RIP Valerie Harper
Valerie Harper has died at the age of 80.
Harper was absolutely wonderful on the long-term hit “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” as wisecracking sidekick Rhoda. Neither Jewish, nor fat, nor a New Yorker, she played a character who was supposed to be all three, and played her marvelously with pitch-perfect accent and timing.
RIP.
I mainly remember Harper as a celebrity who spoke openly of herself as an est graduate:
At the 1975 Emmy Awards ceremony, Valerie Harper gave a “personal thanks to someone who’s profoundly influenced my life, Werner Erhard.” In an interview when asked if she still looked back on est as a positive experience, she responded, “Oh, yes. Daily!” and another time, “est has taken the effort, sweat and strain out of what I do. I can handle the daily upsets better. I used to get some ego thing out of saying I wasn’t a star, just an actress. Forget it. I’m a star. I wanted it, I worked for it, I got it. Werner helped me take the lie out of what I was doing.”
http://www.erhardseminarstraining.com/influence/
If you took est in the seventies, you might say things like that.
RIP.
She was very convincing in the role, as you say, unlike LaVerne, of Laverne and Shirley, who was unmistakably New York and not Milwaukee.
she was so convincing that nobody would have believed she was a shiksa and became type casted as as Jew . similar to Nancy Walker and Jack Warden and Ruth Gordon and David Birney and soon Rachel Brosnahan
Not sure what to make of it. She received a cancer diagnosis in 2009 which gave her a life expectancy of < 2 years and she lasted 10. She was still taking on new projects in 2017.
Seems a number of Mary Tyler Moore's confederates have had extraordinary longevity. Morey Amsterdam lived to be 87, Rose Marie lived to be 94, Gavin MacLeod is 88, Edward Asner is 89, Dick van Dyke and Chloris Leachman are 93, and Carl Reiner and Betty White are 97. All the living still lucid, AFAIK.
“Betty White (is) 97. All the living still lucid, AFAIK.”
https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2019/08/IMG_1920.jpg?w=515&ssl=1
Art Deco: I still laugh or at least smile when I see Dick van Dyke trip over that ottoman.
Wow Avi, just wow!
I got news for you – neither Valeria Harper nor any other non-Jewish woman is a “shiksa.”
Or maybe you didn’t realize that that term is quite derogatory?
Or maybe you didn’t realize that that term is quite derogatory?
charles: Dunno. My stepfather used to say shiksa — and he was an evil man — but I never got the sense the term went beyond mildly unpleasant.
How is shiksa not a term for a non-Jewish woman? What is a shiksa, if not?
MISS Harper (caps are to stress the lapse of the use of the title of respect, the lapse of the use of which is deplorable) — Miss Harper, as Rhoda, had me fooled for years. I assumed she really was from Brooklyn or the Bronx and probably Jewish. (Never thought she was fat. Thought Rhoda was just one one of those people obsessed with the notion that she was overweight.)
She was, indeed, wonderful as Rhoda. I’m sad to learn she’s gone.
Thank you for posting, Neo.
.
Aesop, great cartoon! Thanks! :>)
Ah well. The Edit function never visits Near Chicago anymore. Probably afraid of getting cooties, or worse. :>((
Jewish babies come from Jewish mothers, so when Jewish boys marry non-Jewish girls (here disparaged as shiksa) they and their offspring are correctly perceived to be more likely to depart from the faith of their fathers and mothers.
Where’s the problem with that? Hence disparaging non-Jewish girls or girlfriends when speaking among Jewish boys ought reasonably to be expected. No big whoop, is it? I think it isn’t, and would think as well that Jewish girls intent on having Jewish babies with Jewish boys wouldn’t either. Women generally, after all, compete with one another for men, so this can be seen as merely another form of that.
sdferr: So my mother was a shiksa…
In about ‘91 or ‘92, when I was still working in video production, one I had a single task, to get a quick shot, several angles of a client’s billboard in West Hollywood. I got the early on a summer Saturday morning, spent 30 min or so getting various angles, figured I was done. Was about 11 am by now, and a local cop pulled up and told me I should probably get out of there soon as the Hollywood Gay Pride Parade was heading this way ( and I thought I was gonna get hassled for guerrilla filming) so… I noticed I had passed Pinks on the way, and as it was 11 am or so, nearly lunchtime, thought I’d get something to eat. As I walk towards the counter, I see “Rhoda” coming towards me, carrying tray of chili dogs and drinks. So I sez to her I sez “Hi, I like your work!” And she simply says, with a big smile “Thank you very much young man!” … that was my brush with an 80’s sitcom star.
She’d probably be a lot more successful if she hadn’t gotten greedy and demanded too big of a salary boost on Valerie.
Not only did they replace her, they tossed out her CHARACTER (the title char!!), and refocused the show…