Last night I saw an old Mary Tyler Moore Show episode where Louise Lasser played a bank employee, explaining to Mary why she couldn’t take money out of her own account. (Mary tied it up in a long term saving type account). Then later on she was on Taxi playing Alex’s wife.
So I got to thinking about her. I loved her in Mary Hartman and she was so hysterical in It’s A Living (it was retitled the second year as Making A Living when Louise was in it).
I really think she is quite the under-appreciated actress. Anyone else feel this way. I know she has had problems with drugs and such in the past, but for her comic ability I think she’s underrated.
She had a lost couple of decades–her SNL appearance defined “train wreck”–but her scene in The Mystery Men (as the Blue Rajah’s mother) totally redeemed the movie, IMO.
Supposedly Lasser’s SNL appearance is one of the few shows (along with Milton Berle’s show) that Lorne Michaels would never allow to be shown in reruns. Although I think it does appear on the recent DVD releases.
It was in the very first season, 1975. Lasser was high/drunk out of her mind for most of the week that she hosted, doing things like crawling around on her hands and knees through the SNL offices, looking for pot. She got into a huge fight with Lorne Michaels shortly before the show was to go on the air and said that she wouldn’t do the show unless a certain skit was cut. The cast was actually dividing up her parts amongst themselves and preparing to do the show without a host, when Lasser was finally persuaded to come out of her dressing room and do the show. Which turned out about as well as you’d expect under the circumstances. (I know this only from other reports, not having seen it myself.)
Didn’t know the backstory, but it really was that bad.
Favorite “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” moment: Mary (Lasser) is rescued from a hostage situation and is obviously panicked, scared, and confused. Someone asks if someone could provide her with a Valium. Everyone in the crowd holds up a prescription bottle.
Louise Lasser and Paula Prentiss were actresses with great comic timing who all but disappeared after the '70s. I would watch anything that either appeared in.
Prentiss was hotter, despite my fixation on redheads. She has Sally Kellerman’s voice while being even prettier. She saw what was cool about being a housewife vs a movie/TV star so she chose the former. The hours are great and the time sitting around waiting for something to happen are actually SHORTER (I figured out being a professional actor blew more than working at McDonalds a few years ago).
Well, he’s been romantically involved with most of his leading ladies, so that doesn’t come as too big a surprise.
I was too young to really “get” MHMH so I mostly know her from his films with her–particularly Bananas, which I could never watch enough when I was a kid.
