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The Kitten’s Name Was Mimsie

A recent post about Mary Tyler Moore by MN 70’s got me thinking about the famous MTM logo the company used at the end of each show.

In the standard version of the logo, as first used on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mimsie appears in a crouched position, looks up at the camera, and meows once. Mimsie would not meow for the camera crew, so they eventually used footage of her yawning, run in reverse, with the sound effect added. By the 1980s, there were many different variants of the logo, with Mimsie often appearing in different painted “costumes" corresponding to the style and theme of the particular programs. For the detective series Remington Steele, a Sherlock Holmes-esque stalking cap and pipe were added; The White Shadow featured a basketball with Mimsie; Hill Street Blues painted a police uniform hat onto Mimsie’s head; St. Elsewhere used a surgical mask; in contrast, Newhart kept the original, unadorned footage, but replaced the sound effect with Bob Newhart’s voice-over of “meow" in his trademark deadpan style.

A parody of the roaring Leo the Lion mascot (who appeared at the beginning and ending of the Metro-Goldwyn Mayer films) the “MTM" kitty concluded each episode with a sweet but timid “Meow.“ According to her biography After All (Dell Publishing, 1995) Mary Tyler Moore recalled how MTM was very similar to MGM Studios corporate name. With that in mind, producer Allan Burns said “MTM’s a small company so we could have an orange kitten meow in the same setting as their lion. A few days later, a visit to the local animal shelter produced the kitten that would roar. After her foray into show business, the kitten lived the remainder of its life in the San Fernando Valley home of an MTM staffer.” Mimsey was born in 1968 and died in 1988.

post information via Daily Kitten, Wikipedia, and youtube video by mcydodge919