Valerie Harper took my hands in hers as she looked into my eyes and said, "Oh, my Gawd! You are the real Rhoda!"
This ranks as one of my all-time favorite moments. We were in a small Manhattan apartment in the fall of 1999. The crew and cast were scrunched in, shooting what turned out to be a dreadful movie, Mary and Rhoda.No matter. It was still a reunion of characters from The Mary Tyler Moore Showand its spinoff,Rhoda,two shows that helped form generations of feminists. I know. I am one.
Mary Tyler Moore, she of the spunk which Mr. Grant hated, a fabulous wardrobe and a surprisingly strong backbone hidden beneath a chirpy Midwestern veneer, had her best friend, Rhoda Morgenstern. Rhoda was a fast-talking, straight-shooting, smartaleck from the Bronx, with the prototypical Jewish mother.
I identified with all of that. Plus, Rhoda's mom, played by the incomparable Nancy Walker, was named Ida, the same as my grandmother. My mother even had a copy of Gainsborough's "The Blue Boy" hanging in our living room, just like the Morgensterns.
I told this to Valerie (forgive the informality here, but we are talking about someone who instantly felt like a long-lost BFF), and that's when she took my hands in hers, and we both laughed. From when I first watched Rhoda -- in elementary school, next to the el in the Bronx, and into college, still in New York City, just downtown -- it hadn't occurred to me that this is what a role model looks like.
When I was a kid, I didn't see myself on TV. Trust me; I didn't look like the blondes on The Brady Bunch or the adorable freckle-faced gingers on other shows. No one came close until Rhoda or perhaps her sister, Brenda (Julie Kavner). But there she was, navigating single life in Minneapolis on The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1970-74 and then running the gamut from single to engaged to married to estranged to divorced and ultimately single all over again from 1974-78 on Rhoda.
Rhoda came not just from my borough but from a block away. She was 17 years older, and her family was more affluent; they had made it to the fancy street of the Grand Concourse. Rhoda was fashionable, funny, a terrific older sister, and a great friend. Plus, she took no guff from anyone – except her mother. Everyone took crap from Ida. There was a choice?
I loved so much about Rhoda, especially that she took the subway to her wedding, which her mother had hijacked, turning it from an intimate affair into a building-wide hullabaloo. My mother tried that, too. She canceled a bridal shower a friend was throwing and rescheduled one at a Bronx diner -- your choice of chicken salad, tuna or shrimp salad. Eventually, I outfoxed my mom regarding the ceremony, but it wasn't easy. (The hour-long wedding episode, first telecast in 1974, was an outsize pop-culture event at the time, and it remains one of the most-watched episodes of series television in the history of the medium.)
I especially loved listening to Rhoda. She spoke in my original accent before enough people yelled at me that "water" has an "R">