Betty White in Person Page 11

  The system still works. Not so dumb, that mother of mine.

  The same reflection can be effective in keeping your feet on the ground when the good things happen, as well. If something especially gratifying comes along, or you did something that turned out better than you had hoped, it’s an easy temptation to get a little carried away with yourself, momentarily. Well, leave it to that damned mirror image to bring you right down to size. I can hear it saying, “When you start thinking you can walk on water, honey . . . remember, you can’t swim!”

  With such a watchdog living in every mirror, you’d think that would handle the guilt department, right? Forget it.

  Outside of a couple of parking violations, my driving record is pretty clean. Why, then, when I see a police car, or motorcycle officer, is my instant reaction “What am I doing wrong!” Talk about your guilt complex.

  One day, recently, a black and white pulled up next to me, and the cop waved. I immediately pulled over. He followed me, and stopped alongside just long enough to say, “Hi, Betty! We love your show! Have a nice day!” . . . and off he went. He almost made an arrest, all right . . . cardiac.

  Do you get many letters asking for donations to various causes? Unless you live on Mount Rushmore, it’s a safe bet that you do.

  Charity mail requests have multiplied by geometric progression. It has become a separate business of its own, with companies of professionals designing those pleas for many major charities . . . directly reminding us of our relative good fortune compared to someone else’s need. There is certainly nothing wrong with this. We often need reminding . . . there are simply so many genuine and worthy causes asking for the same charity dollar that competition becomes intense. Each day’s mail contains a wide choice of these. The ones that stir our conscience . . . or our subconscious guilt . . . the most are the ones to which we respond. “Genuine” and “worthy” are key words here . . . if you have any doubt, investigate first, by all means.

  The number of these requests continues to burgeon to the point that they run the risk of canceling each other out. Because we can’t give to them all, tiny calluses begin to form on the very conscience they are trying to reach . . . and it becomes easier not to respond to any. That would be too bad.

  So how do we handle it? Throwing them at the ceiling and picking the one that sticks is neither a reliable nor generous way of choosing. Pick those relating to your particular interests, check them out, then give what you can. No gift is too small . . . think how much could be accomplished if everybody gave something to somebody. Let your conscience be your guide.

  See? I told you so! Guilt isn’t all bad.

  On Sex

  Can you remember watching television before sex went public?

  What did talk shows talk about before they discovered surrogate sex, and orgasms for fun and profit?

  We know by now, do we not, that I have a strong tendency to oversimplify? So just chalk this off as a random observation . . . but, judging by the amount of diverse sex information that assails us on any given day . . . we must be learning a lot. More than some of us even thought we needed to know. We certainly can’t plead innocence anymore as an excuse for digression . . . if we don’t know the hows, whys, and why nots by now, we just haven’t been listening.

  Let’s play “whatif” for a minute.

  Suppose someone had been shipwrecked on a desert island for about twenty-five years, and was just rescued last week. Wouldn’t you love to watch his face the first time he flips on his TV set in the afternoon? Or goes to what would be considered an average movie today? We’ve come a long way, baby.

  Poor old privacy has taken a real beating . . . since some of the most intimate moments have taken center stage. Having never been a voyeur, that really doesn’t turn me on . . . quite the reverse, if you must know. Sex is so great unto itself . . . but as a spectator sport, it leaves something to be desired . . . to coin a phrase. Obviously, this is the minority viewpoint.

  It is also probably somewhat generational.

  Don’t forget . . . I grew up during the period when what we now think of as film classics . . . were new movies!

  I can remember getting carried away watching a warm love scene culminate in a tender kiss . . . as the kiss built in passionate intensity, the music would swell to a crescendo . . . and the camera would pan up to the wind-tossed trees outside the window. If we were very lucky, we might get waves crashing on a beach . . . before the fade to black, when our imagination took over.

  Today, of course, the camera hangs in there until we get right down to the nitty-gritty . . . sometimes more gritty than nitty.

  Salome knew what she was doing . . . gradually removing those seven veils so provocatively. If she had started without them, she might have been just another chunky lady.

  And speaking of titillation . . . I often wonder how the poor stripper makes a living these days . . . now that nudity is almost commonplace? Does her audience holler, “Put it on!”? An ecdysiast could well be an endangered species. Not true, really . . . the gender has changed, that’s all. Now, it’s the boys who are bumping and grinding their way into the hearts of America . . . in nightclubs for women . . . all across the country.

  While I am getting this off my chest . . . sorry, there is no way you can discuss this subject . . . I might as well try and figure out what I am talking about. (Why should I start now?)

  We were discussing old movie love scenes, before I digressed . . . where they didn’t have to bed down on camera to project passion. Just a look across a crowded room could do the trick. At least it could for me.

  The kiss is where the talent begins . . . and sometimes ends. Speaking from long research as an enthusiastic participant . . . the first kiss should leave some room for improvement. The format, these days, is often . . . boy meets girl, boy likes girl, girl digs boy . . . and they start immediately chewing each other’s makeup off . . . then they find out each other’s names.

  That technique may be all right as a learning experience for kids, but once the training wheels are off, a little finesse leaves somewhere to go. We know where that is, but why rush it? . . . getting there is half the fun. Both on and off the screen.

  If he tries to give me his best shot on that first kiss, I lose interest fast. Being a pigeon for romance, however . . . let someone give me the sweet tender-but-strong approach, and he has my attention. Tender, not wimpy . . . strong, not macho . . . it’s the subtly blended package that works on me every time. But why am I telling you all this . . . unless, of course, you are taking notes? Actually, what we do on our own time is our own business.

  Television, today, has loosened up quite a bit, wouldn’t you say? Some of the salty dialogue on “The Golden Girls” may even raise our four sets of eyebrows at the Monday morning script reading. There are network people from the Compliance and Practices Department, who are the watchdogs for that sort of thing . . . and sometimes their leniency is surprising. We even make a bet among ourselves, now and then, as to whether a line will make it to Friday night taping . . . and once in a great while, one or another of us will ask that a line be changed, if it doesn’t sit well with whoever has to say it.

  I can’t recall any specific problems in that regard on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” . . . although, I was not around on a day-to-day basis. Even rotten Sue Ann Nivens, with all her claims of sexual action (I never believed her for a minute) . . . was so ridiculous, she was never taken seriously enough for objection.

  Blanche Devereaux, our Golden Girls swinger, says things that are absolutely outrageous . . . she makes poor old Sue Ann look like a virgin . . . but only rarely does anyone take exception. Rue says that once or twice she has received a call from her Daddy in Oklahoma, saying, “Honey . . . you tell those writers to lighten up on you . . . they are gettin’ a little clo-o-se to the li-i-ne!”

  When I used to appear with some regularity on the Jack Paar “Tonight Show,” we had to be careful to keep our mental editors in good working orde
r . . . not always easy when you like each other and are having fun.

  I remember one night, talking about the way people would come to me when they were looking for a dog . . . (never mind!) . . . because they knew I was always trying to place unwanted puppies. I said it made me feel like a procuror. Well, mercy, Miss Scarlett, the Programs and Practices folk went into an instant huddle to see if that would have to be bleeped for the West Coast. (The show was done live in New York, and delayed for the different time zones, so that it would air late.) They decided that, in the context in which it was used, it was okay. One night, shortly thereafter, Jack made television history when he walked off the show . . . during a taping, and in front of a live audience. He was absolutely furious that because he had used the term “water closet” in telling a joke, they were going to bleep it as unacceptable. He kept on walking . . . to Hong Kong. It was several weeks before everybody kissed and made up.

  Back in the dark ages . . . 1949 . . . when I first started in television . . . Faye Emerson was a big star of her own show, out of New York, and she caused a little heavy breathing because her necklines were considered “plunging.” Innuendo was subliminal, if at all. On “Father Knows Best,” Robert Young and Jane Wyatt were so pristine, they must have had those children by osmosis.

  Al Jarvis and I were doing a talk show in Los Angeles for five and a half hours a day, six days a week. I was his girl Friday . . . as well as Monday through Saturday. Along with guests and songs and special features, we managed to squeeze in an average of fifty commercials a day . . . our record was fifty-eight . . . with not a sanitary napkin or a douche among them. Somehow, we managed to find plenty of other things to sell.

  Spending that many hours a day on camera, unscripted, you did a lot of talking . . . but minding your mouth wasn’t as difficult then as it has become. There were invisible built-in guidelines, beyond which was automatically off-limits. Today, it’s a little like walking across a swamp on a footbridge . . . one misstep, and you are in the muck. But one man’s muck is another man’s humor . . . and it is all a very subjective game. You can only try to set your own standards of taste, and hope for the best.

  For better or worse, art reflects life . . . it does not set an example in order to improve the audience. It was ever thus . . . we didn’t just invent that. In television shows of late, there has been a concerted effort to play down scenes depicting excessive casual drinking, and to minimize dope-related humor. Among other things, this has been brought about through public pressure . . . in direct proportion to the efforts made to improve the situation in real life.

  Since the AIDS epidemic has attained such a high profile . . . and made promiscuity a more dangerous game . . . it will be interesting to see how long it will take for the public attitudes to have an effect on screen love scenes. Art reflecting life.

  Until that time, we will no doubt continue to see condoms in comic strips and TV commercials. That little development happened since Tess left . . . two years ago. What would she think? She would be sad that we had reached such a point. What would she say? She would keep a straight face and say something like, “I had a beautiful condom . . . on the sixth floor in Century Towers.” If the situation should get so acute that sex is no longer in . . . Blanche may have to resort to arts and crafts.

  On Enthusiasm

  What do you generally notice first about someone?

  With me, it’s hands. Long before I can tell you the color of a man’s eyes, I will have seen his hands. If they are neither too rough nor too limp . . . if they look capable and strong, yet gentle . . . I will check the rest of him out immediately.

  Watching someone handle a child or an animal is particularly revealing. The person can be giving you all the lip service in the world about how much he or she loves children, or animals . . . yet the hands remain stiff and impersonal. Believe me, whatever little creature is being handled responds accordingly.

  Hands may be what I see first . . . what keeps me hanging around is a quality difficult to define . . . genuine enthusiasm. Strange as it seems, it is not all that prevalent.

  There is such a subtle but vital distinction between gushing and honest enthusiasm that, unfortunately, one can often be mistaken for the other. Even worse . . . you can find yourself slipping over that fine line, until “genuine enthusiasm” quickly turns into carrying on, ad nauseum. Nothing is easy.

  As a sweeping generalization, however, for my money enthusiasm is a virtue, no matter one’s age or gender. You can’t be that way about everything, certainly . . . but heaven help you if you aren’t that way about something! There is no bigger turnoff to me than the Kool Kat who is so laid-back, he refuses to be surprised or excited or thrilled about anything. He doesn’t commit himself on any subject to the point that he can’t pull back, so he often gives the impression of being right. I wonder if he ever really falls in love?

  No . . . I’ll take someone who may be wrong sometimes . . . but, boy, he’s wrong with enthusiasm. He falls in love the same way.

  Allen Ludden could just possibly have been the one who invented enthusiasm. If he liked something, he liked it a lot. If he didn’t, he made it abundantly, if indiplomatically, clear. There were occasions when things might have been a little simpler with a tad less enthusiasm. But nothing to Allen was ever ho-hum, and it made life more interesting for those around him.

  Allen’s garden was his hobby and his joy. Every Christmas he would plant hanging baskets for close friends . . . whether they had anyplace to hang them or not. Also, his fervor for cutting things back was equaled only by that of our gardener, Mr. Sakamoto . . . I would shudder when I’d see the two of them pick up pruners and shears. Now and then I would get downright hostile . . . but when things soon leafed out lovelier than ever, I had to admit the zeal had paid off.

  Allen’s love for the garden continued to grow . . . he was enrolled in a landscape architecture course at Pierce College, which he didn’t live to complete.

  Someone else who has a corner on the enthusiasm market is Mel Tormé. Mel and his wife Ali are close friends, and I see them quite often . . . and I have yet to find something that doesn’t interest Mel. He is knowledgeable on a wide variety of subjects . . . aside from his genius in the music field. He reads everything . . . devours movies of any era, has a number of collections, regarding which he is passionate. Offhand, I don’t ever remember hearing Mel give a lukewarm assessment of anything . . . it’s either the best . . . or the worst. Even when he thinks it’s the worst, he does it with great verve.

  I’m sure I am overstating the case, but in any event his approach is a lot more fun than indifference . . . and whether you agree with him or not, he stimulates a response. That same intensity is what sets Mel’s awesome talent above the rest in his field. Bland, he ain’t.

  One is only as big as the world he is interested in. I don’t know who said that, but I wish I had. We use such a small part of what we are capable of . . . often because we let ourselves slip into a chronic “Who cares?” attitude. We devote a tremendous amount of energy these days to physical exercise . . . or at least talking about it . . . let’s not sell mental exercise short.

  End of speech.

  “Genuine enthusiasm” and “a positive attitude” must be at least first cousins. Would you say that, for the most part, you have a positive attitude?

  Careful how you answer.

  Say yes, and you can easily find yourself sneered at, patronized, condescended to, dubbed “little Pollyanna” . . . and, in toto, shot down. It happens.

  There seems to be a rather large portion of the population who get their jollies by pointing up every negative they can find. For them the rule is apparently reversed . . . guilty until proven innocent. I’m not talking about the people who make their living as professional critics . . . I mean the everyday, allegedly normal people we all know, who give life in general a bad review. These folk revel in being wretched. If they ever found themselves liking anything at first blush, I’m sure they�
�d be miserable.

  A recurring question that usually turns up somewhere in an interview is “How do you always manage to be so . . . up?” I get the distinct impression they have stopped just short of adding “How phony can you get?”

  Phony? Not at all. It is self-preservation. Cliché or not, accenting the positive beats the hell out of the constant negative . . . especially if you are the only one you live with.

  It often strikes me that I am probably at my most obnoxious when I’m feeling low inside. I overcompensate, make bad jokes, have too much to say, and undoubtedly drive everyone to the point of doing me bodily harm, I say it strikes me, but not hard enough . . . For the life of me, I can’t keep my mouth shut.

  Oh, the negatives are all there, and I won’t deny that sometimes it feels so good to let ’em rip and get it out of your system. But you’d better have a round-trip ticket in your hot little fist to get back to at least neutral ground, or you can wind up in Depression City.

  My sixth grade teacher said something once that really stuck. (Who says I don’t have a memory . . . that had to be in the dark ages!) Her name was Mrs. Thoroughgood, which should have been enough right there. She got very angry in class one day . . . her eyes filled up, and she said, “I only cry when I’m hurt, and when I’m mad. And I never cry unless I know I can stop!” Sure enough, not a tear fell. More times I’ve wondered how she managed that.

  A friend tells the story of a janitor in his building who would sing up a storm sometimes while he was working. One day my friend said, “Willie, you sure sound happy.”

  “No,” said Willie. “I’m trying to get happy.”