Mary Tyler Moore started out almost a complete opposite of the character she would become known for. Her public debut in front of the camera came as a dancer – a jolly elf dancing for Hotpoint kitchen appliances. Non-commercial work was largely uncredited, and the first ever television show she was credited, playing the part of a mysterious receptionist at a detective agency, never showed her face – or anything other than her shapely legs (and husky voice.) At age 24, she began dazzling TV viewers as the wife of Dick Van Dyke, eleven years her senior. But her most famous role started ten years later, when she began playing a character not unlike herself – intelligent, determined and fiercely independent.

On this day, December 29, in 1936 Mary Tyler Moore was born, the eldest of three siblings in a Roman Catholic family. At age of eight she moved with her family from Brooklyn Heights,  New York to Los Angeles, where Moore fell right in with Hollywood.

Moore is of course best known for her eponymous show, where she played Mary Richards, a single thirty-something professional journalists. Hers was the first sitcom to feature in a lead role a woman decidedly single and not seeking a husband – whatever the Women’s Right movement accomplishments up to that point, popular culture had yet to catch up – and it apparently resonated with women of the 70s, as the Mary Tyler Moore Show became a runaway hit.