Valerie Harper on InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse

she started her career as a teen as a ballet dancer at Radio City Music Hall next up was Broadway and then it was on the comedy in TV where she landed the role that would make her famous that of Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and then the Rhoda Show since then there have been other series movies both on the big and small screen theater and her own one-woman tour-de-force stage performance as Golda Meir in Golda's balcony hello i'm ernie manouse coming up on this episode of interviews our conversation with Golden Globe and four-time Emmy Award winner TV legend Valerie Harper do you ever look at your career and wish that the milestone rolls the big parts that you played came at a different point I can't say that I have ever heard that thought Ernie but that's an interesting one I think life unfolds it so it's like the old thing life is what happens on the way to your plans yeah so I guess I like most people when you get older you say oh I wish I knew that then but you can't and you don't so what we've really got I don't even look to the future so much as right now this is the magic this is the moment not to miss the one we're in right now so I cannot say that I would have what would I have wanted to do differently no I think I learned how to act before I got my television break which came when in my late 20s I was almost 30 when I got the rotor roll so milestones mm-hmm I think so no can't think of anything at the moment yeah it's not interesting it's a wonderful question do you then make career plans are there things you look at your career and say I need to do this or as you said you take what comes and make the most of it oh well what you do is you're always a choice in the matter you know you when scripts come in I've turned down things that I thought were horrible or sexist or not appropriate but it's as an actor you are are constantly in the place of not it's not insecurity it's not knowingness not knowing what's coming I in the past years since I met my husband we're together see since 1979 now tony has been wonderful because he has created things for me to do such as there was a one-woman show about pearl s buck that I co-wrote and that was wonderful because he had you know Valerie we should have something a one-woman show for you so you have it in your back pocket if you're not doing TV or something else and as women age there's an expectation that things aren't going to be as good so I was able to move to theater because it started in Wright and I wasn't a glamour doll they have it tough they really do because that whole thing of shelf life poor women look at the plastic surgery industry the makeup and the hair color industry the only woman on primetime when I don't know should the show still on is with her natural color hair of a certain age is Tyne Daly now her hair is brown again she's a wonderful play with Cynthia Nixon so do you know anything so there is a good thing about as a young person you plan I remember working very hard in acting class in my preparation I always kind of knew that if I was prepared when the opportunity knocked I could rise to the occasion because I don't think opportunity knocks but once I think it knocks the door down we're just not prepared for it or you know we're in a place in our lives you make all kinds of choices and I must say to you you're talking about milestones and career moves and planning show business is not my life my life is my life I love acting I love doing it I love working in the theater or in film or in television and you're always looking to what's the next thing I'm going to do but I cannot tell you that I had a master plan I had oh I know this is interesting my master plan was to be a ballerina right I wasn't sure if I chose to I could look at myself as a failed ballerina about you know as a failure because I didn't but you see life took me another way but you mentioned acting class then yes and so I wonder okay you would start off to be a dancer and you danced the Radio City and all of that and then Broadway shows yes so when did you decide I need acting also as opposed to having a dance career well in my second show the first show was a little having her and it was so incredible because I've been training for the ballet and here was this loud wonderful music and joy and laughs and oh my god I said this is great this might be for me I don't know could I do this I was very afraid I had been on a track of Dance ten classes a week and you know just really committed to it so in the second show I did was called take me along with Jackie Gleason and Walter Pidgeon a wonderful classic old-time movie star and it was our wilderness set to music Bobby Moore's was in it he was the juvenile yeah and I there was an actor named Jim Chris on and I will thank him to this day he said Valerie you just want to keep dancing well I'm so thrilled to be on Broadway I was you know 18 19 this was great and he said I have a great acting teacher you should go to acting class so I did and that was a turning point that Ernie was when I began to you know think about the word and speaking and playwriting and learning about and it's so funny that now you know to have grown up in my life or grown older and now to be doing a William Gibson play Golda's balcony was written by William Gibson I just been on the tour I've completed with that production I was working on miracle worker and he saw in acting class yeah by William Gibson in the 60s so I can't tell you how thrilling that is and he is still just sharp as a tack before we leave Broadway behind yes you did a show with Lucille Ball I sure did okay yeah Jackie Gleason Lucille Ball and Andy Griffith I didn't open with it it was called Destry rides again and then the show I did with Lucy was called wild cat now when you do a show like that with a star like that at your point in your career you were at do you get to learn from them Oh is there a separation of their the star you're in the dance or the chorus oh no but you watch stays with them you see what they do you are delighted by them you feel their energy you see how exhausted they are and then they go onstage there's many lessons you learn that you don't know you're learning you know how life is just observation it's I think it's Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson or maybe Thoreau who said leave the lead the exemplary life don't go around telling people what to do lead an exemplar what a lamp so I think I had wonderful examples in these people gosh when you think back on the people that I have worked with and in those early days it was Lucy and Jackie Andy Griffith then it was Orson Bean who was later on Medicine Woman many many years later and Sidney Chaplin a wonderful singer actor who was Charlie Chaplin's son Carol Lawrence was in those shows I think of all the stars when did you make the decision to move toward television how did that work and I asked that because I think often times there's a Broadway sense that this is theatre yes and that's television but in there there was a transition I yes and that sort of has changed because people right they go back sometimes now you make some money so that you can do broadly there are some people that were from the theater and never leave it al pacino is one yeah you know who isn't gigantic film career but he's such a wonderful actor I think state the question just a little bit again at the point that you thought to move oh yeah it was I was married at the time and and he said let's go to the coast and see if we can get work there and I had been working in second city and working on viola Spolin theater games which are wonderful exercises to free you so I'd had a I wouldn't say classic in the sense of shakes burger but classing in the terms of breaking down a script acting class studying lines reading playwrights improvisation is completely trusting the fellow player and allowing something to occur in front of an audience it's a high-wire act it's supposedly to be funny but you're not going for funny but it turns out to be funny because human beings are innately funny and that's the key to second city and then later story theater so I have this wonderful background and I developed I guess a comedy sense and I always liked to laugh Ernie you know it's funny when you say a comedian or drama the those classifications I think or maybe inaccurate I think it's a person an actor with or without a sense of humor I think that might be the dividing because Meryl Streep is as dramatic as you can get and she can be hilarious yeah you know so it's about whether you have that in you to free up your sense of humor in front of people and not being afraid to fall in your face so the move to the west coast was looking for work and well yeah maybe we'll work in television or whatever and I didn't have a snob appeal about it I loved the Dick Van Dyke Show so I was in California a very short period or like maybe a year and that audition came up yeah it was really playing Rhoda was a but I had so much theater work yeah I had had 13 years on the stage summer stock think not huge Broadway as a chorus dancer as a bit player or off-broadway improvising I'd done a lot of work so I was as I told you I had something to bring to market to market rather than just you know a look or all these years later we look back at the Mary Tyler Moore Show is a classic you know that's the situation comedy when you walk in initially on something that's gonna become that big was there a sense yet the start that it was something unique no not to me it was my first show that's to show your I mean I'd done other little shows I was so thrilled to get one day on something Mayberry RFD my girlfriend Arlene golonka who had been a cow honey Darin reading for somebody come on down and read maybe you'll get it and that was a day's work I was thrilled looking at the cameras learning my way around but no I think the other actors knew it was wonderful but you don't know you're in a classic yeah you can't when does the East it's got a rise you know when do you know the point when you looked at it and thought wow we really did make something special here I think it was later it began to be well when we started winning winning Emmys was lovely but it's the staying power it's only time will tell if that piece of furniture is gonna have the patina right you can't say oh this is gonna have patina you're just gonna I mean it does anyway that's not a good analogy we were having great Cloris would see me oh this is hilarious Valerie look at this and she said this is so good and we always felt I felt as a stage actress incumbent upon me to bring more to the page to thrill the writers when they came down we try to come up with funny things to do using their lines but putting some English on the ball as it were in other words don't just do the line as written try to put some other meaning behind it same words but an interesting take on it or an interesting or doing some funny business eating grapes while I'm doing it or you know you just find behavior and things and that was fun and I knew the material was good I just did but we were you know not a big hit right away well true or false the very first scene with Mary and Rhoda cleaning the apartment to get out of my apartment in the windows it was shot and there was no reaction from the audience and you guys shot it a second time and then it got a response that's that's correct yes not just that scene the whole show it the people who weren't laughing so in those days the great thing was the network said okay we like this show let's try it again and Jim and Al and change something they changed one line that I can an example of that hole they went back and I think they rode over the weekend or about four days three days and then we filmed again on a Friday and everyone was laughing everyone loved Mary from Dick Van Dyke and I think there was a sense that here's this woman coming in and treating her terribly they put in a line that was suggested by not the line but by our script supervisor Marge Mullin she's the woman behind the scenes who keeps the script straight helps they say it's a key position on any film and certainly on a 3-carat camera show like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and she said you know what I have best liked her that gives the audience paralysis young daughter yes for those few people who might not know who was that mary says and phyllis is no one that dumb awful Rhoda and that dumb awful girl and then Beth says I like aunt Rhoda she's not your aunt see that's all he had to do was to let Phyllis this sort of pompous you know fussbudget and the kid was eight or nine and you know children and dogs so Rhoda couldn't have been all bad which was a very interesting way to give wood exposition about characters and then I was supposed to be her thorn in Mary's side but the way it worked out they started writing me and wrote Mary as the fret I pushed her I was always saying I gotta get this so moving I'm not Jewish cruelty I got I'm from New York I gotta get her moving so that was always what I used I gotta straighten her out she may have a body that I envy and she may have a great career where I have a job but I'm from the Big Apple tonight and I'm street smart you know that was kind of what it was so I think they moved it more than us being friends and then the clash was between Phyllis and Rhoda vying for Mary which was funny let me zip II ahead then four years later somebody has decided wrote is gonna have a spinoff the first year they said it to me and I thought I was being fired Freddy Zimmerman we're gonna spin you off and they went Oh God you know honey they said no that means I didn't want to go see I was gonna say you've got the comfort of a by that point strong hits show and they're gone this was the first year I don't wanna go anywhere but here yeah they're gonna push you off now and you're gonna go off there and you're gonna have to hold your own shoes right as an actor fearful at that point yes and I asked Mary and Mary said you don't want to be my sidekick all your life and I said but Mary I don't know and she said listen I said what if it bombed she said if it bombed she moved back to Minneapolis I loved here it was great and and better than that I that was very sweet of her and she meant it both wonderful statements it was Nancy Walker I said oh I don't know what if it fails is it Valerie it's a job take it it is true it's true as an actor here's an opportunity grab it hey don't start yeah Carl Reiner used to say that to young actors do everything just keep doing everything and I and I've sort of done that until a point where you're you know if you if you're headed a horrible smutty script that is not even funny I don't mind if it's priyad interest or even you know but if it's just junk you have to turn it down you don't want your kids to see it I don't there was a point in the road a show where okay Rhoda gets married then Rhoda gets divorced and a few years back they were running the reruns and I caught them on TV at that period in the show and I had forgotten how poignant and touching and nicely written your transition through the divorce was and I think people missed that when they look at the body of the show beautifully written that well to see the show was written so wonderfully and from life and from people that Jim Brooks and Allan burns knew and they're the they're the wonderful writers great great so yes it did transition and there came a point where Allen said listen we got to get you back together where we got a divorce shoot because the audience is getting so upset it's it's upsetting to see you know are they going to make it or are they not is this a comedy about going to the marriage counselor and then making it or not and we were there were two reasons that I really think occurred we were in the family and we're all in the family could do just about anything did I mean they're at a do we you know Joey had to sleep with of a Java top I mean it it was kind of silly so I think our guys when I say that I mean Jim Brooks Allen burns all the Treves Silverman this whole ed Weinberger brilliant comedy writers David Lloyd all of them were trying to write well actually that was that was on to the road wrote a show already we're trying to write mad about you do you remember that show which came a decade later they wanted to write a real urban professional marriage or not even professional I was a window dresser he ran a construction company and it would have been funny because he was Italian and she was Jewish but that was there was really a sideline there was just two people who had found each other and they wanted to write and they they got stopped so many times on things that they wanted to do so I think that was part of it also Jim said rodas comedy base was suddenly dissipated they said they he said we're suck were suddenly writing all these shows for Brenda they said that's okay he said no I said why not he said the show's name is Rhoda and she Sadie Sadie married lady now and some of her rhythm section you know the under thing the the generator of her was gone because unfortunately success to a degree now but much less marriage in the 70s was was equated for women with success right and I mean not for all women there was some smart women who do it's important to be a human being and then you can get married or from men exactly less structures less it must be this way so I think that was part of the problem that her calm her comedic base was weakened so then as soon as Joe was out of the picture in came Johnny venture that terrible lounge singer and all these bad dates Howard has her men with the studs all over himself oh my god what are they nail and nail head studs or things that you put into the walls no nailh nailhead shirt oh yeah eventually of course Rhoda ends its run which I think a lot of people don't realize it went on longer than the Mary Tyler Moore Show that because Mary ended and what seventy-seventh you guys oh yeah we wanna oh yes yes so I was 10 almost yeah I was 10 years in the character 9 years to 1979 so yes so I was really with an MTM product longer anyone Oh ed ed asner went on to do Lou Grant in another venue yeah then you do Valerie yeah little things in between you got a good line there sure I was working all the time you do Valerie mm-hmm you leave Valerie yes what I didn't realize - looking back to prepare for this discussion is that you won the lawsuit against the folks okay we remember out of my lawsuit yeah but we don't remember how it came up but yeah I won oh absolutely because it was a wrongful firing and they banked on me not saying the truth and if I was a young actress I think my career could have been destroyed but I'd been around for what years is it I started in 70 yeah 8 16 18 years does that and in the press when difficult they've all been talking to me for 8 17 8 years so it seemed very weird and I didn't have a history of drinking or drugs or any of the reasons that really so is it hard then to see all that attention impress that was going on during that time at the time you want to know something it's interesting you ask Tony the very week that that occurred and that I realized I would have to take court action I mean I didn't realize it right away we were talking and you just upset and you cannot believe it has occurred it was such a blindsided thing as a corporate kind of decision and partners who were very had a very much hidden agenda by the way all those people are friends yeah honestly talk about the buried burying the hatchet they're not in each other really come to terms with everybody and they said oh I'm sorry we shouldn't know this right that very week Joan Rivers husband committed suicide and a plane crash headed for LA from Detroit to LA a plane not a plane crash a plane went down and I said to Tony my husband I said you know you're here inside in in in you're here beside me in bed Christine is fine in the next room so you weren't on that plane crash and I'm not Joan Rivers to deal with such a terrible thing when Edgar took his life so it's an interlude ago this was a group of individuals in our industry behaving terribly and that happens yeah and I and what would it was not the end of my career in fact I was suing NBC and before you knew it I was there doing a movie called people across the lake I did that movie June July and I faced them in court in September but I said to my lawyer what's up he said no no what's happened is the blackballing she's it in a way our case is weakened because they're not blackballing you but on the good side the industry sees yeah what's going on yeah what how crazy and and hard to work with if she's starring with Gerald McRaney in a movie for NBC yeah the people I was suing and then I faced them all in court and I was friendly with them after two big diamond as the show goes into syndication again that's gonna be a remuneration forever so yeah yeah is it at that point that you put like when we started our conversation and you said you know my life is my life first and this is the work is it going through a period like that that it helps you refocus that oh you know this is just the business oh absolutely absolutely because you it isn't what happens to you in life but how you handle it I think I really do how you rise to the occasion I I was so moved by this there was a long time ago scared-straight Jersey yeah here were murderers taking many people's life one guy with one eye and scars scaring the bejeezus or if I can say that scaring the pants off these kids about what was going to be like inside so suddenly their past became a contribution to known I mean and I don't say that to the families of the people they killed you know right but I'm just saying that that's the way life is and if we can live in that that whatever comes turn it to the good turn it to contribution rather than and you can be and I also I think we get stuck in regret or resentment yeah regret for things we should have done or would have done er I have a few of those I remember when I won my MA I wish I had acknowledged the director Robert Moore it was fabulous it just slipped my mind and I'm sure that happens to many people with the clothes yeah and then they go oh god I forgot poor little I felt for Hilary Swank I forgot her husband I really those are those are those things so but that's what you won four of them so you got a chance to I did I took out an ad and afraid' said a lot of money and bowed before him he you know those are things and he's gone now so Bob did you hear that it was you baby and we all heard it and all I can say is thank you so much for sitting down and chatting my great pleasure to be here with you Valerie Harper to order a transcript call eight six six six five to 3378 or send 695 to the address on your screen please include the name of the guest

Channel: HoustonPBS

Views: 21,815

Rating: 4.8461537 out of 5

Keywords: Innerviews, Valerie, Harper, Ernie, Manouse, interview, PBS, houston, houstonpbs

Id: Vhd00pJELj4

Length: 27min 30sec (1650 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 23 2012