If You Ask Me - Betty White [18]
Pat Weaver was a real mover and shaker in the television business, and many of his innovations are still extant today. It was Pat, I believe, who first divided television time into segments like on the Today show and The Tonight Show.
Little did I dream that all these years later I would be working with his star of a daughter. Sigourney wasn’t even a gleam in her father’s eye at that time.
Nice as he was, I was in total awe of Pat when I worked for him back then. I must admit, at first I felt a bit of the same when I started working with Sigourney, since I have been a devout fan of hers, especially her fine performance as Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist.
I am delighted to say that we have grown into warm and loving friends. You can’t imagine how thrilled I was when I came offstage after Saturday Night Live to find her waiting to say hello in my dressing room. She and Victor Garber (also in You Again) had come over to surprise and support me. These are moments I absolutely cherish.
But it doesn’t stop there.
The day before the SAG Awards in 2011, I was at an event and a gentleman approached me and introduced himself. He said, “I’m Roc Hillman’s son! My dad’s still alive!”
I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
He said, “No, he’s one hundred and four, and he’s still going!”
Like I said, life sure does have a way of coming full circle.
On the set of You Again with Sigourney Weaver, Odette Yustman, Kristen Bell, and Jamie Lee Curtis.
ZUMA PRESS/NEWSCOM
DATING DU JOUR
At this moment in time, it seems somewhat current and choice for women to pair up with younger men. These gals are called “cougars.”
Well, animal lover that I am, a cougar I am not. All my life, even as a kid, I have preferred men older than I am.
Unfortunately, today I don’t think there is anyone older than I am!
Even at this age, once in a while I meet a man who seems a trifle more interesting than usual. Nothing untoward—just someone who might be fun to know a little better. I’ve even thought (to myself) that it might be nice if he asked me to lunch or dinner, perhaps. Then reality kicks in and it cracks me up. This guy is probably a much younger man—maybe only eighty—and not about to even look my way.
So I don’t worry very much about whether I’m going to be asked to lunch. I know I had a rare thing in my relationship with Allen. In fact, my castmates on Hot in Cleveland seemed so curious about him—and asked so many questions about him!—that I finally had to wonder out loud, “Why do you always ask me about Allen?”
The answer was simple: “We love the look you get on your face when you talk about him.”
ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/ABC VIA GETTY IMAGES
LOSS
Allen is always with me.
The other night, a dear friend, Mark Alexander, called me to say he had seen the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie I did, The Lost Valentine.
He said he was surprised to see me doing something dramatic.
“At one point, when you were crying so hard, you glanced up and it stopped me cold. I knew who was in your mind.”
I think the toughest thing about loss, and the hardest challenge, is the isolation you feel in its aftermath. You spent so much time sharing your life with someone, talking through issues, even disagreeing about things, and all of a sudden there’s a hole. There’s nobody there and you think, Well, who’s in charge?
My God, it’s me. I have to make the decisions. I can’t share the decisions any longer.
And that’s tough because you don’t fully trust your own judgment.
That’s why it’s great to have people like Jeff Witjas in my life. And why it was so great to have Jerry Martin, whom I lost just a few weeks ago. Jerry and I would talk to each other around dinnertime almost every night. I could get things off my chest that I couldn’t necessarily air to anyone else.
The older you get, the fewer of those there are.
I always thought I would be the one who would go—particularly with the Golden Girls, because I was the oldest.