September 3, 2019 — Chicago, IL — DECADES TV Network will honor the life and career of the late actress Valerie Harper with a week of specially-selected episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda. The tribute will air Monday, Sept. 9 thru Friday, Sept. 13 from 2pm to 3:30pm ET (11am to 12:30pm PT). Complete episode schedule appears below.
Valerie Harper photo by Leslie Nestor Miranda/FilmMagic
Valerie Harper will forever be remembered as Rhoda Morgenstern, the wisecracking and lovelorn best friend to Mary Richards on the Prime-time Emmy Award-winning series, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. With her signature charm and snark, Harper made Rhoda one of the most memorable feminist icons of television in the 1970s, and earned three Prime-time Emmy Awards for her performance, before landing her own spin-off series Rhoda in 1974.
Rhoda is the first and only television series to earn the top spot in Nielsen ratings for its premiere episode, where Rhoda leaves Minneapolis to return home to New York City and fires up a whirlwind romance with divorcee Joe Gerard, played by David Groh. At the time, the iconic New York wedding between Rhoda and Joe was the most watched television episode of the 1970s, with a whopping 52 million Americans tuning in. Airing from 1974-1978, the series earned seventeen Prime-time Emmy nominations, and seven Golden Globe nominations. Harper herself earned her fourth Emmy Award for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical, as well as the Golden Globe for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy.
Harper went on to appear in a handful of television series, including The Love Boat, Touched By An Angel, Melrose Place, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, Dancing with the Stars and 2 Broke Girls. In 2000, Harper reunited with Mary Tyler Moore for the made-for-TV movie Mary and Rhoda. In 2013, Harper revealed that she had been diagnosed with a rare and incurable form of brain cancer, but continued to work, appearing in short films, on stage, and even voicing characters on animated series, The Simpsons and American Dad.
Throughout her career, Harper earned four Prime-time Emmy Awards, one Golden Globe and one Tony nomination. Outside of show business, Harper was a longtime representative for the Hunger Project, an organization that supports rural women in developing countries, and co-founded L.I.F.E. (Love Is Feeding Everyone) in 1983, a charity dedicated to preventing hunger in Los Angeles. Harper is survived by her husband of 32 years, Tony Cacciotti.
The complete schedule for the DECADES Tribute to Valerie Harper includes:
Monday, September 9th
(all times Eastern time)
2pm: The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Smokey the Bear Wants You
2:30pm: The Mary Tyler Moore Show: The Square Shaped Room
3pm: Rhoda: Together Again For The First Time
Tuesday, September 10th
2pm: The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Enter Rhoda’s Parents
2:30pm: The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Rhoda Morgenstern: Minn to NY
3pm: Rhoda: One Is A Number
Wednesday, September 11th
2pm: The Mary Tyler Moore Show: My Brother’s Keeper
2:30pm: The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Mary Richards and the Incredible Lady
3pm: Rhoda: The Weekend
Thursday, September 12th
2pm: The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Rhoda’s Sister Gets Married
2:30pm: The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Love Blooms At Hempless
3pm: Rhoda: Blind Date
Friday, September 13th
2pm: The Mary Tyler Moore Show : The Co-Producers
2:30pm: The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Lou’s Second Date
3pm: Rhoda: Rhoda Cheats
Viewers can see our complete schedule and find out where to watch by visiting www.decades.com.
About Weigel Broadcasting Co.
Weigel Broadcasting Co. is a family-owned media company based in Chicago, Illinois. In addition to producing the new series Collector?s Call, the company owns and operates national television networks, as well as local broadcast stations throughout the country. Weigel is the leader in the multicast television network space with “MeTV,” Memorable Entertainment Television, the number-one rated and distributed multicast network, as well as the “Movies!” Network in cooperation with the Fox Television Stations, the “DECADES” Network, the “H&I” Network and the ?Start TV? Network in association with the CBS Television Stations. Weigel’s local stations include CBS, ABC, The CW, MyNet and Telemundo network affiliates. Weigel and its affiliate companies broadcast network and independent television stations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, St. Louis, Cedar City-St. George, Milwaukee, South Bend and Rockford. Weigel is also the creator of the nationally syndicated music format MeTV FM. For more information on Weigel, visit: https://www.weigelbroadcasting.com/
