If You Ask Me - Betty White [17]
For two and a half years we worked together on that program. And then, Al went over to ABC, and I inherited H.O.T.
You talk about experience—it was like going to television college.
One of the things I realized from the first time I ever did television was the intimacy of the audience. There are never more than two or three people watching a television program—if there are more than three people in a room, they’re usually talking among themselves, not listening to you! So as a television actress, I knew my audience was always very narrow. Later, when I did movie roles, however, it was for this great big audience. And I didn’t know that audience’s content at all. You don’t have that feeling of reaching an individual. And you don’t look at the camera!
No matter how television has grown, you’re still really just talking to those two or three people.
People greet me on the street as a friend, not a celebrity. “Hi, Betty!”
I was walking down the street the last time I was in New York, and a guy drove by and rolled down his window and hollered, “I love Hot in Cleveland, Betty!” Had I been a film star, he wouldn’t have done that.
There’s a remoteness to film stars. As an accessible television performer, you have to be careful walking down the street—you might pick up a hundred new best friends. It’s so unlike film stars, it’s a different genetic makeup.
Television and I discovered each other together. It was a very short window to get in, timing-wise.
I was blessed with that timing, because we were inventing as we went along in those first days of television. And I joined the parade.
On Boston Legal with James Spader.
RON TOM/© FOX/COURTESY: EVERETT COLLECTION
LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP
Our wedding day—June 6, 1963.
GLOBE PHOTOS
FULL CIRCLE
Life does have a way of coming full circle.
As of this writing, I have just finished shooting a movie (You Again) starring three great gals—Jamie Lee Curtis, Kristen Bell, and Sigourney Weaver. I thoroughly enjoyed working with all three but got a special kick out of getting to know Sigourney. It was her father, Pat Weaver, who was at the time the president of NBC, where I got my first network job (The Betty White Show) more than half a century ago.
After several years of doing local television, going “national” was a major turning point in my career, and it was a dream come true.
At the time, I was working five and a half hours a day, six days a week, with Al Jarvis in a live broadcast. No script—all ad-libbed—on KLAC’s Channel Thirteen in the local Los Angeles area. The show was called Hollywood on Television.
After two years, Al left and I inherited the show and worked solo for two and a half years. Every Thursday night I was also doing a one-hour variety show that was something like a small-scale American Idol (like they say, there’s nothing entirely “new” in this world!). It was all local. People would come on the Thursday-night show and sing, and whoever won the variety show, whoever got voted the best performer, would have a week appearing on our daytime show. Here I should mention that I would sing, too—and I don’t know how they could tell me from the amateurs!
So after the five-and-a-half-hour daily broadcast on KLAC, we would hold auditions to screen the candidates for the variety show. They’d sing for us, and some you wouldn’t believe—you just didn’t know where to look. You’d think, This is the longest song that was ever sung! And you felt so sorry for these people. . .. But sometimes we’d get lucky. The most memorable winner was a young Gogi Grant, who went on to achieve a great career.
On Hollywood on Television, we finally got music—a guitar player named Roc Hillman. I would sing three songs each day to his accompaniment.
Then came Pat Weaver’s job offer, which was a godsend. Pat warned me what it would entail:
“Do you think you can handle doing a half-hour show every day, five days a week?”
Well, after five and a half hours a day, six days a week, I wondered what I would do with all the