29/10/2024
50 years ago today, the wedding of the century in Manhattan. Rhoda and Joe tie the knot. 👰♀ 🤵🚖🚎🚝🛵💍💍
50 years ago today, Monday, October 28, 1974, Rhoda and Joe were married in a special hour-long episode that broke several television viewership records.
Heavily publicized, it became the highest-rated television episode of the 1970's, a record it held until the miniseries Roots claimed that achievement in 1977. Additionally, on the night of its airing it became the second-most-watched television episode of all time, surpassed only by the 1953 episode of I Love Lucy in which Little Ricky was born.
The producers originally wanted to launch the spinoff with the wedding as the very first episode, but Valerie Harper suggested that they build up to it and save the event for later in the season.
At the conclusion of the episode, Monday Night Football host Howard Cosell joked on the air that he had not been invited to the wedding, and welcomed viewers back to the game.
Hundreds of "wedding parties" were held by fans across the country on the night of the episode to celebrate the television wedding, and within days the CBS-TV studios were inundated with toasters and other wedding gifts sent in by fans.
The episode was overwhelmingly praised by critics, widely touted as a "television phenomenon, unlike anything that had happened on television for nearly twenty years," and earned Valerie her fourth Emmy in 1975.
It was reported that people across the country had pulled off the road checking into motels, and friends canceled out on dinner invitations (feigning illness), just to watch Rhoda's wedding.
Valerie Harper stated that this was her favorite episode of the entire series, “because my co-stars from Mary’s show were there!”
Ted Knight requested not to be included in the wedding episode because he didn’t want to be the butt of jokes during Rhoda’s big event. This was when he was struggling with playing a “dumb” character and was considering quitting, until producer Allan Burns convinced him to stay.
It was Georgia Engel’s own idea for Georgette to attend, driving cross-country. Her character wasn’t in the original script.
Producer and series co-creator James L. Brooks appears in a cameo during the subway sequence, which was filmed on location in New York City. He was also a guest on Mary’s show as the rabbi who remarried Rhoda’s parents, Ida and Martin Morgenstern.
Surprisingly, Rhoda’s nuptials didn’t make the cover of that week’s TV Guide; instead it was an illustration of The Waltons, but the wedding did appear on the cover of several local TV supplements from the Sunday paper.
Although “Rhoda’s Wedding” originally aired as a one-hour episode, it was later edited into two half-hour installments for syndication and the DVD release. However, the original hourlong version was used for the VHS box set, “The Very Best of Rhoda.”
There was an alternate version of the wedding scene that aired during the first batch of reruns which included closeups of Mary Richards looking misty-eyed during the nuptials. This version hasn’t been seen since the early 1980s.
