Word: tinkerings
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Much of Rhoda's success derives from its parents, MTM Enterprises and the company's magisterial executive, Grant Tinker, 48. The lean-jawed New Englander who was lucky enough to marry Mary Tyler Moore was also canny enough to surround her with the best talent in the business. "My career," he says, "has been an inexorable march to get as close as I could to the creative product, working through people who made the shows." That march included stints at NBC and 20th Century-Fox, where he developed a sure instinct for commercial comedy and new talent, including...
...success is, of course, mutual property; the syndication rights on her current shows alone would make Mary a millionairess. But her husband, Grant Tinker, has exclusive property rights to all the pressures of success. In addition to the long-running Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart shows, plus the overnight smash Rhoda, his company has been churning out a series of series. All bear the MTM trademark-a strong comic idea and a stronger supporting cast. But even these cannot guarantee infallibility. One show, the cantankerous new The Texas Wheelers, is Tinker's first failure, a comedy that guttered...
That scheduling is not calculated to sweeten the disposition or lower the blood pressure. Tinker, the peripatetic executive, has been suffering from migraine headaches. One night this month he tossed restlessly in bed longing for some hobby to take his mind off office problems. Mary's suggestion could have come from one of her scripts: "How about mending injured birds...
While the pilot for The Dick Van Dyke Show was being filmed, the recently separated Mary was introduced to an NBC executive whose own marriage had just dissolved. Mary and Grant were married three years later. The network elevated Tinker to vice president in the programming department and made his headquarters Burbank, Calif., where his bride happened to be working. A five-year idyll ended in 1966, when NBC ordered Tinker back to Manhattan, and Dick Van Dyke decided to leave his show to pursue a film career...
...hated living hi New York again," says Tinker. "I didn't stay a year and asked them to let me out of my contract." In the meantime, his wife tried Broadway-and found fiasco...