Mary Tyler Moore

 Mary Tyler Moore (December 29, 1936 – January 25, 2017)

She was known for her roles in the television sitcoms The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977), in which she starred as Mary Richards, a single woman who worked as a local news producer in Minneapolis, and The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966), in which she played Laura Petrie, a former dancer turned Westchester homemaker, wife and mother. Her notable film work includes 1967's Thoroughly Modern Millie and 1980's Ordinary People, in which she played a role that was very different from the television characters she had portrayed, and for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Moore was active in charity work and various political causes, particularly the issues of animal rights and diabetes. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes early in the run of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She also suffered from alcoholism, which she wrote about in her first of two memoirs.

In May 2011, Moore underwent elective brain surgery to remove a benign meningioma. Moore was married three times, her second marriage was to Grant Tinker (1926–2016), a CBS executive (later chairman of NBC), and in 1970 they formed the television production company MTM Enterprises, which created and produced the company's first television series, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Moore and Tinker divorced in 1981. On October 14, 1980, at the age of 24, Moore's son Richard (from her first marriage) died of an accidental gunshot to the head while handling a small .410 shotgun. The model was later taken off the market because of its "hair trigger". Moore married Robert Levine on November 23, 1983, at the Pierre Hotel in New York City. They met when Moore’s mother was treated by him in New York City on a weekend house call, after Moore and her mother returned from a visit to the Vatican where they had a personal audience with Pope John Paul II. Mary Tyler Moore died from cardiopulmonary arrest because of pneumonia at the age of 80 on January 25, 2017. She was laid to rest in Oak Lawn Cemetery, in Fairfield, Connecticut, during a private ceremony.