We’ll Always Remember Valerie Harper for Giving Us “Rhoda”

Her character, Rhoda, showed us life could be extraordinary, even if we weren't the cultural ideal. That's why Valerie Harper's death hits hard.

“Rhoda, like most of us, was a victorious loser," actress Valerie Harper once said of her best-known character, Rhoda Morgenstern.

Surely that's why we loved Rhoda, and by extension Harper, so much. Rhoda made us feel that we could have an extraordinary life, even if we weren't as perky and pretty as the cultural ideal represented by Mary Richards, played so memorably by Mary Tyler Moore over those heady years (1970-1977) of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. (Sadly Moore died in 2017.) For many of us, those seasons took place during our formative years, and it was breathtaking and instructive to see two characters of such vastly different upbringing and demeanor asserting themselves, living as they wanted to live.

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