Betty White

“A demure little eyeful, endowed her characterization with appeal and coquetry” is how the Los Angeles Times described the performance of a young singer in a musical comedy at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in March of 1940.

The name of the performer was Betty White.

She has died at age 99.

I should state there is no indication this is the same Betty White beloved by millions upon millions of people starting at the dawn of network television. She never mentioned it in her autobiography, and it’s not mentioned in uncountable newspaper articles about her, but she did so much over the decades she may very well have forgotten it (or perhaps put it out of her mind). But wouldn’t that description fit an 18-year-old Betty White?

As a kid in the ‘60s, I saw Betty White on The Match Game, Password, You Don’t Say and so on, and asked myself “What does she actually do? She’s only on game shows. Doesn’t she act?”

This, of course, was years before she launched a third career as a comedy actress on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Golden Girls and a number of other shows. How was I to know her small screen career began in 1939 on experimental TV (likely W6XAO) and that she had at least five regular shows to her credit by 1958?

Here’s Variety of December 3, 1948 at the start of her actual career. Her station had signed on less than three months earlier. (Haynes is not to be confused with singer Dick Haymes).

DICK HAYNES JOKE SHOP
Thursday, 8.00 p.m., KLAC-TV
With strong format and brisk pace, action rolls steadily, but program is bogged down with oft-repeated gags. Betty White and Tod Cook, supporting Haynes, manage vocal chores well.
Relying greatly on grimacing and gag followups to strengthen his material, Haynes' routine hits occasionally but generally it's wan material. Stronger repartee with off-stage voice of Walter Craig would help in boosting show.
More new material is needed in Joe Lowe's script to heighten interest. Camera director Joe Landis managed well, but was caught short on momentary occasions by bad focusing. Sponsored by Grand Ranges, commercials are simply done, but could be more effective with close-shot views of product.

KLAC was pretty good for Betty White. It was the home of her next show, which she ended up taking over in 1950 (for Western Home Furniture) when the host left. It was there she developed her own sitcom that Guild Films syndicated in the U.S. and Canada. That resulted in a network show. Here’s a profile of her career to date in The American Weekly, a newspaper magazine supplement, of August 15, 1954.

TVs Cinderella
BY LIZ WILSON
HOLLYWOOD EDITOR
Early last January the bigwigs of the National Broadcasting Company in New York City gathered around a conference table and pondered what appeared to be an imponderable—where to find, for a daytime coast-to-coast television spot, a brand-new personality with the homey warmth of a Mary Margaret McBride, the cheerful folksiness of a Kate Smith and the humor and good looks of an Arlene Francis. You know . . . a sort of female Arthur Godfrey.
Frederic W. Wile, Jr., NBC's vice-president in charge of solving unsolvable cases, took a plane to Los Angeles, the source of persistent rumors about the talents of a comparative unknown named Betty White. He'd hardly settled in his hotel before the tele-victims of Miss White's charms began bowling him over with extravagant claims.

Mr. Wile, a hard-headed businessman, crossed his fingers and auditioned Betty White and the next thing he knew he was making Betty White claims of his own to the bigwigs back home.
Less than a month later—on February 8, 1954—Betty White made her first appearance on the new Betty White Show, a national program originating from the NBC television studios in Burbank, California. A few weeks later she signed a contract with NBC guaranteeing her $1,000,000 over a five-year period.
That's the way things have always happened—and still happen—to Betty.
Hewing to a multiple-job schedule that would floor most entertainers, TV's Cinderella girl speeds from one chore to another with unruffled poise, an engaging chuckle and a rare aptitude for delivering the right words at the right time. Such is her aplomb that she actually welcomes the opportunity to ad lib for minutes on end a theatrical effort that makes the average performer sweat and gives even a master improviser like Groucho Marx pause for thought.
It was not always thus. Four years ago Betty, getting $5 a show on local TV, knew there must be easier ways to make a living.
"But nobody would tell me what they were." she says. "My parents had move from Oak Park, Illinois, to Los Angeles when I was two. Now, lo these many years later, I began to wonder whether I ought to go back. Things couldn't be any worse in Oak Park."
Her first brush with the drama occurred at the Horace Mann High School in Los Angeles.
"That's where the ham in me first showed. I wrote, directed, produced and starred in a tear-jerker called Land of the Rising Sun. I could hardly wait to graduate and foist myself on a panting public. And do you know what? The movie casting directors had the nerve to tell me I wasn't photogenic."
So Betty set her sights on radio, where one didn't have to be photogenic.
After weeks of pavement pounding she landed a commercial on The Great Gildersleeve Show. She got $5. She did a lot of commercials after that but, whether she sang, acted or read them, the fee was always $5. Then she switched to TV and she did some more commercials . . . for $5 apiece, of course. "It was kind of nice," she remembers wistfully. "I never had to worry about the income tax."
On November 7, 1949, a great thing happened to Betty. Al Jarvis, a local disc jockey, called her. He was starting his own TV variety show and wanted Betty to be his Girl Friday. At $5 a week? Oh, no—$50!
The show was on the air five hours a day five days a week. Betty rounded up guest stars, pushed props, answered mail, kept commercials straight. When Al Jarvis moved on to greener pastures she took over temporarily, pending the hiring of a replacement for him. Her sparkle and wit pushed the show right up to a top rating. The "temporary" job was hers to keep.
A five-hour-a-day stint, however, didn't keep her busy enough. In her spare time she dreamed up a young married couple situation comedy called Life With Elizabeth and sold it—with herself as its star—to a local TV station. Distributed by Guild Films, it won her the 1952 "Emmy" award of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences as TV's outstanding female personality.
Between The Betty White Show and Life With Elizabeth, she's just about the busiest girl in Hollywood. She used to get up at 5 a. m., five days a week, to prepare for her NBC morning stint. Last month it shifted to an afternoon time spot. Betty now telecasts "live" to the East at 4:30 p. m. (1:30 Coast time), and the show is kinescoped to Coast audiences three hours later, at 4:30 Coast time. Now she can sleep till 7, get to the studio at 10 and work till 6 p. m.
Life With Elizabeth, which has 102 outlets reaching an audience reportedly 90 per cent women, is rehearsed on Thursday and filmed on Friday (sometimes through to 3 a. m. Saturdays at the Burbank though it's not an NBC show. On these days her scramble to fit in The Betty White Show is a show in itself. "I spend most of my life at NBC," she says. "But I like it. I go home at night and say to myself, 'In a few hours, now, I can go back to work.'"
How can she just get up in front of the camera and talk? "It's easy," she says. "Nothing can throw me after my Al Jarvis training. If a guest doesn't show up I just look at the audience and say. This isn't the way I planned it. but this is it.'"
Unmarried at 28 ("What time do I have for romancing?"). Betty lives with her parents in a rambling Brentwood bungalow. She has three dogs a St. Bernard, a poodle and a Pekingese, Bandy, after whom Bandy Productions, the independent outfit which produces Life With Elizabeth, is named.
She never forgets a name, never shows temperament, positively sings her "hellos" and is never too busy to share a laugh or a cry. This life-can-be-beautiful attitude, her infectious smile and her spontaneous giggle endear her to co-workers tired of catering to prima donnas.
"She's as cooperative as Jimmy Durante," they say, than which there is no greater praise.

Betty bombed with a sitcom in 1957 called Date With the Angels and was re-formatted into a live prime-time variety show that lasted about four weeks. Her consolation was she was chosen “most glamorous business woman of the year" by the Hollywood Business and Professional Woman's club.”

For about the next decade, she was a “television personality.” She appeared on television and, well, appeared. She was living away from Hollywood in New York state during that time, thanks to her marriage to game show host Allen Ludden; the wedding may have been the most well-known thing she did in the ‘60s.

We’ll leave the last words to Ludden in a column for the Associated Press that appeared on July 22, 1966. The two of them had a happy marriage (and re-location to the West Coast) that ended with his death in 1981.

Allen Ludden Hailed as Mr. Betty White
By ALLEN LUDDEN
(For Cynthia Lowry)
EDITOR'S NOTE — It takes a strong, secure, well-adjusted fellow to marry a well-known woman in show business. Allen Ludden did just that and here tells, without a whimper, what it's like to be — but only occasionally— hailed as Mr. Betty White. And Betty wasn't sure he should write this column.
NEW YORK (AP) – Among the many notable things that have happened to me since the advent of a little television game called Password has been the fact that I am called so many different things. You may take that any way you wish, but what I mean is that people call me different names.
Because they see me on the tube in the afternoon, they associate me with my electronic neighbor Linkletter and I'm hailed as "Art". So, I answer.
Because I emcee a game shew, they call me "Bud," as in Collyer.
Because I wear glasses and belong to that venerable group known as television hosts, I get "Bill" for Bill Cullen, I guess.
But the one I enjoy the most is "Hey, there's the guy who married Betty White!" It's been three years now since Betty and I married and I've become something of an authority on Betty White fans.
Let me make it clear at the outset that I have nothing but the heartiest respect for these people. Obviously I respect their taste. I married the girl! Most of them took upon me as a Johnny-come-lately. They've known her much longer than I have.
There is a very large group who remember Betty from the "Al Jarvis Days". She was doing a 5 1/2-hour daily local show in Los Angeles. There weren't many television sets to begin with (I kid Betty about being a star of the silent TV) and it was a local show. Yet these people turn up all over the country.

When we married we had 9,000 cards and at least 6,000 of them mentioned Al Jarvis. They usually went on to mention "Life with Elizabeth," too, because off of her Al Jarvis friends followed on to that series. They were joined by armies of new and vigilantly faithful followers.
A lot of them must have been about 10 at the time, but they I loved "Life with Elizabeth." I've read some of the scripts just lately, and the reason those shows were so popular is that they were very, very funny.
Betty is constantly amazed to have teen-agers today come up to her to tell her that her's was their favorite show when they were kids.
Then there are the hard-core fans or, even better, friends, who have known Betty through "Life with Elizabeth", "Date with the Angels", and "The Betty White Show", which was her daytime NBC network show.
These are the people from all over the country who know about her love of animals, her jokes, her favorite songs, her wide streak of sentimentality, her curiosity.
They follow Betty's every move. They write regularly. Their generosity is embarrassing. But their affection is so genuine and their intentions are so right, one could only be touched by their gestures.
I think I can safely say that most of the hard-core fans are glad that Betty and I married. At the time of our marriage in fact, many wrote to say that they had picked me out for her.
That was not true of them all. There was another group that came in later, a nighttime group, the "Jack Paar" group. Not all of them were Ludden-oriented. As a matter of fact, it got a bit sticky on several occasions, but time has a way of taking care of those things.
Now when I hear somebody yell, "Hey, there's the guy who married Betty White!" I just smile, keep moving and don't even think about ducking.

All this could have made up an entire career for many. For Betty White, it was only just beginning.