Mary Tyler Moore Dead At 80

TV icon Mary Tyler Moore has passed away at the age of 80.

From BroadwayWorld:

Moore is best known for her long-running leading role in The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1970 to 1977, in which she starred as 'Mary Richards', a 30-something single woman who worked as a local news producer in Minneapolis. The actress is also well known for for her earlier role as 'Laura Petrie' on The Dick Van Dyke Show in the early '60s. Her more recent TV appearances include roles on That '70s Show, Lipstick Jungle and Hot in Cleveland.

Among Moore's most notable film work is 1967's Thoroughly Modern Millie, as well as 1980's Ordinary People, in which she played a role that was very different from the television characters she had portrayed, and for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Moore also graced the Broadway stage in shows such as Whose Life Is It Anyway in 1980 with James Naughton and Sweet Sue, which opened in 1987. She was also the star of a new musical version of Breakfast at Tiffany's in 1966, but the show, titled Holly Golightly, was a notorious flop that closed in previews before opening on Broadway. In reviews of performances in Philadelphia and Boston, critics "murdered" the play; Moore claimed to be singing with bronchial pneumonia during those runs. During the 1980s, Moore and her Production Company produced five plays: Noises Off, The Octette Bridge Club, Joe Egg, Benefactors, and Safe Sex.

A three-time Golden Globe winner and seven-time Emmy Award winner, Moore also received a special Tony Award for her performance in Whose Life Is It Anyway? She was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1986 and received the 2011 Screen Actors Guild's lifetime achievement award.

Moore had been active in charity work as a co-founder of Broadway Barks, an annual pet adopt-a-thon held in New York City. Moore, along with friend and fellow stage vet Bernadette Peters, works to make New York City a no-kill city and to promote adopting animals from shelters.

Mary Tyler Moore was born in Brooklyn Heights in Brooklyn, New York, to George Tyler Moore, a clerk, and his wife Marjorie. Moore, the eldest of three siblings, moved to Los Angeles with her family when she was 8 years old. In 1955, at age 18, she married Richard Carleton Meeker. Her only child, Richard, Jr. ("Richie") was born on July 3, 1956; he passed away in an accident in 1980. After divorcing Meeker in 1961, Moore married Grant Tinker, whose new TV Production Company MTM Enterprises created and produced The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Moore divorced Tinker in 1981 and married Dr. Robert Levine two years later.

Stylish, classy and very talented.  From perky 1960s housewife, to sassy single 1970s female on her own, to her devastating, Oscar-nominated performance in Ordinary People, one of my all-time favorite films.

I loved that she would sing and dance at times, but her comic timing (my favorite, favorite scene from The Mary Tyler Moore show below) was perfection.

Watch below just a tiny scratch of the surface of the talent that was Mary Tyler Moore.