Actress Harper stays busy at 'a certain age'

Valerie Harper is a WOACA and isn't afraid to say it.

The acronym -- which stands for Woman of a Certain Age -- has been adopted as a battle cry by the former star of "Rhoda" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" as she enters her 60s.

"I think it's a huge disservice to the young to say you're peaking at 22," she says. "You should know that it's going to become fabulous. Yes, your body is going to go south but the spirit doesn't age."

These days, this WOACA has enough projects on her plate to make a woman half her age wheeze.

She is currently campaigning to lead the 90,000-member Screen Actors Guild in elections next month, and is putting together a TV movie on the life of Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck.

To top it off, Harper is appearing on Broadway for at least the next six months, replacing Linda Lavin in "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife."

"These kind of parts don't come along all the time," she says. "At this point in my career, it's not about building a career. It's continuing one."

In the play, Harper plays Marjorie, an angst-ridden WOACA who has a comfy Manhattan life with a sweet husband and a hell-on-wheels mother. When an old friend visits, everything changes.

Harper says joining the existing ensemble -- which includes Tony Roberts, Michele Lee, and Shirl Bernheim -- was daunting.

"The idea was I had to jump on this fast-moving vehicle," she says. So Harper did something she rarely does: She memorized the lines alone in Los Angeles before refining her performance with the others. "I didn't want to go out there and ruin wonderful timing and things that the other actors had already found."

According to producer Daryl Roth, the transition has been smooth mainly because of Harper's TV days.

"She just walks on stage and people love her. She doesn't need to win them over but she does anyway," Roth says. "She's wonderfully warm and extremely accessible and very friendly. She's kind of Rhoda."

The role of tart-tongued Rhoda Morgenstern, of course, was what made Harper a star. People still stop her on the street as if she were the single woman who lived upstairs from Mary Richards on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

Harper won three consecutive Emmys (1971-73) as supporting actress on "Mary" plus another for outstanding lead actress for the spin-off "Rhoda," which ran from 1974-78.

"Rhoda Morgenstern gave a wonderful impetus and propulsion to my career," she says. The character also foreshadowed the emergence of other shows featuring single, thirtysomething working women.

Now Harper finds herself playing another woman from New York with a tiny, overbearing mother. She notes that even the messages of "Rhoda" and "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife" are similar.

"Get into life and enjoy it," she says. "Just stop with the white knuckles and relax. Be OK with yourself."

That theme also permeates Harper's recent book: a collection of humorous stories and aphorisms titled "Today I Am a Ma'am." It takes its name from a scene on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" in which Mary recounts in horror that, for the first time, a young man has just called her ma'am.

The book tackles the lighter side of hot flashes and wrinkles, even as it lampoons clothes manufacturers who offer a size zero and greeting cards that invariably mention sagging body parts in the mature women section.

"I don't like to live in the good old days," Harper says. "I'm a believer that this is the best day -- this one right now."