Nilsen 53:50

is that who that is? What happened

Speaker 1 53:51

was, I saw a review. There was a there was a guy in Chicago who said Mary's under sex. So I went in the next time, and I said, guys, they said, Mary's under sex. Let's get her some sex here. That was that one. And then another one. I had a crush on a teacher. And this was the Michael Tolan one, where she goes to take class and she gets a b minus. And what do I have to do to get a B you know, she starts dating him. So all the stories were from my own life.

Michelle Newman 54:20

I just how exciting was it when you would write a line, let's just say, for example, for twinks. So when you're writing and you create this character, I mean, you, you, you're writing for twinks, and then pat Finley walks in and delivers them, and not just delivers them, but just, I mean, she just slays that character and the lines, but you sometimes forget that. Wait, somebody put those words in her mouth. Everybody

Speaker 1 54:46

they think the actors are making them up on us. But how thrilling

Michelle Newman 54:49

was that for you to go to the table read and just see those words come to life so brilliantly? Yeah.

Speaker 1 54:55

The other thing is, back in the day, this was the best place to work, no other place invited. You to the table read. You know you were they take your script, they'd rewrite it and change it and everything. I mean, these guys, I was involved in every step along the way, plus the tapings. And it was wonderful. And, yeah, Pat was was very funny. She was good.

Speaker 4 55:13

Yeah, she was from the travel agency. Now they have this trip to Hawaii that looks Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know you had company. Oh, no, I'm not company. I'm twinks, twinks, McFarland, twinks. We know each other from arm luck. Arm luck.

Speaker 1 55:36

You know, camp on luck. I say I'm between 50 and death. I don't really

Michelle Newman 55:40

lie. I love that line, but I love that line.

Speaker 1 55:43

And I did this on my book tour. I had one bad experience, unfortunately, with a woman. Believe it or not, they said, This is a feminist woman, and she's dying to interview. And I said, Great. And she said something about how old you are. And I said, I say I'm between 50 and death. And she got so upset, that's anti feminism. I said, Excuse me, I was a feminist before you were born, number one and number two, it's all about choice. I love that. How you said that? Surger, if we want to. Yes, we do. We can be white haired or blonde. I've been blonde for many years. I'm now white haired because I'm in the house for two years, and it saves me a lot of money. And, you know, I still want to have a date and get married again, so I'm 1850 in death. But anyway, yeah, the thing is that feminism, at the time, Iris and I actually went to a meeting, and they were literally talking about burning their bras. And I said I was the last person in grade school to get a bra. I was flat chested, only one wearing an undershirt. And I'm not giving up this. Pay my dues in work. I will break the ceiling in any way. But I am not getting rid of,

Kristin Nilsen 56:55

got rid of my bra during the pandemic. I'm having a lot of trouble going back. Yeah, I go out now and I, and it's very common to see,

Unknown Speaker 57:05

and I don't have a run, but I'm

Michelle Newman 57:09

glad you know that I'm in my pajama pants right now. Can I just, can I just share one?

There's the cold open. Okay? I just because I just, I get so thrilled now, you know, I knowing we were going to be talking with you and going back and re watching, I mean, and I'm not just pandering to, I promise, Susan, but like some of your, your episodes of Mary Tyler Moore, because we've all watched all of the Mary Tyler Moore episodes probably multiple times. I was so thrilled to learn which ones you wrote and to see your name come up written by Susan silver. I'm like, I know her. I don't know you yet, but I was sort of like, I know her anyway. I just wanted to just tell you that those are some of my before I even knew you wrote them. Those are some of my favorite episodes. And can I tell you? I just want to I after, you know, just in the past week, I've been going back and re watching some of them again, and I just want to share this line that has always cracked me up from the square shaped room, which is your the episode you wrote in which Ed Asner won an Emmy. We love a good Phyllis Zinger here, because Phyllis is awesome. So Mary is talking to Phyllis, and she's saying, you know, going to ask Rhoda to to step in and to decorate. And Phyllis is like, well, she can't do that. She's, you know, not a naturia decorator. And Mary says this, and this is coming straight from Susan Silver's mind. You guys, haven't you seen the Christmas Windows she's done at hempels? Phyllis says, Then Rhoda is your girl if Mr. Grant wants to live in a manger. Oh, Max me up. And I just wanted to let you know that that you've given us so many laughs

Speaker 1 58:51

That show is what, first of all, why Ed won his Emmy, which I loved it so much. He was the best when he walks in and he sees this room and it's all white and modern, and he says, I love it. I love it. And she says, Yes, look at the bedroom. He leaves, and he turns to Mary says, I hate it. Oh, it's it's

Michelle Newman 59:15

so awesome. He was awesome. And he almost does it in the same breath, still in the same frozen smile. I

Carolyn Cochrane 59:23

love it. I hate it. And when he points to the to the print, and he's because it has that five and he said she must have gone through four other ones before she

Kristin Nilsen 59:33

decided on that was a good one. Yeah, and we're still talking about it. Oh, I know when you're talking about that episode in your book, I know I can see it in my head. I'm playing it in my head. You guys are super fans.

Unknown Speaker 59:46

You're super married. Wait, it's kind of universal.

Kristin Nilsen 59:48

I don't think I'm the only one who's able to do that, and that is a testament to the quality of the TV. Well, the

Speaker 1 59:54

biggest laugh I ever got out of all my shows. See, if you know what it is, what do you think I. Oh, I'm guessing the

Michelle Newman 1:00:01

bride's main dress. Well, that was

Unknown Speaker 1:00:03

the dress.

Michelle Newman 1:00:07

Did you write that in the script? Like did you describe what you wanted that dress to look like?

Speaker 1 1:00:11

The thing is, the sheep it would look like. Brilliant job. The only thing uglier than this dress is this? No, the biggest laugh was in the show where Rhoda is hanging around Mary's apartment all the time because she doesn't have a job and she has her hair dry around. Oh, I love that. And Phyllis, I'm

Kristin Nilsen 1:00:33

trying not to make too much noise, those hair dryers used to wear them Yes, yes. And Phyllis just takes the hose out of Rhoda hair and talks into it, yeah? Rona.

Michelle Newman 1:00:45

So all the characters on that show were so individual and just so wildly, just different, but just characters, right? So how much fun was that to write for all the zingers, like Ted's zingers, or, you know, Murray's comebacks or the band, like, just like the Yeah, Phyllis and Rhoda. Like, did you just have a ball? Like, once you once you got an idea who these characters were, then was it just kind of off to the races writing for their specific voices? Well,

Speaker 1 1:01:16

that's when I used to teach. I would say to be a sitcom writer is really to be a good listener, just to know that Mary sounds different than Rhoda and Ed sounds different than I mean, that's all. So what you should do is watch a show a million times, so you hear the voices and know that they're all different, and then you just plug it in. It's just being a copycat. It really is. And I mean, to me, it was very easy, and I know it's not, so that's probably why I did okay, because it was just I was able to hear the difference in the voices and know who would say that, or who would, you know, say something else. I like my favorite line ever, ever was when Ted. Ted was so much fun to write for, except he got upset because he thought people really thought he was stupid and he wasn't. But anyway, he's reading something in the news, and it says World War I. Oh, that was my favorite line I ever wrote, ever, ever, ever world i and Mary's like, dying, you know,

Michelle Newman 1:02:14

oh, and it's so perfect for Ted. I also just always love between him and Murray, like, how Murray just goats, goats, him all the time. So

Speaker 1 1:02:24

also, they were such great people. But you see, the genius of that show was the creation of those characters. I felt it was Mary in the center, and it was a spoke with a wheel, and they were all around. They don't necessarily see that way, but I did. But each character was so brilliantly conceived and written that you could go on forever, and you knew, I mean, that's the other thing. You know what everybody's attitude is. So when something happens, you know how they're going to react and if you pay attention. And the thing is that I knew so little, you're never supposed to come in with a guest star being the focus of your show. It's always supposed to be the cast. But when I came in with twinks, they liked the idea of the story, and it was like, I that was a rule that was broken. You never really add another character to be the focus of a show on your first show, because they want to see how well you write the people in the show. One

Kristin Nilsen 1:03:16

of the one of the brilliant aspects of The Mary Tyler Moore Show is that they handed us characters that maybe we weren't supposed to like, and yet we did. And one of those is Phyllis. I adore Phyllis. I adore that woman. Oh, well, and that's what I wonder, because I hear the things about Cloris Leachman, about you talked about the the spokes on the wheel. Where does Phyllis? Where does Cloris Leachman fit on that?

Speaker 1 1:03:45

She was ceiling. Even in the readings, it was so interesting. You'd go to the readings. Mary would read it exactly right, exactly the way she was going to do it. Michelle Valerie would try different things. She wasn't sure if Phyllis wasn't even in the room. She'd come late. She wouldn't stay in her place. She did your nose Reddit, she said, and the camera guys would go nuts, because they never knew what she was gonna she's a genius, though.

Michelle Newman 1:04:07

Well, that almost the way you just described them. It almost sounds like their characters, though, like that's what Mary would do. That's what Phyllis would that's

Kristin Nilsen 1:04:16

so true. And then she delivered like it sounds like her insanity is what she brought to the performance, and people loved it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:04:27

But then it's so interesting. When they did the spin off, it didn't work.

Kristin Nilsen 1:04:30

Oh, I was all there for it. Maybe I was the only one watching. I was the only one.

Speaker 1 1:04:35

I mean, it's, look, it's, I have somewhere up here that top 10 shows, you know, from the Writers Guild, and over the years it was one because those got Jim Brooks and Alan burns just designed the most perfect, wonderful experience. And also to work for them was so wonderful. They treated you so well, and you were included. And it was, it was heaven. And then I went on to other places, and it was not heaven.

Kristin Nilsen 1:04:59

You mentioned. To mod earlier. And how involved were you in the creation of her character? Because you were involved in the very first episode. Were they? Did they hand you a character and say, mod is like this? Can you write for this? Or did you say, I want mod to be like this?

Speaker 1 1:05:14

No, what happened was, and this is really was a unique experience, but Norman Lear was the other genius. There were three great geniuses at the time, the empty young guys, Gary, who he always said he wanted to do recess in the day, and Norman, who did the serious political and credible stuff. And he's 100 years old this year, and so amazing. So Maude was a spin off of all in the family. Maude was the cousin, and she came on for one episode there, so they already knew who she was, and then he got a vibe for the show to be mod, but he was on vacation, so they asked me to come in and write the first one. Rod Parker was the producer, and I wrote it. I came in with my story of my mother and me and everything. I wrote it, and they did, I would say a pretty good like maybe half rewriting. Now it's very upset, but Norman came back, and he knew that character. It was his wife. He knew what he wanted it to be, and nobody else had seen it or done it. So I said, You know what? I understand. And then he was so kind. He kept my name on it, which he didn't need to. I mean, it was my story, and it was my premise and everything, but he didn't really need to, but anywhere else, if they rewrote me, I just never went back. But that was unique in that show, because he knew that character so well, and I didn't go to the table because I was afraid of the Arthur. Oh

Kristin Nilsen 1:06:36

yeah, she literally afraid of her. Well, is that because of who she was, or because she was, like your mom,

Unknown Speaker 1:06:42

both, I think, who wrote this shitty script,

Kristin Nilsen 1:06:49

like it sounds like these. These were really incredible men, and they were enlightened men to work for. That's not what I expect to hear about these stories anyway.

Speaker 1 1:06:57

But these guys were so great. And then you go to other places and you expect it to be the same way, and it wasn't. And some of the guys were really nasty. And there's a producer who Iris and I called feet, I won't say who he was. We came into the meeting, and he put his feet up on the desk, right in our faces. And another guy who I did talk about, I think he's dead now, but anyway, we went into the office, and he had an entire wall of breast pictures. Now, you the secretaries? We said, No, we're the writers. And what are those?

Carolyn Cochrane 1:07:29

Well, can I just say then thank you for sticking with it. Because a lot of, I mean, there are probably a lot of women that would have said, Fuck this. You know, I'm not gonna do this anymore. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have to take

Speaker 1 1:07:42

the truth my book, aside from the show biz and the boomer stuff and everything, is about three things. It's about reinvention, which you have to do many years. And as we get older, you know that you guys did it, resilience, which I never knew I had until I wrote the book. And relationships, resilience, I was so surprised that I went through these things and but if I had started out on a show that was mean to me, I probably would have given up. People Magazine did an article about the women writers, and they had different names for them, and mine said pushy, pushy, pushy. And I cried for two days, and my husband said, you get a t shirt and you write pushy, pushy, pushy on it. You wear it to all your meetings. And I did, and he was right, but I cried for two days so I wouldn't have had the resilience had I started out in the show that was mean to me, right? Wow.

Kristin Nilsen 1:08:32

And that's a, that's a Kismet of sorts, because that show clearly needed to be. It needed to be, we needed to have it 50 years later, I think, for

Carolyn Cochrane 1:08:40

our generation, particularly this Gen X generation who grew up watching that part of Saturday night TV, and as women or girls men, and we've heard this from our listeners, Mary was like the role model. I mean, when we looked for our first apartments, we had Mary's apartment in our mind, we were looking for the wall that we were going to hang our initial on. Yes, we wanted to be married. So in a way, you directly impacted how we walked through life. And, you know, the the women that we held up as role models and who we wanted to be when we were going to be, you know, out of college, we didn't have to get married, we could get a job. And I was the only one of my

Speaker 1 1:09:24

girls growing up. There were four Susans and a Judy. Everybody was named Susan, and they all went to Wisconsin to get their Mrs. And I was the only one who went somewhere else to get a career. So yeah, so I now that I am this incredibly giving human you can all ask to find a guy for me. I have got to write again within the next year, or to be too late and not. Mom called the search for Mr. Adequate. I haven't found him yet, and I've been divorced from another generation or another century. So it's. Time.

Michelle Newman 1:10:00

Well, Susan, you got to get out of your house, though, to make that happen. No, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:10:06

Why can't someone move next door? Two single guys did move next door, but they had girlfriends, and I just want that next door to be the option. I just want them to knock on the door.

Kristin Nilsen 1:10:20

This was an amazing conversation. I'm so happy to meet you.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:23

Thank you. I am

Michelle Newman 1:10:24

too. I just and I feel like the next time I see written by Susan silver, and I say, I know her, she's my Can I call you my friend? I feel like I'm friendly with you.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:34

You can call me your best friend. Oh

Carolyn Cochrane 1:10:37

gosh, okay, Listen, guys, we're gonna have to, we'll have

Speaker 1 1:10:41

Yes, what I want, yeah, okay, 65 to 75 tall, really good looking. I'm sorry, I'm so I'm so superficial, really, really, really smart. My husband was, like, so smart. You have to be really smart and fun. And likes to travel and not working anymore because you want to have fun.

Michelle Newman 1:11:01

Okay, listeners, we've put it out there. That's right, it's out there. DM us your suggestions. Susan is right, dead gorgeous. She is so smart. She has the best energy and stories. And yeah, let's, let's set her up. Let's do it. Let's show you one thing, and then wait. Can we ask you, though, if we can come to your wedding. Oh, please. Okay, great, if we, if we make this happen. Oh, look. Oh, yeah, did you just around your office? Sure, you guys, I'm gonna tell you what we're seeing. We are seeing beautiful photos framed in her office. You're gonna make you're gonna make it after all. And then we these are pictures of Susan. Oh,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:11:43

there's Sean her crush. Yeah, wasn't that Sean Gallatin crush? Yeah, I think it

Michelle Newman 1:11:48

was. You guys just books and pictures and articles framed. Oh my gosh, we have such a pleasure to know you now, and I hope to

Speaker 1 1:11:57

Minneapolis, but I'm only going, I'm going to California in September to a conference, and then I'm going to Florida to try it out. Hey, I meet

Michelle Newman 1:12:06

someone there, Susan, that's why I'm going mainly

Carolyn Cochrane 1:12:11

love you. Well, we will find we guarantee you, a year from now, we will be meeting your significant other,

Speaker 1 1:12:19

from your lips to God, because I really need it sex.

Kristin Nilsen 1:12:25

She needs to find a man now. Yes,

Speaker 1 1:12:27

okay, I love you guys. Okay, we love you. Do this just to hang out sometimes. Oh, my God.

Kristin Nilsen 1:12:36

Oh, my goodness, that was fun. Many, many, thanks to the lovely Susan silver. She's not kidding about that boyfriend, by the way, if your dad is single and meets Susan's requirements, please send us a DM right away. I mean, think about it, you could be just one degree away from Mary Richards. That's a big deal. So thanks to Susan, not just for her time today, but also for the legend she helped create, who in turn expanded the dreams of an entire generation of little girls. We were those little girls who had a future that didn't look like, you know, the people from the 50s because of her and the army of women who wrote for Mary Tyler Moore, we always knew that we would make it on our own. Thanks for listening today.

Carolyn Cochrane 1:13:12

Yes, and please join us next week for another fun filled nostalgic trip down memory lane. And we'd love for you also to get to read Susan's book, so I'm including in the show notes a link to her book, as well as in this week's Weekly Reader. If you don't already subscribe to our newsletter, you can visit our website or check out our link in bio on Instagram.

Michelle Newman 1:13:37

Yeah, thanks everyone for listening, and thank you all for sharing our podcast with others. We see your DMS, we read your emails, and a lot of you tell us that you're sharing our podcast with all the people you know, and we appreciate that so much. Honestly, it helps and for rating and for leaving a nice review on Apple podcast, we read all of those as well. And if you don't, you should go to Apple podcasts and read all the nice reviews. They're really They're really sweet. They make a nice little they're a nice boost. It tells us those conversations that we have means something to you guys, and that, in turn, means a lot to us and we also we appreciate so much all of our patrons over on Patreon for really keep keeping this podcast trucking. Did I say that? Right, right? I think I did, and this week, we are giving a special shout out to patrons, Jeremy, Amy, Francis Taylor and Rachel. Thank you all so much for your support.

Kristin Nilsen 1:14:36

In the meantime, let's raise our glasses for a toast, courtesy of the cast of threes, company, two good times, two Happy

Michelle Newman 1:14:43

Days,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:14:44

Two Little House on the Prairie. Cheers, the

Unknown Speaker 1:14:47

information,

Kristin Nilsen 1:14:48

opinions and comments expressed on the pop culture Preservation Society podcast belong solely to Carolyn the crushologist and hello Newman, and are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates. And though we truly believe we're. Always, right? There is always a first time the PCPs is written, produced and recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional wjm studios and our beloved Mary Richards, Nana Nanu. Keep on truckin and May the Force Be With You. You.