TV Mother, Reluctant Film Star

Her graduating class of the Professional Children’s School in May 1936 included Florence Halop, later of TV’s Night Court, Jackie Kelk, later of radio’s The Aldrich Family, and Peter Donald, later the battling Irishman Ajax Cassidy in Allen’s Alley. Donald received a medal for mastering French. He had already appeared on Broadway.

Also among the 34 grads was a young lady called Nan Barto. You’ll probably know her better under a different name.

Nancy Walker.

To some, Walker came out of nowhere to play Rhoda Morgenstern’s meddling mother on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It was only natural she would continue the role on a regular basis when Rhoda was spun off into her own sitcom.

But Walker had been around show biz long before that

Her first major piece of publicity was amusing, although maybe not altogether complimentary. Leonard Lyons wrote about her in his column of March 13, 1937. There’s some age-shaving going on here as Walker was 14 at the time.

JUST A HAM TO HER
Dewey Barto of Barto & Mann is the father of Nan Barto, 8 years old—who refuses to wash her hands. "Look," he reasoned with her, "your father is a big star, and it's shameful for a big star's daughter to have dirty hands. If anybody asks you why, you answer: ‘My father is a big star, so I must wash my hands'’' . . . Two days later he discovered that his lesson had been ineffective. He took her across the street from the Paradise restaurant, showed her the sign "Barto & Mann," and stated: "See that? Your father's name is up there in lights. As the daughter of a star, you must wash your hands." Again he admonished, "If anybody asks you why, you answer ‘My father big star, so I must wash my hands’, Now tell me, Nan anybody asks you, what'll you say?" "I'll say: ‘My father," Nan replied, ‘is ham!’"

Four years later, Walker was no longer Nan Barto, and was appearing on Broadway. Columnist George Tucker had this to say on October 28, 1941:

D'ju get a load of that Nancy Walker kid in "Best Foot Forward?" Her pop's the little half of Barto and Mann, in ‘Hellzapoppin,’ and I understand she "was born in a trunk (figuratively) and has been trouping around with the old man ever since. This is Nancy’s first stage assignment and the reason she clicked is that the Abbott office liked her but not having a part for her, said, "Look, kid, you're a blind date—now make people believe it!" She just acted natural-like, she claims; loves to face audiences; doesn't want to go Hollywood because her ambition is to be the "No-Glamour Girl of the Year'." Doesn't use make-up. "It doesn’t do any good. Age 19.

Edwin Schallert’s column in the Los Angeles Times of Dec. 11, 1941 reported MGM had signed her to a contract. So much for no to Hollywood.

Metro found films for her to appear in, but Walker wasn’t happy. Let’s jump ahead to a Times feature story of January 10, 1954.

Nancy Walker Returns to Films
‘The Boys Have Gotten to Work,’ Star Finds After 10-Year Absence
BY PHILIP K. SCHEUER
When I went out to meet the "Look, Ma, I'm Dancin’!” girl, darned if that wasn't what she was doin'—dancin’. The studio was Warner Bros, and the picture was "Lucky Me." Nancy Walker was kicking up her heels with Doris Day, Phil Silvers and Eddie Foy Jr. in a number entitled "The Bluebells of Broadway" (“Oh, where, tell me where, has my Highland laddie gone? He's gone to join that jazz band up on 52nd St.”).
It was Nancy's first Hollywood film stint in a decade, and she returns to find herself CinemaScoped. When I asked what changes she has noted here, she retorted promptly, "More population—and less sham! The boys have gotten to work."
She was under long-term contract to MGM for years, the studio having spotted her in "Best Foot Forward," the college musical, and hustled her out to do a repeat in the movie version. At the same time she doubled into "Girl Crazy"—and then was left idle for a year. "Broadway Rhythm" followed, but Nancy couldn't stand the all-or-nothing pace and said so, loudly.
"If you love it" she explained, "seven years can go by like seven minutes; but if you hate it, it seems a whole lifetime. I screamed a lot so they let me out.
Couldn't Stand Pace
"I was also unhappy within myself," she confessed. "I was fresh from New York and 19, and I couldn't stand the tempo of work out here. It drove me nutty: ‘Hurry up!’—and then you sit for six months. Every chance I had I'd get back to Toots Shor's Restaurant in New York; in fact that's where I took my studio calls!
"There's a very different feeling on this lot; the tempo seems right. Besides, when you get older—I'm 31—you start to mellow a bit. Not only that. My part's more restrained in this; tamer. I'm finally out of college. People used to seeing me wearing pompons and Peter Pan collars are due for a shock."
Even before departing MGM for keeps, Nancy sneaked back to Broadway and "On the Town," a hit. "Look, Ma, I'm Dancin'!"—an even bigger one for her—established her as a star. A period ensued during which she lost her voice—"partly a mental block, maybe"—but it was restored through the ministrations of David Craig, a good-looking young vocal coach recommended by friends. Nancy was so delighted she married him. (A brief, earlier union with Actor Gar Moore didn't pan out.)
She became Mrs. Craig on Jan. 29, 1951. A daughter, Miranda, was born last June, and both Miranda and David have been here with her in recent weeks.
Appeared in “Pal Joey"
Nancy's most recent Broadway play before her arrival at Warners was the revival of "Pal Joey." It was Jack Donohue, the dance director who becomes a full-fledged director with "Lucky Me," who persuaded the studio to sign her for this initial effort of his.
"At first I said I couldn't accept because I was going to have the baby," Nancy recalled. "But they kept postponing the starting date for so long that the baby was born anyway—early. When I did come out in September, they sent me back! "I finally went to work Oct. 1."
Resembles Judy Garland
Nancy, who has slimmed down to 110, bears a greater resemblance to Judy Garland offscreen than on. She is 4 feet 11 inches tall (or small), has black eyes and brown hair and a voice a good deal like Judy's in tone and inflection. "I don't think I'm like her all," she sighs, "but I get it all the time."
She was born Nan Barto, daughter of one-half the vaudeville team of Barto and Mann, in Philadelphia in 1922, and has spent practically all her life backstage. In 1950 she came all the way out here especially to appear in a comedy, "Horace," which she had tried out at the Princeton Playhouse. It had a short-lived run at Las Palmas Theater, after which she hastened back to Manhattan and her husband-to-be.
With no new plays or pictures in immediate prospect (though she has "kept busy on TV. till I'm blue in the face,”) Nancy anticipates an early voyage to England and the stage there.
"Compared to New Yorkers, the English have a far greater appreciation of personalities, rather than simply the quality of a play—a more civilized approach. I don't mean by this that I want to be good in bad plays, but you get the idea. In New York," she concluded, "they either love you or loathe you—which makes you either a star or a bum."

At the risk of a verbose post, let’s jump ahead again. Walker (rightfully so) garnered an Emmy nomination for her debut guest performance as Ida Morganstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Producers would have been nuts not to include her in a Rhoda spin-off in 1974. But it seems, before that happened, Walker was known to people mainly for something other than series television. This story from the King Features Syndicate was published around August 1, 1973.

Nancy Walker Among Those Wasting Talent
By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD—The waste of talent in this town is a subject no one likes to dwell upon because contemplation leads to deep drink, depression and maniacal freeway driving.
The problem has always been around. The amount of high-grade material is skimpy compared to the number of hungry, skilled performers. And too many artists sit because Hollywood doesn't know how to use them properly.
A good example is Nancy Walker, the Broadway sketch comedienne who is now on TV doing towel commercials out of a diner and playing the maid Mildred on "McMillan & Wife," and Mrs. Morgenstern on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."
Hollywood producers have never really known what to do with Nancy ever since the funny little fighter with the snapping jaw arrived at MGM in 1943, along with June Allyson, fresh from George Abbott's Broadway hit, "Best Foot Forward." A hot 19 at the time, but trained by the best including her father, Dewey Barto of vaudeville's Barto and Mann, Nancy pattered around in "Girl Crazy," "On the "Broadway Rhythm" and Metro's version of "Best Foot"—her humor and timing always completely wasted.
Looking back recently, Nancy shudders. "What do you do when the biggest studio in the world says, 'Come to us!’ Do you say, 'Justa sec'?
"I used to try to get out of my Metro contract and sneak back to New York where I belonged in the theater, but my agent kept renewing my option. So I sat, and drove to the beach at night to keep my sanity."
After five years of client badgering agent with pleas to let her out, the option was finally dropped by the moguls. "And my agent was upset,” Nancy added. "Then it occurred to me, nobody listens out here."
The 30-year puzzlement over what to do with Nancy Walker continues but with a shade more insight. "I think 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' comes the closest to me with the role of Rhoda's mother. I've only done three shows which isn't much but people talk about Mrs. Morgenstern as if I were on all the time. We have a good one being filmed in August. Mary and Rhoda come to New York for the marriage of Rhoda's sister."
Last year as maid Mildred, Nancy appeared in all eight episodes of "McMillan & Wife," and will do another batch this season with her good friend Hudson whom she calls Roy.
"I love that show," she said. "Everyone is so pleasant. I was asked in the beginning to take a chance in the small part. My role is well defined. It's the wasp and the elephant.”
Asked if she ever knew a maid with Mildred's bite, Nancy said, "I had one in the theater who drove me up the wall. She would come in with a beauty every night. 'Oh you have a new dress. Aren't you the selfish one! Always buying things for yourself.’
"The little sweetheart was once Bea Lillie's maid," the comedienne continued. "And she knew how to stick the knife in with lines like 'I never did like that second act.’ Bea finally wrote a great sketch based on the charmer." Nancy recently made use of the character while taping a musical segment of the forthcoming Carroll O'Connor special. She plays the wardrobe mistress who tells O'Connor to mind his own business when he comes backstage to learn his daughter (Barbara Sharma) is appearing in a nudie.
The Walker towel commercial, seen everywhere in the country except California, is the chief source of the comedienne's fame these days.
"I'm the lady who runs a diner and keeps telling you how great the towels are," said Nancy. "There's little variance, but I've done 15-a-year for three years and have just signed for another three. I fly back to New York, and we go out to a New Jersey diner and shoot all day. Don't ask me why we go to Jersey. All I know is that when I'm in New York, and I'm shopping with my daughter, Miranda, salesladies look up, say and call for Mabel. I'm mobbed because of the towel thing."
With revues out of fashion, few sketch material writers around, and fewer comedy directors, Nancy must go with the times and take bits in TV, and in films like “40 Carats." Asked about concocting a show of her own, since nobody else knows what to do with her talents, Nancy acknowledged that she had been thinking about it. She might also go into comedy directing, having filmed an ABC pilot with England's Frankie Howard.
"I won't attempt anything unless I know I can do it well. If I know I'll do it badly I won't try. And the problem with television is that you don't have time, and that's why it's often distressing."
Nancy paused, then concluded. "The whole world's mediocre, why not TV!"

Judging by her failed sitcom Blansky’s Beauties and a director’s job in the ridiculous Village People movie Can’t Stop the Music!, Hollywood still had problems figuring out what to do with Walker. But overall, she had recognition and a long, steady track record on stage, films and television. That should be pleasing to any star.