Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Mary Kay Place

    Since putting up The Mary Kay Place Place, I've decided to honor the huge affection for the program that I had as a kid. I usually missed the show as I was in middle school and expected to be asleep when the Atlanta station aired it at 11:30 p.m. I've commiserated with so many people who were in my situation. It's amazing that we all came to the conclusion that watching the show was worth getting in trouble. Several of us had TV's in our bedrooms and we would hide the set under the covers, turn the bright all the way down, use earphones, or any number of ploys to avoid parental discovery. Luckily, my parents relaxed bedtime strictness on Fridays, and I usually got caught up on the soap opera aspect of the show, if not necessarily the comedy.
     I had to get my Loretta fix, but I quickly became attached to Mary, Charlie, Tom, Merle, Cathy, Martha, Grandpa, Roberta, etc. Now, Heather Hartman was particularly close to my heart as she was about my age. In fact, bizarre kid that I was, I bought two goldfish for my sixth grade classroom and named them "Mary Hartman" and "Heather Hartman."
     Even though I was addicted to the show, I was oblivious to the mania that existed in the U.S. regarding "MH2" and Louise Lasser. Nobody in my class watched the show.
     The show might have never made it to air had some maverick independent stations not taken a chance on this truly dark horse. Creative forces behind the show, Norman Lear, Al Burton, Gail Parent and Ann Marcus couldn't sell the show to any of the three networks, although all three tried to develop it. On my "MH2" Museum of Television and Radio Page, I've given a fairly good accounting of the way that the show started out if you want to read more. So, Lear was able to sell the show as a syndicated package and the rest is history.
     The premise of the show was that Mary Hartman was (sort of) a typical American homemaker who was overly affected by television. Both soap operas and advertising ruled the day with Mary.
     It was an obvious in-joke that Mary watched soaps. Here she was star of her own comic soap opera, but was focused on the fictional "MH2" soap, "Tears of Our Years."
     The most talked about phrase of the series was "waxy yellow buildup." It was all that Mary could do to listen to her sister Cathy while Mary pondered her kitchen floor. In fact, she didn't really listen to Cathy at all as she was entirely enamored of her floor. But Cathy quite handily rained on her parade when she told Mary that she saw "waxy yellow buildup" on the floor. This theme of advertising phrases peppering the characters' dialog was frequent and rampant throughout the series run.
     Mary, her family and neighbors lived in the fictional town of Fernwood, Ohio. Most of the male characters worked at the plant on an assembly line while most of the female characters were housewives. This was certainly not your typical soap opera character line-up.   The actors all played their roles earnestly regardless of the inane or mundane or insane scripts. While the humor was occasionally raucous, generally the comic moments were quite subtle. As Graham Jarvis, "Charlie Haggers," has said, many of the funny elements were accidental. The camera might not have been on the actual scripted joke, but then that made the shot surreal.

This shot of "Mary" perfectly illustrates how Louise Lasser played the role. She tentatively attacks the mundane duties of housework while smoking a cigarette and (probably) has the portable television tuned to "The Days of Our Nights."

Mary and Loretta were next door neighbors. It's not likely that the two would be friends without that geographical connection. However, they were next door neighbors and they were truly supportive and caring friends (even if both were selfish enough to sometimes focus on their own personal agendas--Mary's "waxy yellow build up," Loretta's wish to become a Superstar, etc.).

    When the show started, Louise Lasser and her character were clearly the reason to watch. Louise had a way of delivering a line that was so unique. Detached is the only word that I can think of that comes close to describing her style. Even when in the middle of an argument with her husband Tom, played by Greg Mullavey, she could find something in the corner of the kitchen distracting enough to briefly change the subject. Louise was not Mary, but the distinction between the two was difficult to make. When Louise hosted "Saturday Night Live" (reportedly one of only two episodes that producer Lorne Michaels refuses to ever air again), she seemed to actually be playing Mary while delivering the monologue. She even distractedly stopped the monologue to talk to herself about her insecurities. It's almost impossible to tell whether she is "playing a character" or if she has some sort of actual breakdown while on live television. It seems almost prophetic that Mary has a nervous breakdown at the end of the first season (as a guest representing the average American housewife on the David Susskind talk show).
     While I don't think that Mary ever became less interesting (or funny), the secondary characters became just as important to the overall success of the show and devotion of the fans. Tom was not my personal reason for watching the show, but seeing whether he would ever get over his impotence or have normal marital relations with Mary kept me interested.
     Tom and Mary had a daughter, and what a daughter she was. Television had never seen any child character like Heather. Heather slouched, played with her straw in her Coke can, talked back to Mary and had a sort of blase attitude about the world and all of the apparent negativity associated with that world. She was clearly a product of the television generation and could never have been a child on "Father Knows Best" or "As the World Turns" or any other earlier program.

Product placement was quite different on "MH2" compared to both shows from the 1970's and movies today. Television shows usually used some sort of generic packaging for laundry detergent, coffee or cereal, as seen below. Movies, then and now, feature product placement as a form of advertising paid by the corporation responsible for that product's production. "MH2" used actual products without regard to corporate wishes in order to both represent a typical household (not many homes only consume Kellogg's cereals) and to further the concept of the commercialization of both TV and of American everyday life. It was not uncommon to see boxes of competing brand names sitting on the Hartman kitchen table. If Ralston had paid for the placement in the below photo, there would never be a chance to also see Rice Krispies, which we usually did.

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"Everything's going to be all right! And afterwards, we're going to go to the House of Pancakes."-Mary Hartman while screaming at her upset family about Grandpa Larkin being arrested for the second time as "The Fernwood Flasher."
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Claudia Lamb as Heather Hartman paved the way for the young actors who played the Connor children on "Roseanne." She was real.

Mary's parents were completely insane. Father George Shumway was a sort of stereotype of an uneducated plant worker with little or no affection for his long-suffering wife, Martha. George (Philip Bruns) disappeared from the program for a while only to return as a member of a strange religious cult, chanting at Mary's kitchen door in some unknown language.
Martha was scatterbrained and illogical. Like Mary, she was likely to be impressed by the slogans of Madison Avenue. She was quite well known for talking to her plants, which was all the rage in the mid 1970's.

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"Heather dear, have some cereal. It's endorsed by Billie Jean King."
-Mary to Heather at the breakfast table.
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Dody Goodman as Martha Shumway. "What is a woman to do?"

Mary's sister Cathy was nothing if not fickle. Former "Welcome Back Kotter" Sweathog Debralee Scott played her with a sexual fervor not yet seen on TV. In the Atlanta market, "MH2" originally ran in the afternoon as just another soap opera. I like to think that the reason that it moved to late night had a hell of a lot to do with Cathy Shumway's antics. According to Claudia Lamb, there was a running tally of over 20 boyfriends whom Cathy buried. She definitely wasn't destined for marital bliss, even though she usually got engaged after one date.

Debralee Scott and Ed Begley, Jr. as deaf-mute boyfriend Steve.

Graham Jarvis and Mary Kay Place spent many hours in bed on "MH2" so that this photo is representative of the norm.

    Charlie and Loretta Haggers (full name according to Loretta's medical records with Dr. Firman-Loretta Billie Jean Suzanne Antoinette Bowers Candless Haggers) were definitely low-brow folks. Loretta mispronounced words such as demise (demeez) and stimulant (stimudant). Charlie was a vocational school grad, but never college educated. Loretta couldn't cook without burning the meal. Their house was a virtual pig sty. Loretta shoved a pile of clothes off of the sofa with a shotgun so that someone could sit.
     Charlie was nearly old enough to be Loretta's father, but they never even mentioned the May-December aspect of their romance. Their love was so natural and strong that it hardly seemed necessary to bring that nonsense up. They longed to be part of the elite of country and western music in Nashville. To them, that seemed like the pinnacle of success, but to mainstream America in the 1970's, the dream was laughable. Loretta was a pretty terrible singer who wrote even worse songs. She never let that stop her though. Charlie was so in love that he never noticed that Loretta was not a "Superstar" quality talent as she so often mentioned. Loretta did get better with time and found success (short-lived as it was) with her single "Baby Boy," which she had written about Charlie (and was an original Mary Kay Place composition which made it to #3 on the actual Country and Western charts).
     Unfortunately for her career, Loretta was naive, guileless and garrulous. While riding the success of her hit single with a guest spot on "The Dinah Shore Show," Loretta blew her career out of the water before it had even begun. While attempting to praise Jewish people whom she'd met as part of her trip to Hollywood, Loretta mentioned a specifically nice Jewish person on Dinah's staff. Dinah and her director had to immediately cut to commercial when Loretta blindly said, "I just couldn't believe that his was the people that what killed our Lord, you know?" Every radio station pulled Loretta's single off the air and her Vegas gigs were canceled.
     Compared to Tom and Mary Hartman, who were dealing with the impotence quotient, Charlie and Loretta were polar opposites. On any other soap, the serious subject of a miscarriage would be given the gravity it deserves. On "MH2," Loretta seemed to have a miscarriage every three months or so. The running gag of never having a baby, even though the sex was incessant, was part of the show's entire run. Charlie and Loretta endured many other obstacles in their quest to have children. When Loretta thought that she was pregnant, it turned out that she had a fibroid tumor. Loretta became paralyzed after the Haggers hit a station wagon full of nuns. Loretta had amnesia and was separated from Charlie in another town (thinking that she was Lulu and working at a diner). Charlie accidentally shot off one of his testicles. Typical soap opera stuff.
     At one point, there was a storyline concerning some sort of wild child orphan whom the Haggers adopted. My memories are fuzzy, but the wild child resembled something like a juvenile Bigfoot. The Haggers treated this child as though he were their own though. It actually was touching to see the love that they tried to give him. They truly felt blessed to have that opportunity. If I remember correctly, they had to allow him to return to the wilderness or something and once again lost the chance at parenthood.
     Charlie and Loretta represented a real, loving, supportive couple who gave "MH2" a sort of moral backbone. Even though they dealt with frequent adversity, they always found a silver lining and clawed their way back to the "top."

If you want to see more about "MH2" characters, I've got extra stuff on Page Two of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" and Mary Kay Place.

Read my review of the Museum of Televsion and Radio's "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" Reunion Reunion, June, 2000.

Back to The Mary Kay Place Place

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Martha to Loretta-"Loretta, please, I know what you mean. You're trying to tell me that I'm Mary's mother, but I've known that for over 30 years."
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"Heather doesn't go to dirty movies! I know, 'cause I know I don't, and she reminds me a little bit of me."-Loretta to Blanche Fedders
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"Cathy, you're always here to say 'good morning,' but never around to say, 'goodnight.' That sounds like one of Loretta's tunes, huh?"-Martha to Cathy
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Philip Bruns

Visitors Since June, 2001

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This is the first of two pages in which I discuss "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" characters, with a tiny bit of insight as to how those characters related to Mary Kay Place's character, Loretta.

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