'She turned the world on with her smile': Carl Reiner remembers Mary Tyler Moore
When the news of Mary Tyler Moore's death was announced, the outpouring of admiration and grief was immediate and overwhelming.
I gave her a page to read. She read the first line, and there was a ping in her voice, and I said, 'Oh-oh. This is it.'- Carl Reiner remembering the moment he discovered Mary Tyler Moore
Moore became an icon of women's liberation with The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s.
Week after week, she spun around on a Minneapolis street, and threw her hat in the air -- where it stayed. And that freeze-frame at the end of that opening sequence of the show felt like a metaphor for the character herself. And the woman who played her.
But before she became a household name, she showed up on the office of Carl Reiner back in 1961 to audition for the part of Laura Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show.
"She came into my office and didn't want to come, she said, because she had failed in two interviews that week," Reiner said. "And as soon as she walked in, I looked at that face and that hair and those legs, and I gave her a page to read. She read the first line, and there was a ping in her voice, and I said, 'Oh-oh. This is it.'
For the full story, listen to the interview with Carl Reiner.