Culture

Les Nessman Deserves a Statue

Clayton Trutor

I once saw a group of Badgers dry humping Mary Tyler Moore in broad daylight in Downtown Minneapolis. It was a football Saturday in the Twin Cities and some visiting Wisconsin fans were taking liberties, and pictures, with the life-sized, though frighteningly petite statue of the WJM-TV anchor on Nicolet Mall. While Mary tried throwing her hat into the wind, half of Madison tried unmentionable things on the unmarried thirty-something. It looked something like the group hug on the last episode of the series.

What surprised me the most about the incident was not that a sausage party of Sconnies were taking the edge off before their Metrodome showdown with their hated, though underachieving rival, the Minnesota Golden Gophers. I was surprised that none of the locals rose to defend the statue’s honor. Mary Richards, Moore’s character on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, is easily the most iconic Minneapolis-based character to ever grace the small screen. Her hat toss from the show’s opening credits might be the most memorable event in the history of the state.

Several groups of maroon and gold clad Golden Gophers fans passed the assault in progress. A couple of Gophers fans made offhand comments about the sexual orientation of Wisconsin’s mascot, Bucky Badger, but none of them stopped to help the statue that could turn the world on with a smile.

Minneapolis isn’t the only city to commemorate one of its television icons with a statue. A half day’s drive away in Milwaukee, a recently unveiled statue of the Fonz adorns the city’s magnificent waterfront. Mary shouldn’t feel too badly. She isn’t the only one that’s underappreciated. Word on the street is that Milwaukeeans could care less about the bronze Fonz. Tourists who stumble upon the lifelike rendering of Henry Winkler often snap a picture, but the new statue has hardly become a fixture of the city’s cultural life.

The indifference of Upper Midwesterners to their TV star statues surprises me. I guess citizens of Minneapolis and Milwaukee feel like the statues pigeonhole their cities. They essentialize what it means to be an inhabitant of either community. This may be so, but I don’t think the statues essentialize the experiences of life in Minneapolis or Milwaukee in a bad way. Both statues project a positive image of their respective cities. Moore’s character is a feminist icon. She is an attractive, unmarried woman who excels in the working world. She finds fulfillment in her job and takes advantage of all the social and cultural amenities the city has to offer. Mary Tyler Moore’s Minneapolis is a safe, welcoming, progressive city.

Milwaukee, in the hands of the Fonz, is the embodiment of leather-clad 1950s American cool. In the hometown of Harley Davidson, appeals to a particularly American kind of cool should be particularly resonant. It is clear that Milwaukee’s city fathers were thinking the same thing when they commissioned a statue of Arthur Fonzarelli. Laverne and Shirley was just as popular as Happy Days, the show from which it spun-off in 1976. It certainly put more effort into depicting the day-to-day lives of Milwaukeeans than the dream-like suburban landscape of Happy Days. And that’s exactly why Henry Winkler got a statue over Penny Marshall or Cindy Williams. Laverne and Shirley are too blue-collar, too common in their tastes. No tourist bureau would get behind a statue that might lead to a flare-up of the old Midwestern, flyover country cultural insecurity. Maybe this would constitute the kind of pigeonholing I mentioned earlier, but maybe not. Maybe the people of Milwaukee would embrace a statue which at least aimed to reflect the experiences of working people in the city.

Pigeonholing or not, I can’t imagine a city which served as the setting for a hit television show not following Minneapolis and Milwaukee’s lead and throwing up a statue of one of the characters. This might not work for New York or Los Angeles as every public space in both cities would be filled with bronzed depictions of their dozens of noteworthy television characters. If you’re Cincinnati on the other hand, why not commission a statue of a bandaged Les Nessman for one of the city parks? Like it or not, when most people think of your city, they think of its Les Nessman or Niles Crane (Seattle) or Mork from Ork (Boulder). Scranton has certainly parlayed the success of The Office into greater national visibility. People who’ve never been to the long contracting rust belt city get a warm feeling when they think about the hometown of those crazy cats at Dunder Mifflin. If you’ve ever had a hit show set in your city, at least your city has some cultural cachet. That’s more than Houston can say.