Is there any way to thank Valerie Harper for Rhoda Morgenstern?

Mary and Rhoda

by Ken

Especially for someone with an AOL e-mail address, the tabloid gossip is hard to escape, and often -- well, usually -- I find myself wondering why anyone on earth would care whether so-and-so is sleeping with such-and-such, or whether the marriage of Yokum and Hokum is more than just on the rocks this time.

And then comes this awful news about Valerie Harper's brain cancer.

Somewhere I saw Valerie's signature character, Rhoda Morgenstern, Mary Richards's best friend on The Mary Tyler Moore Show who was then spun off into her own show, Rhoda, as "iconic." For once the word seems entirely appropriate. Over the few seasons that Mary and Rhoda were neighbors, before Rhoda's dramatic move back to New York City, their friendship remains one of the supreme achievements of the television medium.

Of course at first meeting they were bitter enemies, with Mary unknowingly standing in the path of Rhoda's planned move from the attic apartment down to the lovely apartment that, thanks to the meddling Phyllis, became Mary's. Later in the episode Rhoda was already admitting that Mary wasn't easy to dislike. By the second episode they were best friends.

And in the course of that friendship, unimaginable quantities of wisdom were shared about the nature of friendship and the way it makes life as we know it possible. Nowhere was this better illustrated than in the sublime episode where the friends have their great falling out, and the world seems on the brink of falling apart -- at least the world of poor Georgette, who tries to explain with resort to a kooky and wonderful analogy with the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show team understood things about the human condition that will never be known to the people who produce cretinous crap like Girls and Enlightened if they live to be 100, or even 125.

And for a good part of the run of Rhoda it was pretty damned fine too. It had the obvious anchor of yet another iconic character created by the Mary Tyler Moore Show people, Nancy Walker's Ida Morgenstern, the undisputed queen of all TV mothers. And Rhoda found herself entwined in another iconic TV relationship. Not, unfortunately, with the man she wound up marrying; we viewers got to see how that worked out, or didn't. No, it was her relationship with her sister Brenda, the treasurable portrayal that introduced most of us to Julie Kavner, now a TV legend in her own right.

Brenda, Rhoda, and Ida

One interesting feature of this devastating news about Valerie's illness is the way she chose to go public. Obviously she had to consider what her life would be like once the news broke, and she chose to get out in front of the story, breaking it herself, but breaking it in a way that, she has said, would focus attention on the cancer that's killing her.

And this isn't just talk. It's clear from the press coverage that she has authorized her doctors to talk about her condition. So we're not getting the usual pointless jabbering from doctors who have never met her but are nonetheless prepared to share what they know about what they think her condition is.

It's a good bet that, beyond calling attention to this apparently rare brain cancer, Valerie's brave decision is going to save lives simply by encouraging people who otherwise wouldn't to seek treatment. I'm sure everyone's tired of hearing it, but I'm always obliged to trot out the contrary examples of Betth Ford, who did worlds of good with her openness about both her substance abuse and her cancer, vs. that pile of human garbage Ronald Reagan, who had the chance to bring people with hearing loss out of hiding by being open about his own hearing problems but instead chose to feed his vanity by living in denial and perpetuating the ethos that hearing loss is something to be ashamed of.

In the present context it seems trivial to point out as well that he not only routinely dyed his hair but routinely lied about it, reinforcing the notion that the aging process too is something to be ashamed about. But hey, the man was filth. Is it any wonder that he's universally reviled?

On this count too, thanks, Valerie. I hope the time to come is less grim than the likely prognosis, which we know about because you were brave enough to share it.

#