Valerie Harper and Dick Schaal

During a break in the first rehearsals of Rhoda, ValerieHarper slipped next door to the set of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, out at CBS's television complex in Studio City. 

"When I saw that familiar apartment, I felt at home. This is my safe space, my cradle, my nest. I miss the whole thing so badly.  Was I a dope to leave?

"Valerie Harper has swapped safe space for star space. They asked her what color she wanted her trailer dressing-room decorated, now that she
was a star.

"Any color at all," she sang out, "just so long as it's burnt orange, brown and yellow."
 

She's junked the cradle, flown the nest. Her salary has also flown-up from a measly $5000 a week as Mary Tyler Moore's neighbor to not quite $20,000 a week as the star of her own show. She owns a piece of Rhoda. She has her
own secretary. The ugly duckling is now a swan. Minneapolis Fats is Manhattan Svelte.

Maybe she was a dope to leave.
 

Valerie Harper fights stardom the way other people fight poverty. "Why am I pretending to be a star?" she asked rhetorically the other day. "I'll never be a star. Mary is a star. John Wayne is a star. I feel good about Rhoda, but I've left something terrific."
 

She's left the nest. The problem of fleeing the nest is ancient with Valerie Harper. When she was a kid, her mother kept pushing her to do things on her own. "I'd say, 'Mom, I can't do that by myself'." Her mother told her she could, so she did, but she never believed. She still doesn't.
 

"My manager tries to convince me that I'm supposed to be a star," she told writer Peggy Hudson. "Ha! That makes me laugh."
 

Her old roommate from Valerie's stage days in New York, Iva Rifkin,says, "There's no star syndrome with Valerie."
 

MTM Enterprises, Inc., the producing company that created Rhoda, wanted to call the new show The Valerie Harper Show. Valerie refused. "It's not about
me. I want to stay separate from Rhoda."
 

She can't. The two merge into one.  Of the character Rhoda, Valerie says, "She's not a winner, but she's not a total loser either. She has a weight problem. She can gain 10 pounds in a weekend. I can do it. Valerie can do it."
 

She pinpoints one difference between Rhoda and herself.
 

"Rhoda is Jewish. I'm not." Then she quickly adds: "In my heart, I'm Jewish."
 

In her head, she frets. She frets over everything-her figure, her weight, her age, a litany of self-deprecation. She even deprecates the new house in Westwood she and husband Dick Schaal bought a year ago, when she knew she was going to do Rhoda and suddenly could afford a $92,000 home. It's the first house they've owned in 10 years of marriage.
 

"It's like the apartments we used to rent, except it has more closets. We're remodeling it. A decorator took one look and said, 'This house has no personality.' When I first saw the living room, I knew it was ugly. We're fighting
a high-rise project behind us. Maybe we should have stayed in the old rental."
 

She now has her own studio to work in, but naturally that would be pretentious. "I work in my bedroom. It's a mess. I dry my hair, read my scripts, do my nails, all in bed. It's my Linus blanket, working in bed."
 

She's a born knocker. She knocks her new figure. "Let's face it. I'm fat here," patting her hips. "I weigh 130.  Once I hit 125 during a hiatus. I want to weigh 122, 123, so I have a few pounds to fudge with. I'm fat in my head."
 

She inventories herself briefly. "Too much in the caboose. The calves are good. They'll do. You ain't Juliet Prowse, so you work with what you've got."
 

She frets over her age, tries not to reveal it. "I'm in my early 30s," she says. "Between 30 and 35. Write it like that. It's true." Finally she relents. "I'm 34." Pause. "Almost." She was 34 on Aug. 22.
 

"The market value of actors goes down as you get older. A 16-year-old is better than a 19-year-old. We are pieces of meat. But we mustn't regard ourselves as such. People see me as a product, a box of corn flakes. I fight not to be a product."
 

She fights also not to be a star.  Valerie recently made a movie, with Alan Arkin and James Caan, "Freebie and the Bean." Arkin is the Bean, a Mexican-American cop. Valerie plays his Chicano wife.
 

"I loved the role. It wasn't me." Naturally she tried to give the role back.  She suggested to the producers they'd do better if they hired someone of Mexican descent. The producers assured her they wanted Valerie Harper. She phoned the Screen Actors Guild, and asked whether it was kosher for an Anglo to play a Mexican-American. Finally satisfied she wasn't going to rupture the Good Neighbor Policy, she signed on. They shot the film in San Francisco. What did Valerie do up in America's most exciting city, when they weren't shooting?
 

"I visited my mother."
 

A quick leap to Rhoda. In the season's second episode, Rhoda's guy, Joe, decides to attend a Knicks basketball game instead of spending an evening with Rhoda.
 

"What will you do instead?" her sister Brenda asks.
 

"I'll go see Mom," Rhoda says.
 

Valerie Harper remains close to both her mother and father, who divorced when she was 17. She grew up on the move.  Her father was a lighting contractor who trained the company's salesmen, so the Harpers bounced between Suffern, N.Y.; Northampton, Mass.; South Orange, N.J.; Altadena,
Cal.; Ashland, Ore.; and Monroe, Mich.; with shorter stops in between. Other things made for a bouncy upbringing. To satisfy her mother, she was raised as a Catholic, but after a spell at a parochial school in Michigan, she dropped out of school and church.
 

"My father was an agnostic, with a little Protestant around the edges. We had a lot of Darwin in the house. As a kid I spent my time hiding from boys. I was the vestal virgin type. I've made up for lost time since."

While at high school in New Jersey, she danced at Radio City Music Hall, and later got chorus jobs in Broadway musicals. In 1964, she met actor Dick Schaal, fresh from a divorce and with a 9-year-old daughter; and even faster than Rhoda marries Joe (fresh from a divorce, with a 10-year-old son), she married Schaal, four weeks later.

In 1969, the Schaals moved to Los Angeles. Weighing 150 pounds, she read for the part of Rhoda Morgenstern and landed the role of the brassy up-stairs neighbor and best friend.

In four years, she won three Emmys; the spinoff to her own show was inevitable. From a loser she's become awinner. Of sorts. At Rhoda, they've dared do something you seldom see in television situation comedy. Girl meets boy, girl marries boy right off. At first Valerie wasn't sure she liked the idea of Rhoda's marrying Joe.
 

"I'd discuss it on plane flights with the stewardesses. 'Don't marry him,' they said. But with the network taboo against people living together, if I was going to be with him, I had to marry him."

Now she's middling happy with the idea. The marriage represents a progression in the life of Rhoda Morgenstern. Valerie Harper explains:
 

"Men and women are on this earth to play together in every way. Here's somebody she can really connect with.  In the past, you always saw me with a schlump. At first you saw me fat.  Then you saw me dating losers. Then I'd date a winner, but he'd break off, tell me he didn't love me. And Rhoda would say, 'At least this time I'm not being loved by a better class of guy.'  On this show, Rhoda has more self-worth. She's 33, marriage is something she's not done, and she just adores Joe. So they marry."

Naturally Valerie frets over the future of the marriage. "Rhoda probably thinks -- 'I can always get a divorce'."

Valerie's own progression has been similar these same four-plus years. She has magically slimmed down, helped out by Weight Watchers in the third year of the show. She's evolved into a gorgeous woman, lustrous dark brown hair, large green eyes, excellent figure, despite those pounds in the caboose. She's open and warm, a touchy-feely girl who likes to place a friendly hand on your arm. Nearsighted, she often forgets to wear her contact lenses, which makes her sit even closer to company. Nobody complains. She never wears her contacts before a live audience when she films Rhoda. "I can't see anybody out there. All I see is a big smile."

She likes to be liked. "That's one reason why I act. I'm saying, 'Look at me.' Babies do it in the cradle. They say, 'Look at me. I'm here.' I have a need to be looked at."

She also has Rhoda to fret over. "I don't worry about me. I worry about coping with stardom. I worry about the responsibility. All those people's jobs. If the show doesn't make it, they're out of work."

She worries whether she's disciplined enough for stardom. "I have a desire to goof off. I'm not disciplined.  Look at Mary! Look at how she does crossword puzzles. I hate crossword puzzles. She's disciplined. She's a star.  I hate to put things into little boxes."  Naturally she has her old problems to fret over as well. "The hardest part," she says, "is not eating all that Danish pastry around the set."

So some things don't change. The first night of filming Rhoda, a live audience gave the cast a standing ovation.  People pressed up to Valerie to tell her the future was unlimited. After Rhoda, she could write her own ticket; another series, perhaps, or stardom in big films, solid stage roles.
 

How does she see herself, in those future years?

"Continually dieting," says Valerie Harper.