TV Quote of the Day (‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show,’ As Ted Delivers an On-Air Obit for Chuckles the Clown)

Ted Baxter [played by Ted Knight]: [ad-libbing an on-air obituary]: “Ladies and gentlemen, sad news. One of our most beloved entertainers, and close personal friend of mine, is dead. Chuckles the Clown died today from - from uh - he died a broken man. Chuckles, uh, leaves a wife. At least I assume he was married, he didn't seem like the other kind. I don't know his age, but I guess he was probably in his early sixties; it's kind of hard to judge a guy's face especially when he's wearing big lips and a light bulb for a nose. But he had his whole life in front of him, except for the sixty some odd years he already lived. I remember, Chuckles used to recite a poem at the end of each program. It was called 'The Credo of the Clown,' and I'd like to offer it now in his memory - 'A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.' That's what it's all about, folks, that's what he stood for, that's what gave his life meaning. Chuckles liked to make people laugh. You know what I'd like to think, I'd like to think that somewhere, up there tonight, in his honor, a choir of angels is sitting on whoopee cushions.”— The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Season 6, Episode 7, “Chuckles Bites the Dust,” original air date Oct. 25, 1975, teleplay by James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, and David Lloyd, directed by Joan Darling

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show,’ As Lou Advises Ted on a Tempting Job Offer)

[WJM anchorman Ted Baxter has just told his colleagues that he’s received a more lucrative job offer as a game-show host. He’s been waiting unsuccessfully for someone to persuade him to turn it down, until…]

Lou Grant [played by Ed Asner]: “Stay.”

Ted Baxter [played by Ted Knight]: “What? What did you say, Lou? Lou? Did... Did you say something?”

Lou: “Yeah. I said stay.”

Ted: “Gee. That's one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me. I'd like to stay, Lou. I-I love it here, but... but this is my big chance.”

Lou: “For what, Ted? So you can go to New York and become a quizmaster? Is that what you want people to say when you walk down the street? ‘There goes Ted Baxter. He's a quizmaster.’”

Ted [chuckles]: “It's not that bad, Lou. Just the way you say it makes it sound terrible.”

Lou: “Oh, yeah? Then you say it, Ted. Say, ‘Ted Baxter is... a quizmaster.’” [With greater emphasis now, practically hissing the words out in contempt]: “Ted Baxter is... a quizmaster. You see?”—The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Season 6, Episode 5, “Ted’s Moment of Glory,” original air date Oct. 11, 1975, teleplay by Charles Lee and Gig Henry, directed by Jay Sandrich

When I saw the headline on Facebook yesterday about the death of Ed Asner, my heart sank. With his demise—the third this year of an original cast member—one of the last links to one of the favorite shows of my youth was gone.

The above exchange illustrates how Asner could take the words in a script and turn it into something sidesplitting. Not even the deadly repetition of the word “quizmaster” quite does the trick. Rather, it’s in the way Asner spits the word out, as if he can’t wait to dislodge something so commercial, so gross before Lou can get to a word he honors: “newsman.”

Asner’s death came 35 years to the day of Ted Knight’s funeral—the first time that all the stars of the sitcom had gathered together since the landmark sitcom went off the air, in perhaps TV’s most fondly remembered finale, in 1977. Let’s hope that Mary, Valerie, Phyllis, Gavin, Ted, Georgia, and Ed are sharing laughs in a Valhalla of comedy legends even now.

Fans who watched the seven-time Emmy-winning actor over the years knew that there was far more to Asner than the Lou Grant role he played for 12 seasons, first on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, then on the dramedy Lou Grant.

Obituaries I’ve read have cited his voice-over work in animated series and movies. But much of his one-off work in the Seventies and Eighties, though perhaps harder to find on video these days, are also worthy of mention, displaying his dramatic range in Roots (a drunken sea captain haunted by his role in the slave trade), A Case of Libel (as a lawyer in the McCarthy Era), Anatomy of an Illness (as editor Norman Cousins), The Gathering (as a difficult father trying to make amends with his family before dying), and Tender is the Night (as a tycoon who has sexually violated his daughter).

TV Quote of the Day (“Mary Tyler Moore,” as “Chuckles Bites the Dust”)

Ted Baxter (played by Ted Knight): [ad-libbing an on-air obituary] “Ladies and gentlemen, sad news. One of our most beloved entertainers, and close personal friend of mine, is dead. Chuckles the Clown died today from - from uh - he died a broken man. Chuckles, uh, leaves a wife. At least I assume he was married, he didn't seem like the other kind. I don't know his age, but I guess he was probably in his early sixties; it's kind of hard to judge a guy's face especially when he's wearing big lips and a light bulb for a nose. But he had his whole life in front of him, except for the sixty some odd years he already lived. I remember, Chuckles used to recite a poem at the end of each program. It was called ‘The Credo of the Clown,’ and I'd like to offer it now in his memory – ‘A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.’ That's what it's all about, folks, that's what he stood for, that's what gave his life meaning. Chuckles liked to make people laugh. You know what I'd like to think, I'd like to think that somewhere, up there tonight, in his honor, a choir of angels is sitting on a whoopee cushion.”—"Chuckles Bites the Dust,” The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Season 6, Episode 7, written by David Lloyd, directed by Joan Darling, original air date October 25, 1975


Forty years ago, CBS began broadcasting a situation comedy that was the first to feature a young, attractive, career woman who was not only not married but not even engaged. But if that had been the only achievement of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, its success would have been limited.

No, the program that Grant Tinker created for his wife at the time, Mary Tyler Moore, stood in sharp contrast with the fare ruling the airwaves until then—the likes of Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hee-Haw. This new show presaged the start of programming for a younger, more urban, sophisticated audience.

It’s not just that it opened the way for All in the Family, The Bob Newhart Show, and other sitcoms that really made CBS “The Tiffany Network” in those years. Without The Mary Tyler Moore Show, it’s impossible to envision the “flock comedies” such as Seinfeld and Friends—often featuring young people who invariably hung out in coffee shops—that The New York Times' columnist David Brooks analyzed recently.


All these decades later, the character-driven comedy of The Mary Tyler Moore Show feels as fresh as when it aired. When I slip an episode into my DVD player, then wait patiently for “America’s Sweetheart” to fling her hat up toward the frosty Minneapolis sky, I can rest easy for a half hour, knowing that God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.

The “Chuckles the Clown” episode, which aired on this date 35 years ago, is usually considered not only the best episode over the show’s seven-year run, but also one of the most hysterical in the sometimes glorious history of sitcoms. The premise itself is absurd—the titular clown dies in a freak accident (“He went to the parade dressed as Peter Peanut, and a rogue elephant tried to shell him,” Mary’s boss Lou Grant explains helpfully, thereby showing why Chuckles, in Ted’s terms, died “a broken man").


But the humor of this Emmy-winning episode—showing, even in Season 6, one year before the end, that the show’s vitality remained undimmed—is mined from two sources: 1) our fear that we’ll do something inappropriate at the worst possible time, and 2) the corollary anxiety that even the most thoughtful and dignified among us--i.e., none other than Mary Richards/Mary Tyler Moore--can fall victim to this (as Ms. Moore did, to wonderful effect, in the scene depicted in the accompanying image, at Chuckles’ funeral).

Even the speech by Ted Baxter that I've quoted here is a miniature masterpiece. The laughs don't come from one-liners that can be isolated, but organically, from the plot and the character (in this case, Knight's pompous, stupid but lovable anchorman).


When the writer of this episode, David Lloyd, passed away last fall, quite a few newspapers and blogs took notice of the sad event. Lloyd’s great script was every bit as absurd as Seinfeld and its progeny, but also far less snarky, considerably wiser, and a thousand times more humane.