Valerie Kathryn Harper (August 22, 1939 – August 30, 2019) was an American actress. She began her career as a dancer on Broadway, making her debut as a replacement in the musical Li'l Abner.^[2] She is best remembered for her role as Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977) and its spinoff Rhoda (1974–1978). For her work on Mary Tyler Moore, she thrice received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, and later received the award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Rhoda.

From 1986 to 1987, Harper appeared as Valerie Hogan on the sitcom Valerie, which she was fired from after two seasons. Her character was killed off, and the show was retitled Valerie's Family and eventually The Hogan Family. Actress Sandy Duncan was cast in a new role that served as a replacement for Harper's character. Her film appearances include roles in Freebie and the Bean (1974) and Chapter Two (1979), both of which garnered her Golden Globe Award nominations. She returned to stage work in her later career, appearing in several Broadway productions. In 2010, she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance as Tallulah Bankhead in the play Looped.

Harper was born on August 22, 1939, in Suffern, New York,^[3][4] the daughter of Iva Mildred (née McConnell)^[5] and Howard Donald Harper. Her father was a lighting salesman; her mother was born (and raised) in Dalmeny, Saskatchewan, before becoming a teacher and later training as a nurse. Her parents married in Alberta before her mother immigrated to the United States.^[6] Valerie was the middle child of three, between her sister Leanne and her brother Merrill, who later took the name "Don". After her parents' divorce in 1957, she also had a half-sister, Virginia,^{[citation needed]} from her father's second marriage to Angela Posillico (1933–1996).

She stated that her parents were expecting a boy. But after her arrival her first and middle names were derived from tennis players Valerie Scott and Kay Stammers who were victorious doubles partners at a tournament Harper’s father was attending the day she was born.^[7][8][9] She was of French, English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry.^[10] Harper based her character Rhoda Morgenstern on her Italian stepmother and Penny Ann Green (née Joanna Greenberg), with whom she danced in the Broadway musical Wildcat.^[11][4] She was raised Catholic,^[12] although at an early age she "quit" the church.^[13]

Her family moved every two years due to her father's work. Harper attended schools in South Orange, New Jersey; Pasadena, California; Monroe, Michigan; Ashland, Oregon; and Jersey City, New Jersey. When her family returned to Oregon, she stayed in the New York City area to study ballet. She attended Lincoln High School in Jersey City, New Jersey^[14] before graduating from the private Young Professionals School on West 56th Street, where classmates included Sal Mineo, Tuesday Weld, and Carol Lynley.^[4]

Harper's NYC roommate was Arlene Golonka.^[42]

Harper married actor Richard Schaal in 1964. They divorced in 1978, after which she had a relationship with Peter Horton.^[43] She married Tony Cacciotti in 1987,^[44] after dating for seven years, and they adopted a daughter, Cristina.^[45]

Despite playing Jewish characters such as Rhoda Morgenstern,^[46] Harper herself was not Jewish.^[46]

In 2009, Harper was diagnosed with lung cancer.^[47] She announced on March 6, 2013, that tests from a January hospital stay revealed she had leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare condition where cancer cells spread into the meninges, the membranes surrounding the brain. She explained her doctors had given her as little as three months to live.^[48] Although the disease was considered incurable, her doctors said they were treating her with chemotherapy to try to slow its progress.^[49]

In April 2014, Harper said she was responding well to the treatment.^[50] On July 30, 2015, she was hospitalized in Maine after falling unconscious, and taken via medevac to a larger hospital for further treatment.^[51][52][53] She was later discharged.^[54]

In 2016, Harper's cancer treatment continued at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and she was well enough to appear in a short film, My Mom and the Girl, based on the experiences of director/writer Susie Singer Carter, whose mother has Alzheimer's disease.^[55] In September 2017, she said: "People are saying, 'She's on her way to death and quickly'. Now it's five years instead of three months... I'm going to fight this. I'm going to see a way."^[56] At the time, she was developing a television series with Carter.^[57]

By July 2019, she was on a regimen of "a multitude of medications and chemotherapy drugs" and was experiencing "extreme physical and painful challenges" that required "around-the-clock, 24/7 care."^[58] Harper died on the morning of August 30, 2019, in Los Angeles.^[59][60]

Valerie Harper is buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.^[61]