Valerie Harper tackles Tallulah

THESE days, the actress formerly known as Rhoda sports personas vastly different from the straight-talking New Yorker she created for television's classic sitcom "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and its spinoff, "Rhoda." Three decades later, Valerie Harper still hears "Hi, Rhoda" when she walks down the street, even though the characters the four-time Emmy Award-winner plays now are far more complicated -- real women whose lives were indeed stranger than fiction.

By Irene Lacher

July 6, 2008