5 Things You Didn’t Know About Mary Tyler Moore (Like That She Got Her Start as a TV Elf)

Gabrielle Moss December 29, 2024

THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW, Mary Tyler Moore, 1970-1977 — Courtesy Everett Collection

Beloved actress Mary Tyler Moore, who was born on Dec. 29, 1936, would have been 88 today. Though she passed away in 2017, Moore’s influence is still felt all over — whether in her acclaimed performances in shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show and films like Ordinary People (which nabbed Moore a Best Actress Oscar nomination), or through her outspoken activism regarding diabetes and animal right.

In honor of the woman who could always turn the world on with her smile (even when she was dancing around a stove in TV commercial), here are five things you probably didn’t know about Mary Tyler Moore.

1Her first big break was as a dancing, appliance-loving elf …

Moore began her career as a dancer, and had her first success in 1955, when she appeared as “Happy the Hotpoint Elf,” a sprite who is so excited about the Hotpoint line of home appliances, she breaks out into a merry little dance routine. She shot 39 Hotpoint commercials in a week, and was then let go after she became pregnant (producers didn’t like the idea of a visibly pregnant elf).

2… and her first big TV role stopped at the waist

Soon after losing her Hotpoint gig, Moore landed something bigger: the role of switchboard operator Sam on the show Richard Diamond, Private Detective, which debuted in 1957. Sam informed Diamond about his new cases via phone. But to create a sense of mystique, Sam was always shot from behind, or from the waist down, revealing only her legs. To further this sense of mystique, Moore was not listed as Sam in the show’s credits.

After 12 episodes, Moore asked producers for a raise — and was promptly fired. But Moore figured out a way to make the situation work for her — she publicly “revealed” Sam’s identity, which led to multiple magazine profiles and interviews.

3She almost skipped her audition for The Dick Van Dyke Show

DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, Mary Tyler Moore, Larry Mathews, Dick Van Dyke, 1961-1966, 1962 episode, Season 2

Everett Collection

Moore’s big break came in 1961, when she was cast as Laura Petrie, a funny, beautiful USO dancer-turned-suburban housewife on The Dick Van Dyke Show. However, as she revealed in a 2004 interview on The View, she almost didn’t show up to the audition. “I was auditioning for every role that was available to me, and I had a week where everything I went to audition for, I did not get,” she said on the show. “And I got a call from my agent saying, ‘Carl Reiner wants to see you about being the wife of Dick Van Dyke on a new series.’ And I said, ‘No, I’m not going. I can’t take any more rejection.’ And he said, ‘Get over there, now.’ And I did, and oh boy.”

4Elvis had a crush on her

CHANGE OF HABIT, from left, Elvis Presley, Mary Tyler Moore, 1969

Everett Collection

Moore and Elvis Presley starred in the 1969 film Change of Habit, about a doctor (Presley) who falls in love with a young woman who works at his clinic (Moore), unaware that she is secretly a nun. It wasn’t either star’s most enduring work — but it did give Moore the memorable experience of finding out that the King liked her. You know, liked her liked her.

As she wrote in her memoir After All, “He confessed right from the start that he’d had a crush on me since The Dick Van Dyke Show. He was so shy about it he was literally kicking at the dirt below him as he talked.” The two never dated, but Moore came away with positive memories of the experience, recalling that Presley was “a thorough professional.”

Presley isn’t the only costar that Moore had chemistry with. She said of Van Dyke, “The amazing thing is, we never had an affair … I always thought it was a terrible waste.”

5She starred in a bizarre, Bible-inspired disco variety special

What ’70s celebrity ididn’t star in a bizarre, psychedelic variety show? Moore’s special, called Mary’s Incredible Dream, aired in January 1976, shortly before The Mary Tyler Moore Show wrapped up for good. In the special, viewers are shown Moore’s supposed dream — which includes Bible-inspired segments including a trip to the Garden of Eden, Ben Vereen as Satan, and the Manhattan Transfer singing “Sympathy for the Devil.”