This weekend I watched a cable channel tribute to Mary Tyler Moore which involved showing the final season of the MTM Show, 1976-1977, and although I remember most of the episodes, one really took me aback. I remembered S7E19 "Mary and the Sexagenarian" where Mary dates Murray's stepdad who is 68 when her character is 37. What I didn't know, because I wasn't into classic film at the time, was that the older man was played by Lew Ayres who was exactly 68 at the time! I didn't recognize him 40 years ago because I had no idea who he was.
The whole thing got kind of weird for me when I realized that if Mary really had been born in 1939, then Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare was old enough to have delivered her and given her naked behind its first spanking! Goofy mental imagery ensued.
In the end he dumps her for another 37 year old woman he had previously been dating, but he did it in that charming way Lew Ayres always had about him.
I did notice one thing the script got wrong. I think I noticed it when I saw the episode the first time too. Ayres' character is talking to an older friend of his about how they should not have voted for Hoover in 1928. But 20 year olds were not allowed to vote for president until the 1970s. Actually Herbert Hoover was not such a bad guy. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong economic theories. But that's another story.
The whole thing got kind of weird for me when I realized that if Mary really had been born in 1939, then Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare was old enough to have delivered her and given her naked behind its first spanking! Goofy mental imagery ensued.
In the end he dumps her for another 37 year old woman he had previously been dating, but he did it in that charming way Lew Ayres always had about him.
I did notice one thing the script got wrong. I think I noticed it when I saw the episode the first time too. Ayres' character is talking to an older friend of his about how they should not have voted for Hoover in 1928. But 20 year olds were not allowed to vote for president until the 1970s. Actually Herbert Hoover was not such a bad guy. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong economic theories. But that's another story.
