‘Rhoda’ Actress Has Cancer
Actress Valerie Harper best known as wise-cracking neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern on television’s “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, People magazine reported on Wednesday.
Doctors told Harper, 73, on Jan. 15 that she had as little as three months left to live after a battery of tests revealed she has leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, according to People. The rare condition occurs when cancer cells spread into the fluid-filled membrane surrounding the brain.
Harper previously battled lung cancer in 2009 and discussed that challenge in her new memoir “I, Rhoda.”
Aside from playing Moore’s neighbor on the 1970s TV sitcom, Harper is best known as the star of her own TV series “Rhoda” and her Tony-nominated portrayal of Broadway legend Tallulah Bankhead in the play “Looped.”
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO