Television: Once in Love with Mary

First, You Cry, Nov. 8, CBS, 9p.m. E.S.T.

Few TV performers are as durable or as justly adored as Mary Tyler Moore. During the past 15 years she has become an unpretentious symbol of sophistication in a medium where that quality is usually considered a punishable offense. As Laura Petrie, the slightly daft heroine of the classic Dick Van Dyke Show, Moore demonstrated that sitcom suburban housewives did not have to be domestic ninnies chained to a kitchen sink. With her easy wit and sturdy intelligence, almost single-handed she brought TV out of the Lucille Ball-Donna Reed era.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show went even further. News Producer Mary Richards was TV's first truly liberated heroine: a capable, ambitious working woman who was perfectly content to turn 40 without having found a husband. When MTM voluntarily ceased production at the end of the 1976-77 season, Moore's admirers quite naturally assumed that their heroine would soon return in yet another rich and adventurous series.

Now 17 months have gone by, and no such series has materialized. Instead, Moore has frittered away the time by trying to parlay an indifferent singing voice and nice legs into a career as a song-and-dance woman. Last winter she came up with a special called How to Survive the 70s and Maybe Even Bump into Happiness, a thoroughly distasteful blend of toothless social satire and Vegas vulgarity. This fall Moore unveiled Mary, a regular variety show in CBS's old Sunday-night Ed Sullivan slot. On Mary the star had the aid of some top writers and supporting players, including Dick Shawn and Swoozie Kurtz. But the show flopped about aimlessly and folded last month after only three airings. Mary deserved to die. Its star cannot sing and cannot dance and certainly cannot carry a weekly hour of musical high jinks.

What Mary Tyler Moore can do—and it's nothing to be embarrassed about—is act. Indeed, she may be a better actress than either she or her fans realize. The proof can be found this week when CBS airs a TV movie that features Moore in a rare serious role. The film, First, You Cry, is a strong adaptation of NBC News Correspondent Betty Rollin's book about her recovery from a mastectomy.

Even without its star, First, You Cry would be superior television. The unusually high-powered cast includes Anthony Perkins, Jennifer Warren and Florence Eldridge as Rollin's family and friends. Director George Schaefer helps keep the story from sliding into soap opera. Carmen Culver's script is not afraid to deal frankly with the physiological, psychological, sexual and social cruelties of cancer. It is Moore, however, who gives what is essentially a public service drama its surprisingly fine emotional texture.

First, You Cry is not, as one might expect, Mary Richards Gets Cancer. Rather than fall back on her considerable resources of charm, Mary plays Rollin as a rather cold and strident woman at first. When tragedy strikes, she gradually works shades of anger, maturity and self-doubt into her characterization. As a result, Moore does not just jerk the audience's tears but gives a sense of how one complex life can be redefined by an encounter with death. She also plays some extraordinary scenes, including one where we see Rollin's face as she examines her chest for the first time after surgery. A lesser actress would not have risked such a moment in closeup.