Valerie Harper has starred in well over a dozen TV-movies, appeared on and off Broadway and had roles in a handful of feature films, but it is as Rhoda Morgenstern, Mary Tyler Moore's Bronx-born, no-nonsense, comic sidekick with which the audience most connected and for which she will always be remembered. The Rhoda Morgenstern of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (CBS, 1970-74) was overweight (at least during the first season), man-hungry, and Jewish--the perfect foil for Moore's WASPy apple-pie persona. The audience loved the character so much that CBS gave Harper her own show, "Rhoda" (1974-78).
