Celebrating Betty White’s 70 Years on TV With an Inside Look at Each of the Iconic Actress’ Shows

‘Life With Elizabeth’ (1953-55)

While Betty was hosting the daily entertainment show Hollywood on Television, she, writer George Tibbles and producer Don Fedderson started a production company known as Bandy Productions, the idea being to spin off characters from Hollywood on Television. The first was Life with Elizabeth, which not only featured Betty in the title role but gave her an extraordinary (for the time) amount of creative power and control.

Describes Wikipedia, “Elizabeth and Alvin [Del Moore] are an ordinary suburban couple, but inevitably get into predicaments. In the end, Alvin, in variable degrees of frustration, would say, ‘I shall leave you at this point, Elizabeth,’ and would walk out of sight. The announcer would say, ‘Elizabeth, aren’t you ashamed?’ She would slowly nod, but then, with a slightly devilish grin, would vigorously shake her head to indicate she wasn’t. The series was divided into three eight- to ten-minute comic shorts — referred to as ‘incidents.’ Sometimes an entire incident might just consist of the two main characters talking to each other.”

In her memoir, Here We Go Again: My Life in Television, Betty writes, “For the format, we opted to go for three separate situations, on the premise that when you or your friends tell a funny anecdote about something that happened, the stories last no more than five or six minutes — eight, max. My contention was that if you try to stretch that anecdote into a half our, the joke wears thin. History has proven just how smart I was — a half hour situation comedy would never work. Never mind the fact that they were springing up all around us.”

More on ‘Elizabeth’

Comments Jim Colucci, “Life with Elizabeth was in the early days of television when, obviously, sitcoms were just figuring out what they were, and I Love Lucy was really helping with that. As a result, I think the formula at the time was domestic sitcoms set in the home. It was very 50s and very stereotypical gender roles for that era. It means that shows were set in the home and were somewhat wacky with a wife driving her husband crazy. That came from the radio era, too, which was what shows were like. So I think Life With Elizabeth was in that mold of those shows, though it was certainly able to take advantage of Betty’s TV experience in that she was comfortable in front of the camera and she’d been really getting the best on-the-job training there could be in television. I can’t say that it broke any molds or, if it was running today, it would be the thing we would love Betty for, because she’s done so much work that is more innovative in 2019. But it certainly was important that here she was in 1953, and at the time was on the vanguard.”

Laughs Mike Pingel, “There’s a funny moment in Life With Elizabeth where Betty and Del Moore forgot their lines and it was live TV. Del got up and left Betty at the restaurant scene alone, and she filled her time building a little house with forks and knives. Del finally arrived back with a line and the scene continued. Things like that would happen; it was definitely a slapstick comedy, very much like I Love Lucy.”

‘Date With the Angels’ (1957-58)

In her second sitcom, Betty plays Vickie Angel, who is married to Gus (Bill Williams). The concept of the series, which was loosely based on the play Dream Girl, is that typical sitcom set-ups would take a detour with Vickie’s tendency to daydream, resulting in fantasy sequences. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before the show’s sponsor, Plymouth, demanded that the fantasy sequences be done away with, believing that fantasy never connects with the viewer at home. Ha!

“Without our dream sequences,” writes Betty, “our show flattened out and became just one more run-of-the-mill domestic comedy … I think I can honestly say that that was the only time I have ever wanted to get out of a show.”

‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ (1973-77)

While Betty had enjoyed great success on television in a variety of formats in the years prior, she made a major connection with the audience through her portrayal of Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Appearing in episodes aired during seasons four through seven, Sue Ann serves as host of WJM’s The Happy Homemaker Show, presenting an unbelievably cheerful persona. Off camera, though, she’s acerbic, judgmental and man crazy. Betty won a pair of Emmys for her portrayal.

“The way she was cast is just kismet,” opines Jim. “They were creating this character who was only supposed to be this one-time thing, because she was going to be cheating with Lars Lindstrom, the husband of Phyllis [Cloris Leachman]. But when they came up with the idea that she would be sickeningly sweet homemaker with a nymphomaniac streak, they said, ‘A real Betty White type.’ And then, because Mary [Tyler Moore] and her husband, Grant Tinker, were such good friends with Allen Ludden, Betty’s Husband, they said, ‘Why don’t we just get Betty White?'”

“That role,” he continues, “so captured what we love about Betty. I think Rose on Golden Girls did, too, because Betty is a brilliant woman, as we saw from her game show appearances where she was so quick-witted. Of course back in the days of sexism, we didn’t give women credit for being smart, but Betty was smart and beautiful and funny in one package. And she has the warmth to her like Sue Ann. Yet the flip side of that, which you don’t find in a lot of people, is that she can be as dirty as a sailor and has that rapier wit that comes out passive aggressive.”

Points out Ed Robertson, “In the ’50s on shows like Life With Elizabeth and Date with the Angels, in many ways Betty was sort of a traditional June Cleaver type of figure, and that carried over to the ’60s where she sort of became known as Mrs. Allen Ludden and for her game show appearances. The fact that she was good at them added to her appeal, because when doing game shows, she’s being Betty, right? That would probably added to her overall longevity. But up until The Mary Tyler Moore Show, she was still sort of Mrs. Allen Ludden/game show icon of the ’60s. And then she reinvented herself when she played Sue Ann Niven. Nobody expected her to be the bitch, right? But that was just great casting and was a masterstroke from whoever came up with that. Something like casting Betty played a large part in the Moore show remaining fresh during the last four or five years of its seven year run. And seven years is a long time on a weekly show. If you have cast changes, you have to make sure the cast changes work and enabled you to go in different directions while staying true to the core elements that make the show work. Betty did such an indelible job as soon as she reinvented herself.”

“She definitely knew how to make a soufflé and explode it at the same time,” Mike Pingel states. “She just took our breath away in the way that she would deliver a line very sarcastically, but very sweetly as well, and most of the time people were, like, ‘What did she say?’ She had such a masterful use of the words and her sense of character, turning each line into a fireball and throwing it whatever character she was aiming at. Sue Ann took no prisoners at all, in the kitchen or out.”

‘The Betty White Show’ (1977-78)

Unlike Rhoda, Phyllis and Lou Grant, this was not a spinoff series from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. “Rhoda was four or five seasons, so you can it a moderate hit,” Jim notes. “Phyllis was not a hit and Lou Grant was a wholly different genre. So the spinoffs didn’t seem like they were the guaranteed path to success anyway. What was interesting here is that Betty was working with Georgia Engel, so here it was two alums for the price of one and they didn’t go the spinoff route, which I don’t think was necessarily a mistake anyway.”

Mike Pingel comments, “Betty played Joyce Whitman, a sharp-witted actress in Hollywood who stars in her own TV show called Undercover Woman. She didn’t take any crap from anyone, especially her ex-husband, who was the director of the show within a show. The problem with the series was that everybody thought it was going to be a spinoff from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which it wasn’t. People wanted to see Sue Ann Nivens, and they didn’t get her.”

‘Mama’s Family’ (Recurring, 1983-84, 1986)

A spinoff of the recurring sketch from The Carol Burnett Show, with Vicki Lawrence, Ken Berry, and Dorothy Lyman, with recurring appearances by, among others, Carol Burnett, Harvey Korman and Betty White.

“This show really evolved or changed from its original inception on The Carol Burnett Show,” Jim points out. “It went from being really kind of a downer of a sketch about a down and out family and their dysfunctional relationship, where it would of course be funny, but more darkly funny, to being much more of a sunshiny cartoony sitcom in its later days. Betty brought authenticity to Aunt Ellen whenever she could, and when Betty was on you knew it would be a better episode. Rue McClanahan was great, but given a very limited role that she didn’t care for, so she didn’t get to shine like she would on Golden Girls. Betty says very graciously about writing, if it’s not on the page it’s not on the stage, but I also think the flip side of that is when there’s a show that’s not well written, and you know it’s kind of mediocre and you watch it because it’s the only thing on or whatever reason you watch it. But when you see an actor who’s fantastic in everything else, at least that’s something you can hang your hat on. But Mama’s Family was a mediocre show, though a lot of people love it and will be mad at me saying for saying that. At the same time, when Betty shows up, I’m, like, ‘Oh, good!'”

‘The Golden Girls’ (1985-92)

Google describes this classic as follows: “Four mature women live together in Miami and experience the joys and angst of their golden years. Strong-willed Dorothy, spacey Rose, lusty Southern belle Blanche and matriarch Sophia, Dorothy’s mom, occasionally clash but are there for one another in the end.”

Jim Colucci offers, “What Betty did with Rose Nylund was something as Rue said was not something she had ever done. It’s been reported that Betty was originally going to be Blanche and Rue was going to be Rose. The producers were actively looking all around the country at women of a certain age to play these roles, and ended up casting along very well known and traditional lines. From the beginning [series creator] Susan Harris wanted Bea Arthur to play Dorothy, because she wanted a strong Maude-type for that character. When you look at Blanche, who just played a ‘slut’ on television? Betty, and she did it beautifully. When you look a Rose, who they were viewing as kind of a meeker character, for lack of a better word, who just played that on Mamma’s Family? Well, Rue did. So they really were going to cast it in much more of a traditional way.”

“Jay Sandrich, the director of the pilot, was the one who had a vision that it would be better the other way around,” he adds. “Rue had not wanted to be Rose, but learned that if she didn’t she couldn’t be in the show. Jay said to Rue, ‘I want you to go in the other room and humor me. Study the Blanche lines instead.’ She, of course, was, like, ‘OK!’ and when she rehearsed Blanche and was so good, Jay took it upon himself to tell Betty that I want you to switch. When he first told Betty, she wasn’t happy about it. She went along with him, because she’s a team player, but she didn’t know what she was going to do with Rose. The end of that story is that Rue said to me, and I’ve heard her say other things, too, that Betty did something with Rose that she never would have known how to do. Which was that Betty, being the brilliant woman that she is, when she’s talking to you there’s that twinkle in her eye and you know she’s five steps ahead of you. You see the intricate machinery in her eyes, yet the moment they yelled action for Rose, her face went totally blank. Rue said that Betty was able to drain the light and intelligence out of her eyes when she was playing Rose and just really take everything literally like Rose would, and not show the comic genius inside her head.”

Observes Ed Robertson, “The Golden Girls had a renaissance in popularity in the late ’90s/early 2000s among college-age young women. You know, kids who were not old enough or were not the target demo when the show originally aired in the ’80s, but who were of an age where they had the TV on maybe in the background initially while they were going to school, doing their homework, doing their social media and so on. And the renaissance of Golden Girls kind of correlated with the popularity of Sex and the City in the early 2000s, because both shows had core relationships among four women. The difference was that The Golden Girls were of a certain age and Sex and the City was popular among younger people or people closer to the college age. But one fed the other.

“And the reason that Betty has kind of jumped out from the four is that because of the four women, Rose was the sweetest, she was the ‘innocent’ and good-natured. She wasn’t the cynic like Dorothy or the vamp like Blanche was.”

Mike feels that The Golden Girls, like such series as Charlie’s Angels, Law & Order and 90210, was the kind of show that everyone tried to rip off, but couldn’t. “It’s the one moment in television you just can’t change,” he says, “because it’s the characters, it’s the actors, it’s the writers, and that’s why today everyone still watches it.”

‘The Golden Palace’ (1992-93)

This spinoff series, which ran for a single season from 1992 to 1993, picks up where The Golden Girls left off. With Dorothy getting married and moving out, the other three ladies decide to invest in a Miami hotel that’s for sale, which is not nearly as profitable as it seems. In fact, the only remaining employees are hotel manager Roland Wilson (Don Cheadle) and the chef, Chuy Castillos (Cheech Marin). The show itself had the ladies interacting with each other, the new castmembers, and people checking into the hotel. While an interesting experiment, it didn’t work.

Explains Jim, “[Executive producer] Marc Cherry points out, and I always felt this way, too, that the fantasy of The Golden Girls was that when you grow older, your friends will be there for you. That you’ll be able to take care of each other till the end, through thick and thin. The story of Golden Palace completely undoes that good message, because it says at one point one of you may decide to go off and get married leaving the other three of you having to sell your palace, buy a s–tty hotel in Miami Beach, and work like dogs as hotel maids well into your 70s and 80s. Surprise! So it really undid the goodwill of the message of The Golden Girls.”

‘Bob’ (1992-93)

The series stars Bob Newhart as comic book artist Bob McKay, creator of the classic character Mad-Dog, season 1 follows the challenges Bob faces working on modern comic books, but in season 2 the show was retooled with his new boss being Betty White’s Sylvia Schmitt, and Bob himself finding himself now drawing greetings cards.

Jim observes, “It’s very hard, as in the case with Bob, to come onto a show that’s floundering through no fault of anyone, because Bob Newhart is a genius, and try and re-conceive it. That’s a lot of pressure to put on an actor, so Betty came onto Bob as this new character and a refocus of the show. It’s a lot to try and turn the ship around once it’s sailing and I don’t think it worked.”

‘Maybe This Time’ (1995)

Recent divorcée Julia Wallace (Marie Osmond) prefers trying to run the family-owned coffee shop to dating, but her much-married mother Shirley (Betty) won’t let her give up on love.

“This came and went pretty quickly,” Jim points out. “When I see Betty, I want her comic genius and I want wit from her, and Maybe This Time seemed like it was maybe a little bit of a soft family show and that’s just not my thing. And maybe it wasn’t what the audience expected from Betty, either.”

‘Ladies Man’ (1999)

In a nutshell, Alfred Molina is Jimmy Stiles, who lives with a number of women under the same roof (including Betty, Sharon Lawrence, Dixie Carter, Park Overall and Kaley Cuoco). Enthuses Jim, “That was a show that had an amazing cast and I can’t say that it wasn’t a success creatively. Ladies Man premiered in ’99 at a time — and it’s still true of CBS and their comedies — when you get slotted on CBS and you’re viewed as prime shelf space. Even though everyone says sitcoms are dying, it’s still the case with CBS shows that you have a high bar to meet. Whatever the ratings of the day are, CBS is one of the highest bars of that era. That was the case with Ladies Man. It had a great cast; you can’t load a show with more TV stars than that did. At the time it was talking about a man surrounded by a bunch of women. I think we were getting into the age of women having more power and more say and claiming equality from men. And I think it was just a case of the bar for CBS for ratings was very high and they couldn’t meet it.”

‘Boston Legal’ (Recurring, 2005-08)

Reflects Mike, “Betty’s character, Catherine Piper, crossed over from The Practice to Boston Legal. She was an adorable character who murdered someone and hired the law office of Alan Shore. Later, she follows Alan over to the cast of Boston Legal and becomes his assistant, among other jobs. She’s a very sweet and lonely lady who’s not afraid to do a crime to get attention. The show gave Betty not only the opportunity to do some comedy, but a more dramatic role as well. A very different Betty than we had seen previously.”

“Oh, my God,” exclaims Jim in thinking about Betty on Boston Legal. “That show was unique in how it combined law and comedy. Other shows have done a little bit of that, but I was really impressed with Boston Legal, and Betty brought a lot of the comedy, even though she was playing an assistant at the law firm. I think there was a case where she was the person suing, but the scene that no one can forget when she clocks Leslie Jordan with a frying pan. Knocks him out cold. And she was being accused of being a black widow. I just remember Betty was a comic light in a show that had actors like William Shatner and Candice Bergen, and so the show could weave both in. Betty was another one. She could do drama, but could bring a quirky moment to a show like that.”

‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ (Recurring, 2006-09)

Between 2006 and 2009, Betty played the part of Ann Douglas on 23 episodes of the daytime soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. “For most of her life,” opines Jim, “Betty has been happy to work and also kind of happy to break some barriers. As she’s gotten older, she was very proud of the fact that, ‘Hey, I’m 88 and I got asked to do SNL. Hey, I’m 88 and I’m starting a new sitcom called Hot in Cleveland that could run for years.’ I think it was the same thing with The Bold and the Beautiful; just a great opportunity to work and something that would allow her to stretch a little bit. And it was on CBS where she had a pretty good relationship. The ironic thing is she was playing an older character being an older actress, and look at how many years she survived that character who got killed off like 10 years ago or something like that. But Betty ticks on.”

‘Hot in Cleveland’ (2010-15)

Describes Wikipedia, “The series centers on three aging entertainment industry veterans from Los Angeles, Melanie (Valerie Bertinelli), Joy (Jane Leeves) and Victoria (Wendie Malick). The three women find a more welcoming and less shallow and youth-obsessed community in Cleveland, Ohio, where, as seen in the pilot episode, their Paris-bound plane makes an emergency landing. They decide to stay and lease a home where sassy caretaker Elka (Betty) still lives in the guest house.”

Jim expresses, “Betty brought magic to it and really made it kind of a Golden Girls-like show. Whether it was intentional or not. I remember when Betty did the pilot and they kind of had to talk her into it. I don’t think that it was meant to be a regular part. Betty reluctantly did it, because she was 88 and thought, ‘Why do a one-off when I’m not going do do the series?’ That’s probably where her mind was at. But then she did the series, and what a great time she was having playing with these three sitcom veterans who were also fabulous. And she had instant rapport with them. When it came to the series, she didn’t hesitate; she’d completely changed her mind, because she’d had a ball. And, of course, Betty brought magic to that character as someone who at that age could not only memorize her lines, but had the comic timing she brought to it that probably no one else could have done. It was a show that certainly embraced the heritage of The Golden Girls, which is one of the reasons why I think it was an instant hit. And clearly those three other women, who themselves are TV stars with impressive resumes, revered Betty and her comic timing, yet they were all equals and friends. When the cameras weren’t on, I hung out with them a little bit observing them for the book and for other reasons. I just remember thinking it was so interesting that the show knew what a treasure it had.”

Agrees Mike, “It was kind of like The Golden Girls for those years, and it actually really worked, because you had the aging women and the other three women. Betty was the vodka-drinking, profanity-speaking, no holds barred presence on the show, who would hit someone’s leg and say, ‘Oh, you’re a whore.’ She took everything she’d learned from all those years on all those shows, and brought it here. A great last series for her.”

Ed Robertson comments, “If I remember correctly, the producers felt that even though the other three actresses were popular and had had shows of their own, they needed Betty White in order to sell it to TV Land. And then she ended up sort of lampooning herself when they had her be the potty-mouth person, which helped to, again, allow her to reinvent herself, kept her fresh and kept her irreverent.

“In the last decade,” he elaborates, “Betty White is sort of doing what William Shatner has been doing and what Adam West did the last decade before he died, which which is to play a parody of herself on screen. I think there was a lot of that going on with Hot in Cleveland. And she was having fun.”