How Mary Tyler Moore Changed America With Feminism, TV, and Comedy

The Mary Tyler Moore Show was much more than a TV show. On screen and off, it changed how American women saw themselves, and how men saw them.

By Tim Teeman

When Mary Richards threw that hat up in the air at the end of the credits of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, it was both a vision of an independent person’s joy and a declaration of specifically female independence and autonomy.

That image of the hat-throwing was frozen many times on social media Wednesday afternoon, after the news of Mary Tyler Moore’s death at age 80, in Greenwich, Connecticut, was announced by her agent.

The cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest after she contracted pneumonia, her family said. She died, a representative said, “in the company of friends and her loving husband of over 33 years, Dr. S. Robert Levine.”

Mary Richards’s proud striding through the streets of Minneapolis, and throwing of that hat in the opening credits, was an inspirational gauntlet.

From that moment in 1970 we can trace a lineage that endures today to successful female comics and show-runners like Tina Fey (whose 30 Rock character of Liz Lemon, Fey said, was derived from Mary Richards), Chelsea Handler, and Amy Schumer, and TV shows with a female focus (including Sex and the City, Ally McBeal, and Girls). At the root of them all lie the seeds laid by Mary Tyler Moore. 

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Source: The Daily Beast