‘Rhoda’ Actress Has Cancer
Valerie Harper Image by getty images
Actress Valerie Harper best known as wise-cracking neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern on television’s “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, People magazine reported on Wednesday.
Doctors told Harper, 73, on Jan. 15 that she had as little as three months left to live after a battery of tests revealed she has leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, according to People. The rare condition occurs when cancer cells spread into the fluid-filled membrane surrounding the brain.
Harper previously battled lung cancer in 2009 and discussed that challenge in her new memoir “I, Rhoda.”
Aside from playing Moore’s neighbor on the 1970s TV sitcom, Harper is best known as the star of her own TV series “Rhoda” and her Tony-nominated portrayal of Broadway legend Tallulah Bankhead in the play “Looped.”
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
