Betty White: Now that was a career. And that was a pro, adored by millions who appreciated comic skill and the ability to get the last laugh.
The Oak Park native, who died Dec. 31 just weeks before her 100th birthday, was the daughter of a homemaker and a lighting company executive. She became a Californian when she was just a year old, after the family’s move to Alhambra, California, a few miles from downtown Los Angeles. She worked in radio — first in 1930, at age eight! — and would seek out radio gigs as she grew older, having already been dismissed as “unphotogenic” by Hollywood casting agents.
Over the next half century and more, White avenged that idiotic mischaracterization by wielding one of the greatest, most recognized smiles in American television. She did so across a remarkable spectrum of vivacious sincerity and subtly wicked parody, supported by timing and presence and craft that came together as a natural force as it has for precious few others.
We know her for so much long-running situation comedy: As Rose Nylund, of St. Olaf, Minnesota, on “The Golden Girls”; as Elka Ostrosky on “Hot in Cleveland”; and as Sue Ann Nivens, star of “The Happy Homemaker” on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
Casting the peerless “MTM” ensemble, Moore and company wanted an “icky sweet” Betty White type, with a twist. The character was like whipped cream concealing knives: a shark one second, a kitten the next. Lo and behold! Betty White turned out to be perfect for it.
In 2021, we lost Ed Asner, Cloris Leachman and Gavin MacLeod before White. For countless Americans (I’ll just count one: me), the ritual of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” followed by “The Bob Newhart Show” Saturdays on CBS was like going to comedy school once a week, learning from geniuses. Newhart, still with us at 92, is another Oak Park native. Hemingway wasn’t very funny, but he and White made up for that.
With White it’s worth remembering what she did and when, at the point of TV’s relative infancy.
In 1949 White and LA disc jockey Al Jarvis began co-hosting a daily five-and-a-half-hour talk show, “Hollywood on Television,” live. After a brief stint with a new co-host, Eddie Albert (who left to do “Roman Holiday”), White fronted the show solo. She was, by most accounts, the first female TV talk show host.
She’d do sketches featuring a fictional spin-off character, which led to a domestic sitcom soon afterward, “Life with Elizabeth” co-starred Del Moore (best known as Prof. Warfield in “The Nutty Professor”), airing from 1953 to 1955. Take a look at one of those “Life with Elizabeth” episodes sometime. In the opening credits, she holds a broad, friendly smile for a full eight seconds, like a champ. From the perspective of today, it looks like a joke; back then, it was the blueprint. Smile, girls! Hold it!