Dick Van Dyke to Present SAG’s 48th Life Achievement Award to Mary Tyler Moore at the 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards

Photo Credit: Kevin Mazur

Dick Van Dyke will present Screen Actors Guild’s 48th Life Achievement Award to Mary Tyler Moore at the 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards®, executive producer and director Jeff Margolis announced today.

Screen Actors Guild is honoring Mary Tyler Moore for her career achievement and humanitarian accomplishments. Past recipients of SAG’s Life Achievement Award include Ernest Borgnine, Betty White, James Earl Jones, Charles Durning, Julie Andrews, Shirley Temple Black, James Garner, Karl Malden, Clint Eastwood, Edward Asner, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, Kirk Douglas, Elizabeth Taylor, Angela Lansbury, Robert Redford and George Burns.

The 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards®, one of the awards season’s premier events, will be simulcast live coast-to-coast on TNT and TBS on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012, at 8 p.m. (ET) / 5 p.m. (PT) from the Shrine Exposition Center in Los Angeles. An encore primetime telecast will begin immediately following on TNT at 10 p.m. (ET) / 7 p.m. (PT).  The ceremony will also be telecast internationally, as well as to U.S. military installations overseas through the American Forces Network Broadcast Center.

The SAG Awards® nominations in five film and eight television categories will be revealed on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011, telecast live on TNT and webcast live on tnt.tv and tbs.com at 9 a.m. (ET) / 6 a.m. (PT).  Nominations for the SAG Honors for film and television stunt ensembles will also be webcast live at 8:50 a.m. (ET) / 5:50 a.m. (PT) on tnt.tv and tbs.com.
   
Film and television legends Moore and Van Dyke first made history together when they were cast as suburban couple Rob and Laura Petrie in Van Dyke’s eponymous sitcom based on the experiences of comedy writer Carl Reiner. The series broke new ground in television and is said to have ushered in the golden age of the situation comedy. Adored by audiences and critics alike, the series earned four Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy® Awards during the show’s five-year run, three Emmys for Van Dyke and two Emmys and a nomination for Moore.

In 1969, Van Dyke and Moore reunited for a one-hour variety special called Dick Van Dyke and the Other Woman. They joined forces again in a 1979 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Hour reprising their roles as the Petries in a tongue-in-cheek comedic sketch. Other notable collaborations by the famously funny TV spouses include a PBS version of D. L. Coburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning nursing home-set stage play “The Gin Game,” as well as a reunion with former cast mates in TV Land’s nostalgic “The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited.”

After the series ended, Van Dyke went on to star in such classic feature films as “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” “Mary Poppins,” “The Comic” and “Dick Tracy.” Over the years, he continued his work on network television starring in “The New Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Van Dyke and Company” (for which he received his fourth Emmy) and a critically-acclaimed, Emmy-nominated dramatic performance in the made-for-television movie “The Morning After.”  In his fifth decade in television, Van Dyke starred in the 1990s prime time series “Diagnosis Murder” for CBS.  He returned to his Broadway roots in productions of “Bye Bye Birdie” and “A Dancers Life,” and most recently penned a New York Times best-selling memoir “My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.”

Moore showed her range as a ‘triple threat’ following the Dick Van Dyke Show with co-starring roles opposite Julie Andrews in the film musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” Elvis Presley in “Change of Habit” and her television movie debut in the drama “Run A Crooked Mile.”

She formed a production company, MTM, with her then husband Grant Tinker and created the groundbreaking comedy “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” chronicling the career, friendships and dating life of a single, thirtyish, spunky, independent, career woman in the world of local TV news. With a brilliant cast, the character-driven series redefined the meaning of ensemble comedy and of family. In its seven-year run the show garnered 29 Emmys, including four for its star.  MTM Enterprises continued to produce an impressive list of landmark comedies and dramas including “The Bob Newhart Show”, “Newhart, “WKRP in Cincinnati,” “Hill Street Blues,” “The White Shadow” (starring current SAG president Ken Howard) and “St. Elsewhere.” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” yielded several successful spin-offs, including “Rhoda,” starring Valerie Harper; “Phyllis,” starring Cloris Leachman; and “Lou Grant,” starring Ed Asner (SAG’s 38th Life Achievement recipient).

Moore is a holder of seven Emmys®, a Tony® and an Academy Award® nomination, among numerous industry and philanthropic accolades. She delivered Emmy nominated performances in the telefilms “First You Cry” for her portrayal of TV correspondent Betty Rollin and “Heartsounds” opposite James Garner (SAG’s 41st Life Achievement recipient), as well as Lifetime’s “Stolen Babies” for which she won her seventh Emmy. Moore earned her Oscar® nomination for her riveting portrayal of Beth Jarrett in “Ordinary People” and continued to explore painful subject matter in the hit Broadway play “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?” for which she earned her Tony Award in her Broadway debut.

This year, on the season premiere of “Hot in Cleveland” Moore reunited onscreen with Betty White for the first time since “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” sharing a jail cell with White’s character, Elka, who was arrested in the season one cliffhanger.

Moore has published two autobiographies, “After All,” and “Growing Up Again: Life, Loves, and Oh Yeah, Diabetes.” Moore donated all her profits from “Growing Up Again” to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), the world’s leading funder and advocate for Type 1 diabetes science. Moore has been JDRF’s International Chairman since 1984, a tireless advocate to increase funding for Type 1 diabetes research and support, as well as a generous supporter of JDRF’s research programs.

Among many other accolades, Moore has received the Women in Film Crystal Award, been immortalized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, presented with the American Screenwriters Association first David Angell Humanitarian Award and honored with the National Association of Broadcasters Distinguished Service Award.

The 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards will be produced by Jeff Margolis Productions in association with Screen Actors Guild Awards®, LLC. For more information about the SAG Awards, SAG, TNT and TBS, visit www.sagawards.org/about, “like” SAG Awards at www.facebook.com/sagawardsofficialpage and follow SAG Awards at www.twitter.com/sagawards.

Photo Credit: Mark Hill. Screen Actors Guild Awards®