Love Is Still All Around

Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern are ushered into a crummy comedy club by a bored waitress who is wearing fishnet stockings that expose a good deal of her rear end. The club is crowded with kids 40 years younger than they are. The waitress seats them at a table in front of the stage, and after some scripted palaver, Rhoda looks around and says, “You need shots to get in here.”

The camera crew bursts out laughing.

“I don’t know why I said that,” she says, smiling.

Among those laughing at this bit of improvisation is Mary--that is, Mary Tyler Moore, reprising the role in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” that made her America’s sweetheart during the 1970s. Acting opposite her is Valerie Harper, for the first time in more than 20 years. Though the crew is rushing to complete this scene, there is an unhurried air about the two actresses. They’ve been there, done that.

“Can someone fan Valerie?” Moore asks between shots. “She’s got so much clothing on.”

“Thank you, my friend, my pal, my savior,” Harper says without being sentimental--or ironic.

The two women are reuniting for an ABC-TV movie Monday night simply titled “Mary and Rhoda,” about, well, Mary and Rhoda 25 years later--a lifetime we never saw unfold.

When we find them now, Mary, who recently lost her husband, a congressman, has taken a job as a producer in a newsroom; Rhoda has divorced her philandering husband--she’s been living in Paris--and is working as a photographer. Each has a college-age daughter living in New York.

And that’s where they find themselves, starting all over again, as they were in the original show.

Today they are shooting a scene in which Mary’s daughter, Rose (Joie Lenz), an aspiring stand-up comic, takes the stage and delivers such lines as “If Casper the Ghost was so friendly, what killed him?” (“So true!” Mary says with forced gaiety as everyone else sits on their hands.)

Of course, the real joke is that Mary and Rhoda are here at all.

“It’s a dream location,” says the director, Barnet Kellman, who has directed “Murphy Brown.” “The idea is to take Mary as far out of her universe as possible.”

In fact the place they’re shooting in, CBGB’s (which stands for Country, Bluegrass, Blues), is hallowed in its own right, having served as a venue for the Talking Heads and Patti Smith, among others. The room is narrow, plastered with posters, crisscrossed with exposed plumbing, ductwork and insulation, and it exudes an air of cigarettes, spilled drinks and deafening music--if these walls could scream.

The downside of working here is that they have to be out by 8 p.m. (the club opens at 9), hence the rush. Most of the day is taken up by scenes between Mary and daughter Rose, who, much against Mary’s wishes, is threatening to quit college.

Between shots, Moore sits with her assistant behind a makeshift screen in a fugue-like state. It’s not that she’s unfriendly. It’s more like she’s trying to conserve energy. She’s 62 now, very thin and has been a diabetic for 30 years. She broke a couple of bones in her right wrist while chasing a dog in a scene shot a week earlier and is now wearing a brace that she artfully hides up her sleeve.

The first thing Moore said after falling, according to Harper, was: “Did you get the shot?”

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There is about her the perky Mary Richards, the neurotic Laura Petrie (from “The Dick Van Dyke Show”) and the chilly mom she played to perfection in “Ordinary People.” One thing undiminished by age is that ringing voice. She insists that Mary Richards--and she--may be older and wiser but still essentially the same.

“She’s gained a bit of cynicism, perhaps,” Moore says. “But you still see her stumble, be unsure of herself, but determined to forge ahead anyway. She says to her boss in a big scene, ‘You know, I always was terrified at the thought of being 60, but there’s a lot about it that’s not bad. I get the American Assn. of Retired Persons newsletter, and it’s damn good. Your hair doesn’t grow as fast, so you don’t have to shave your legs as often. And what you just said to me 20 seconds ago would have terrified me, but you know what? I don’t care what you think of me.’ So you see changes that are made in a good-hearted way. Putting a foot down when necessary but then picking it up and wondering if I put it down in the right place.”

Harper says that this Mary Richards is closer to who Moore is than the Mary Richards she played 25 years ago. The question is, does anyone want to see that?

Kellman thinks so. “There’s an enormous pleasure in seeing these two again,” he says. And enormous pressure on the two, although neither of them seems to feel it. Perhaps the fact that they slipped so easily into their roles has something to do with that.

“I had trepidations, as we got involved in it and the studio said yes and the network came on board, about how it might be received,” Moore says. “And then I said, ‘But that’s not my business. My business is to make it the best we can possibly make it.’ And what fun. Working with [Harper] is so natural, so easy, and tiring too because she sparks things in me that I can then grab ahold of and use in my character. She just gives so much.”

Moore and Harper are seated in Moore’s enormous trailer parked just off the Bowery. Their chemistry is palpable and unforced. Moore refers to Harper as “the cyclone.”

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Harper, 59, is enthusiastic, inclusive, curious and “on,” but not in an obnoxious, actressy way. She says that the idea of them working together again was first considered seriously several years ago when they appeared together on “The Rosie O’Donnell Show.” O’Donnell and the crowd became teary-eyed, and Moore and Harper realized they still had an audience. In a sense, Mary and Rhoda have never been gone, because reruns of the show have been airing for years.

“I echo Mary’s view,” says Harper. “She said, ‘Val, if we don’t try it, we’ll kick ourselves.’ We could fall flat on our faces. But I don’t see it as detracting at all from the [original] show. I was on the radio with one of those shock jocks. He said, ‘Valerie, please don’t do the show, let them live as they were.’ I said, ‘You can’t ruin a classic.’ Those shows, a hundred ‘Rhodas’ and however many ‘Marys,’ they are what they are, and they’ve been playing for decades.

“So what we do isn’t going to besmirch anything,” Harper says. “All it will do is it didn’t work or we shouldn’t have done it and then they can go watch the reruns again and forget about these two old dolls. I was going to say ‘broads,’ but I decided not to.”

The network, ABC, is hedging its bets by making this a TV movie--a “backdoor pilot”--rather than a 13-episode tryout. Originally it was conceived as a series, from an idea by Moore, and written by Tom Fontana and Jeff Lowell. According to Harper, then-network head Jamie Tarses thought “the words were not special enough.” Harper didn’t agree.

They then re-approached the network with the TV movie idea, which the suits accepted (it was written by Katie Ford). Moore, who is acting as a producer, insisted that it be shot in New York rather than the cheaper shooting locale of Toronto. Should the movie become a series, Moore and Harper say they’d like to perform in front of a live audience.

As Moore envisions it, in the first year they’d establish their family of players; during the second season, they’d introduce guest spots featuring characters from the original series, much as “Frasier” has done as a spinoff of “Cheers.”

Of course, these notions are preceded by a big “if.” What is not iffy is their own affection for Mary and Rhoda and the reservoir of goodwill these characters enjoy--as do the women who play them.

“It’s just great to be working in these characters again,” says Harper. “And who’d of thunk? Thank God we’re still recognized.”

“I know,” Moore says. “Sometimes I want to say, especially to the young ones, ‘Don’t be afraid, it’s me.’ ”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, it’s true. The granddaughter of a friend of mine came over to me--this is a girl I’ve known since she was a baby--and she said, ‘Mary, why did you get so old?’ She had been watching the reruns, and it had just occurred to her.”

“It’s adorable. What did you tell her?”

“I got very literal. I said, ‘Those were made 25 years ago, and I was that age then and I’m this age now and I don’t mind that I look old.’ ”

Moore says this in the same tremulous comic voice she used nearly 40 years ago, turning “Oh, Rob!,” then “Mr. Grant,” into bits of television history.

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“Mary and Rhoda” can be seen Monday at 8 p.m. on ABC. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).