Year 14, Day 194 - 7/13/22 - Movie #4,199
BEFORE: WAY back on January 1, I had to decide who to dedicate the new Movie Year to, somebody from among the fallen, and there were a LOT of fallen. I couldn't decide between Betty White and Fred Willard, so I split the vote. And it took me THIS long, 198 films, to get to the documentary about Betty White that I knew I had in the hopper. So yeah, I stacked the deck, whatchu gonna do about it? I wasn't 100% sure that I could link to this one, but then I added so many docs to the line-up that there were probably a thousand different ways to link them all together, so I was able to choose the one that suited me best.
So, umm, why not add one more film to the chain and put this documentary on the century mark, make it Big Movie #4,200? Well, sure, I could, but Betty herself didn't make it to 100, she died a the age of 99, so I felt maybe it was appropriate to make sure this film's number ended in that "99". SO close to 100, and yet not quite there. Hey, she had a good run, and we should all be so lucky as to have 99 good years, even if some of them aren't so good, and a career in TV. Isn't that the American dream?
Tina Fey carries over from "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me". Betty may not make the year-end countdown, because that takes three appearances in a calendar year, and right now she's only got two. But who knows, she may turn up in another doc before the chain is done, there may be archive footage of her leaving Studio 54 some random Saturday night in the 1970's.
THE PLOT: A look at Betty White's life and career features behind-the-scenes clips of her work on TV and comments from her friends and co-stars.
AFTER: Again, who doesn't love Betty White? All of her co-stars (the ones still living, anyway) turned up to be interviewed for this 2018 TV movie (?) tribute. Hey, Netflix ran it and then it aired on PBS, plus it's a documentary, so I'm counting it as a movie. I know, standards are really slipping here at the Movie Year, aren't they? Just slap together a bunch of old TV footage from 1950's daytime talk shows, assemble the remaining cast of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", plus the cast of "Hot in Cleveland" during their lunch breaks, and you've got a movie. Sort of.
Betty White was the last surviving cast member from TWO long-running sitcoms - "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "The Golden Girls", now THAT'S longevity. Except for Ted Knight (who died in 1986), the vast majority of the MTM cast died in the last few years - Mary Tyler Moore in 2017, Valerie Harper and Georgia Engel in 2019, then Cloris Leachman, Gavin MacLeod and Ed Asner in 2021, and finally Betty on the LAST day of that year. It might seem statistically unlikely, but given the relative ages of all the cast members, plus the passage of time, it kind of makes some odd sort of sense. Everything has an expiration date - I'm surprised somebody didn't write an article about the show being "cursed" like they did for the movie "Poltergeist" or the bad things that seem to happen to actors who play Superman. Hey, there's still one cast member of "Gilligan's Island" left, Tina Louise, and one cast member of "Hogan's Heroes", Robert Clary.
How can Betty White pass away at age 99 and still have people think she left us far too soon? That speaks volumes about her personality, I think - everybody loved her in the early days of TV, and then she got a whole second career out of playing against type, like saying raunchy things on Saturday Night Live or appearing in that Snickers commercial playing a rough game of football in the mud. On "The Golden Girls" her character was always the clueless one, she didn't seem to understand much about the sexy humor, but it turns out you have to be in on the jokes to make them work, even if you're playing dumb. But being on TV so much, and being allowed into so many American homes via the tube, people just started to think she was always going to be there, I guess. By comparison, when Elaine Stritch, who had the complete opposite personality (yet was also funny), died, some people probably said, "Thank God, I thought she'd never leave..." or maybe they just enjoyed a little peace and quiet for once.
Things I didn't know but learned from this film - Betty White was one of the first female TV producers, out of necessity of being in the right place at the right time and needing to figure out how to get a sitcom ("Life With Elizabeth") made on a tight budget. And she was a crusader for civil rights, when Southern TV viewers didn't like the fact that Arthur Duncan, a dancer on her show, was black, she vowed to keep him in place, because she felt it was important. She was also the first woman to get an emmy for hosting a game show, called "Just Men!" in addition to being a regular on SO many game shows in the 1950's through 70's - "Password", "Match Game", "To Tell the Truth", "The Hollywood Squares" and "The $25,000 Pyramid", to name just a few.
Who said there are no third acts in American lives? Betty's fourth act came from getting back into movies at the age of 87 in "The Proposal" in 2009, and then the fifth act came about from a Facebook campaign to have her host "SNL" in 2010, which earned her another Emmy. And then she's got the Guinness World Record for longest TV career by a female entertainer. And she only became an actress back in the day because women weren't allowed to serve as forest rangers, which was her first choice for a career. Later in life she took up so much charitable work for animal-rights causes, essentially she became the ultimate forest ranger. (The USDA Forest Service made her an honorary ranger in 2010, fulfilling her dream.)
During World War II she volunteered for the Women's Voluntary Services, and drove a truck if you can believe that, but also participated in events for troops being deployed. A post-war tryout for the movies told her she wasn't photogenic enough, so she moved over to radio. Hey, it's gonna happen, just keep trying different ways to break in, right? It worked this way for George Carlin, too. That led to "Life with Elizabeth", which led to "The Betty White Show", a daily talk & variety show, and she had creative control. Then came all those game shows in the 1960's, where she met her third husband, Allen Ludden, the host of "Password", in 1961. They got married in 1963, she turned him down for a year and a half of proposals, then finally gave in, but always regretted that lost year and a half.
Then "Mama's Family", "Golden Girls", "Empty Nest" and "Hot in Cleveland" - there was a lot to cover in a documentary that was only an hour long, so really they could only focus on the big three. Ultimately, this hour about Betty White's career was edited into "Betty White: A Celebration", which screened in theaters on what would have been her 100th birthday, January 17, 2022.
Also starring Betty White (last seen in "You Again"), Valerie Bertinelli, Tyne Daly (last seen in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"), Arthur Duncan, Lisa Edelstein (last seen in "What Women Want"), Georgia Engel (last seen in "The Sweetest Thing"), Tony Fantozzi, Michelle Forbes (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2"), Sharon Gless, Valerie Harper (last seen in "My Future Boyfriend"), Jennifer Love Hewitt (last seen in "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer"), Linda Lavin (last seen in "Being the Ricardos"), Justina Machado (last heard in "Scoob!"), Gavin MacLeod, Millicent Martin (last seen in "The Last Word"), Mary Tyler Moore (last seen in "Walt: The Man Behind the Myth"), Jack Narz, Carl Reiner (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Ryan Reynolds (last heard in "The Croods 2: A New Age"), Tom Sullivan, Alex Trebek (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could read My Mind"), Jeff Witjas
with archive footage of Jason Alexander (last seen in "For the Love of Spock"), Bea Arthur, Ed Asner (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Sandra Bullock (last seen in "All About Steve"), Carol Burnett (also last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Dick Clark (last seen in "Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road"), Tim Conway, Rachel Dratch (last seen in "Adrienne"), Nelson Eddy, Will Forte (also last heard in "Scoob!"), Ana Gasteyer (last seen in "Wine Country"), Estelle Getty, Merv Griffin (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Al Jarvis, Jimmy Kimmel (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Ted Knight, Cloris Leachman (also last heard in "The Croods 2: A New Age"), Jane Leeves (last seen in "Music of the Heart"), Allen Ludden, Jeanette MacDonald, Wendie Malick (last seen in "Waiting..."), Dick Martin (last seen in "Tiny Tim: King for a Day"), Richard Masur (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Rue McClanahan, Jack Paar (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Amy Poehler (last seen in "A.C.O.D."), Tony Randall (last seen in "Pavarotti"), Gene Rayburn, Maya Rudolph (last seen in "My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea"), Molly Shannon (last seen in "Promising Young Woman"), William Shatner (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Mary Steenburgen (last seen in "Miss Firecracker")
RATING: 7 out of 10 Outstanding Lead or Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Emmy nominations
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