Julie Kavner: 50 Years a Star

It’s Julie Kavner’s birthday as I type this (b. 1950), but we’re also a couple of days shy of a second benchmark — 50 years since many of us have known who she is.

Rhoda premiered on September 9, 1974. 24 year old Kavner made an immediate splash as Rhoda’s ascerbic, funny kid sister Brenda. This will always be the first thing I think of when Kavner’s name is mentioned, in spite of her having gone onto much bigger things. I was a kid in 1974! First impressions are very formitive. But with that raspy voice and a personality that is both earthy and warm at the same time (kind hearted but frank to the point of rudeness) Kavner was a stand-out. Because of her manner, and because the show was set in NYC, one tends to think of her as a New Yorker, but she is a native L.A. person. After finishing Beverly Hills High and San Diego State she got the Rhoda gig almost immediately. Her first professional job put her on the map, a testament to the real true fact that if you’re not lucky enough to be conventionally stunning in the looks department, second best is to be a really distinctive character. I can’t think of anyone of her generation remotely like her. (David Davis, co-creator of Rhoda, was such a fan that he married her in 1976. The pair remained hitched until his death in 2022.)

The flip side of uniqueness, of course, is that people assume you can only do one thing. After Rhoda wrapped in 1978, Kavner experienced a lean period of nearly a decade, during which she worked, but in under-the-rader stuff. She starred in three tv movies: No Other Love (1979, in which she and Richard Thomas of The Waltons played mentally impaired lovers), Revenge of the Stepford Wives (1980), and a rom-com called A Fine Romance (1983). She also had the misfortune to be in National Lampoon’s Movie Madness (1982, a notorious bomb) and the Steve Guttenbergcomedy Bad Medicine (1985). And she played Tony Danza’s sister in a 1980 episode of Taxi , which was produced, like Rhoda, byJames L. Brooks.

The two things happened to put her back on top again. In 1986, Woody Allen cast her in a small supporting role in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). This was followed by a much larger role in Radio Days (1987), and parts in New York Stories (1989), Alice (1990), Shadows and Fog (1991), the remake of Don’t Drink the Water (1994), Deconstructing Harry (1997) and his 2011 stage play Honeymoon Hotel.

At the same time, Kavner became a cast regular on the Brooks-produced The Tracey Ullman Show (1987-1990) followed by the Tracey Takes On…series for HBO (1996-99). Always prized for her ability to improvise she held her own in sketches with Ullman, Dan Castellaneta, and others. (Counterintuivitely, Kavner is NOT in the one magical team-up between Woody Allen and Tracey Ullman, 2000’s Small Time Crooks. Go figure!) At any rate, Kavner and Castellaneta et al were cast in animated segments that became the monster hit The Simpsons (1989). In case you’ve been living on the rocky surface of Pluto, Kavner voices Marge Simpson and her sisters Patty and Selma. It’s all pretty much the same voice, but that’s kind of the joke of it — and that voice was MADE for animation.

Success breeds success, so Kavner’s prominence in these roles led to other parts. You can see her in Penny Marshall’sAwakenings (1990), Nora Ephron’s This is My Life (1992, her only starring role), James L. Brooks’ I’ll Do Anything (1994), Billy Crystal’sForget Paris (1995), Betty Thomas’s 1998 Dr. Doolittle remake with Eddie Murphy, the award winning Judy Berlin (1999, Madeline Kahn’s last movie), and Adam Sandler’sClick (2006).

I wish we could celebrate a Rhoda reunion this year, but the sad fact is that Kavner is the only principal cast member remaining, Valerie Harper,Nancy Walker, Harold Gould, and David Groh all having departed some time ago. On the other hand, after 35 years The Simpsons is still with us, and remarkably the entire cast is not only still alive but still on the show!