Valerie Harper Biography

Fast Facts

• Began ballet lessons at age 6 and was dancing in the Radio City Music Hall corps de ballet by age 16
• Appeared in several Broadway musicals, including Michael Kidd's Li'l Abner (1958) and Wildcat (1960); used her earnings to finance acting classes
• Moved with then-husband Richard Schaal from New York to Chicago in the mid-'60s so he could join the Second City comedy troupe; she later auditioned and was also accepted, beginning a five-year run with the company
• Was Linda Lavin's understudy in 1968's Something Different and their stage careers have intertwined ever since: Lavin replaced Harper in Story Theatre, and Harper replaced Lavin in 1995's Death Defying Acts and in 2001's The Tale of the Allergist's Wife
• Cast as the matriarch in Valerie in 1986; title was changed to Valerie's Family and then to The Hogan Family after she left the series in 1987 due to a contract dispute (she was replaced by Sandy Duncan)
• Cowrote and starred in All Under Heaven, a one-woman show about author Pearl S
• Buck that debuted in 1998
• Penned a memoir (with writer Catherine Whitney and illustrator Rick Tulka) in 2001 entitled Today I Am a Ma'am: And Other Musings on Life, Beauty and Growing Older