Obituaries

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Valerie Harper ("Rhoda"), at age 80.



August 30, 20197:31 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered

ELIZABETH BLAIR
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Valerie Harper and Mary Tyler Moore Showco-star Ed Asner pose with their Emmys at the 1971 award show.
AP
Updated at 8:08 p.m. ET

One of TV's most beloved sidekicks has died. Valerie Harper, best known for playing Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, died Friday in Los Angeles. She was 80.

As the blunt, self-deprecating Rhoda, Harper created one of the most beloved sitcom characters of the 1970s. The Mary Tyler Moore Showwas a ratings powerhouse, centered on best friends Rhoda and Mary Richards, two single women making their way through life, love and career.

Rhoda was the perfect foil for the buttoned-up Mary, played by Mary Tyler Moore. "Rhoda had this wonderful quality of saying the unsayable," Harper told NPR in 2010. She would say things "that Mary Richards would not say because she's too much of a lady or, you know, it's not polite. Rhoda, the New Yorker from the Bronx, would just say it straight out."


The show set high standards for every sitcom that followed, and generations of TV writers and actors cite it as a major influence, including Tina Fey, Lena Dunham and Modern Family star Julie Bowen. Robert Thompson, who teaches television and popular culture at Syracuse University, says Harper and Moore were one of the great comedy teams of all time: "We had Lucy and Ethel — they were kind of the Romulus and Remus of TV girlfriends — and we get a lot thereafter: Laverne and Shirley, and Cagney and Lacey. But Rhoda and Mary, when they were on stage together, even though they weren't dancing, it was kind of like watching [Fred] Astaire and [Ginger] Rogers. They just worked perfectly together."

Harper's daughter Cristina Cacciotti tweeted her father Anthony Cacciotti's statement saying, "My beautiful caring wife of nearly 40 years has passed away ... Rest In Peace, mia Valeria."

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/30/512035751...dies-at-80