Betty White is still ready
Scott D. Pierce
Actors a quarter her age wish they could get that much work.
But, at the age of 85, the television legend isn't ready to call it quits. The R-word is not in her vocabulary.
"I don't know what retirement is," White told TV critics back in July. "I just can't imagine what retiring would be, unless it was with somebody I cared a great deal about.
"I haven't retired with anybody in — what time is it?" she joked.
White quoted her old friend Carol Burnett on the subject of retirement.
"She said, 'You know how in a mystery play, when they open the door there's a skeleton hanging on the door and it rattles?"' White said. "She says, 'I'm going to wind up being that skeleton."'
White is a television icon, with credits that include "Life with Elizabeth," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Golden Girls," "Boston Legal" and literally hundreds of appearances on game shows, sitcoms and dramas. She was the first woman to produce a sitcom, even before Lucille Ball.
Among other things, she was the first woman to host a network game show and has become nothing less than a TV icon.
White's TV career stretches back 58 years to "Hollywood on Television," and you'd think she might still be tired from working on that local show in Los Angeles — it was on 5 1/2 hours a day, six days a week.
And White and the rest of the show's staff were "fighting for our lives." When Al Jarvis "asked if I'd be his Girl Friday, I thought, 'Gee, that's wonderful.' And I didn't realize it was going to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday."
They didn't even have commercial breaks — the commercials were done live as part of the show.
"You found yourself drudging up stuff out of your head that you never knew was there," White said. "And Al was brilliant. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and he would suddenly make up a character — my drama teacher, for example. And we would just ad-lib something."
Jarvis left to go to another station and White took over as star of the show. And, believe it or not, "We were always late," White said. "We had five-and-a-half hours and we were always fighting for time with more to do than we had time for."
White shares memories of her nearly six decades on TV in PBS's "Pioneers of Television," which debuts Wednesday at 7 p.m. on Ch. 7 (and continues on Jan. 9 and Jan. 16). It's a medium she's been a big part of — one that has made her a beloved figure in the entertainment industry.
"I also think that we shortchange television," she said. "I've been defending television for 58 years."
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com
Recent comments
Happy Birthday, Betty!!
Snoopy | Jan. 17, 2008 at 10:24 a.m.
Cute and funny. She was always good on "What's My Line?"
Wesley | Jan. 1, 2008 at 9:27 p.m.
She is a credit to actresses. What a great gal and one with class…
suzyk | Jan. 1, 2008 at 7:40 p.m.
