Some time back, I reviewed the DVD of the third season of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Well, my daughter and her fiance (now husband) got hooked on them, so in the weeks before the wedding we watched our way through seasons one and two also. We even started season four, but then wedding week arrived. But, the show we did watch, The Lars Affair, shows off two of the all time best female comedians giving two of their best performances ever: Cloris Leachman and Betty White.
Cloris Leachman, as Mary’s progressive and ostentatious landlord Phyllis Lindstrom, was a regular cast member since the show’s inception. But this show marked Betty White’s first appearance as Sue Ann Niven, the man hungry star of WJM-TV’s happy home show.
In this episode, Phyllis learns that her husband Lars is playing around with Sue Ann and fights to win him back. Graced with a script so well written not one word is wasted, Leachman and White play their parts to perfection. Every word, every gesture, every facial expression add to their characters and the interplay between them. Leachman’s performance won her an Emmy and White’s resulted in her becoming a regular on the show. ( You can hear Mary Tyler Moore talk about how White became part of the show at www.emmytvlegends.org.)
Because I was rather distracted by wedding details during my first viewing of The Lars Affair, I forced myself to watch it again this week – purely in the interest of research. Surely, I thought, it couldn’t be as funny as I remembered. But it was. And it is.
So if you need a laugh, and don’t have time to watch every episode, watch The Lars Affair. It’s classic TV. It’s worth watching. It’s a gift from Betty and Cloris.
Thanks to both of them.
