"The Mary Tyler Moore Show" continues to leave its mark on Minneapolis half a century later
MINNEAPOLIS — Kenwood Parkway in Minneapolis is full of beautiful, historic, century-old homes — but a house on the 2100 block stands out for other reasons.
"This is the house that is featured in 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show,'" Brian Driscoll said.
From 1970 to 1977, the sitcom rose to fame and gained fans across the country, with the show's characters calling Minneapolis home.
"She supposedly lived on the third floor, that beautiful paladin window you see on the outside there," Driscoll said.
Driscoll is with "Experience the Twin Cities," a local tour company that's made the Mary Tyler Moore house one of its stops, along with the Mary Tyler Moore statue on Nicollet Mall — famously posed to show the character throwing her hat in the air, just like in the opening sequence.
Other iconic city sites can be seen in the intro, including IDS Center and Lake of the Isles.
Moore played Mary Richards, an unmarried, independent woman focused on her career as a news producer at the fictional WJM in Minneapolis.
FINDING MINNESOTA: Jasper man's old-school windmill collection draws visitors from across the country
"The producers did not want New York or Los Angeles to be central to the character," Driscoll said. "Mary Richards herself was seen as someone to aspire to. Someone who didn't need a man in her life."
"I think Mary Richards came along at a time when women were entering the workforce and entering professional life," Kate Roberts said.
Roberts is with the Minnesota Historical Society and remembers watching the show with her sisters as kids. They even drove from Moorhead to check out the sites.
"I vividly remember being on Nicollet Mall and seeing Donaldson's and being like, 'Oh my God. This is where Mary Tyler Moore threw her hat in the air,'" Roberts said.
Fifty years ago, in 1973, the show's producers and actors came to town for a couple of days to refresh the intro at a cost of $15,000. They brought along 1,000 pounds of film gear.
WCCO got to tag along to watch the MTM crew re-shoot parts of Minneapolis.
It was behind-the-scenes access that was featured on Dave Moore's Sunday show, and a big part of it centered on the Kenwood Parkway house.
The house was built in 1900. It has nine bedrooms, nine bathrooms, and it's 9,500 square feet.
And the homeowner at the time was determined to protect every square foot. The show's rising popularity meant she had what she called cranks, burglars and tourists showing up every day. So she decked out her house in "political signs" so the crew couldn't re-shoot it.
"I thought the 'Impeach Nixon' banners, which I made in about five minutes, would be offensive to plastic people like those," Paula Giese said in an interview 50 years ago.
But the show must go on, so the crew moved on.
Even though episodes were shot in Los Angeles, Mary Tyler Moore received an "Outstanding Citizen" award from Minnesota Gov. Wendell Anderson, due to the goodwill she brought to Minneapolis. In a sense, she "helped the city make it after all."
"Just a really great show and it took Minneapolis to another level of being known across the country. Not just flyover land anymore," Driscoll said.
The show also helped the careers of actors like Ed Asner, who played Lou Grant, Betty White, Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachman and others.