In this Sept. 16, 1988 file photo, Actress Valerie Harper, left, and her husband, Tony Cacciotti, hug and smile after a jury decided in her favor against Lorimar Telepictures Corp. in a dispute that ended her role in the"Valerie" television series, in Los Angeles. NEW YORK -- There was never a better laugh line in all of sitcomania and, in her signature role as Rhoda, Valerie Harper nailed it.
Rhoda was for everyone, and she would prove it in back-to-back hit sitcoms that made Harper a breakout star on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," then established her as a funny leading lady in her own series, "Rhoda," scoring guffaws and busting TV taboos as an overweight, brash, Jewish version of the girl next door.
Then in 2013, she was back in the news, and all over TV, when she revealed that just a few weeks earlier she was diagnosed with brain cancer. This rare condition, leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, occurs when cancer cells spread into the fluid-filled membrane surrounding the brain. Harper was a chorus dancer on Broadway as a teen before moving into comedy and improv when, in 1970, she auditioned for the part of a Bronx-born Jewish girl who would be a neighbour and pal of Minneapolis news gal Mary Richards on a new sitcom for CBS.
Of course, if CBS had gotten its way, Rhoda might have been a very different woman with a much different actress in place. As "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was being developed, its producers were battling a four-point decree from the network, which insisted that the nation's TV viewers would not accept series characters who were divorced, from New York, Jewish or have moustaches.
But "Rhoda" couldn't maintain those comic or popular heights. A domesticated, lucky-in-love Rhoda wasn't a funny Rhoda -- not the Rhoda who could claim "I had a bad puberty. It lasted 17 years;" not the Rhoda who before a date had been hungry but refused to eat, explaining, "I've got to lose 10 pounds by 8:30."
She found comedy when she fell in with a group of Second City players from Chicago who had taken up residence in Greenwich Village. One of these improv players was Richard Schaal, whom she wed in 1964 .
Her Canadian connection: I seem to recall an interview she did years ago in which she said she knew all the words to the 'Maple Leaf Forever'. Her mother was Canadian.
ItsLeeWilliams Valerie Harpers gone? So sad. She was so strong. ❤️Rhoda RIPValerieHarper
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