Television Stardom
While doing theater in a small venue on Vermont Street in Los Angeles in 1970, Harper was spotted by casting agent Ethel Winant, who called her in to audition for the role of the wise-cracking Jewish New Yorker Rhoda Morgenstern on the landmark CBS sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She co-starred from 1970–1974 and then starred in the spin-off series, Rhoda (CBS 1974-1978) in which her character returned to New York. She won four Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award for her work as Rhoda Morgenstern throughout this period. In 2000, Harper reunited with Mary Tyler Moore in Mary and Rhoda, a TV movie that brought their iconic characters back together again in later life. The first season of Rhoda was released on DVD on April 21, 2009 by Shout! Factory.
She was also nominated for a Golden Globe for "New Star of the Year" for her role in 1974's Freebie and The Bean. Harper was a guest star on The Muppet Show in 1976, its first season.
Harper returned to situation comedy in 1986 when she played family matriarch Valerie Hogan on the NBC series Valerie. Following a salary dispute with NBC and production company Lorimar in 1987, Harper was fired from the series at the end of its second season. Harper sued NBC and Lorimar for breach of contract. Her claims against NBC were dismissed, but the jury found that Lorimar had wrongfully fired her and awarded her $1.4 million plus 12.5 percent of the show's profits. The series continued without her with the explanation that her character had died off-screen. In 1987, it was initially renamed Valerie's Family and then The Hogan Family, as Harper was replaced by actress Sandy Duncan, who played her sister-in-law Sandy Hogan. NBC canceled The Hogan Family in 1990, but it was picked up by CBS for one more season.
Harper has worked almost exclusively in theater and television, but did have key supporting roles in Neil Simon's Chapter Two in 1979 and Stanley Donen's Blame It on Rio (1984) opposite Michael Caine. She has had roles in television movies and guest spots on a number of series, including Melrose Place in 1998 and Sex and the City in 1999. Also in the 1990s, she advocated hormone replacement therapy for Eli Lilly and Company.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Harper was involved in the Women's Liberation Movement and was an advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Read more about this topic: Valerie Harper
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“They [parents] can help the children work out schedules for homework, play, and television that minimize the conflicts involved in what to do first. They can offer moral support and encouragement to persist, to try again, to struggle for understanding and mastery. And they can share a child’s pleasure in mastery and accomplishment. But they must not do the job for the children.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)