Inside the Actors Studio (S16 E6) - Betty White

as you can see tonight we are not at our home in manhattan's pace university we're in los angeles in the magnificent walt disney concert center on the stage of the calarts theater familiarly known as redcat as the guests of the california institute of the arts which was established by walton roy disney tonight cal arts and the actors studio drama school of pace university join hands to welcome an artist who has been touching audiences charming them and making them laugh almost as long as disney has for 70 years along the way she has received 20 emmy nominations and won seven emmys several of them for her unforgettable performances on the mary tyler moore show and the golden girls she has won two american comedy awards and the screen actors guild and television critics association have recognized her with life achievement awards her films include lake placid bringing down the house the proposal and you again her recent appearance as the host of saturday night live resulted in her latest emmy award continuing at a tireless pace she is writing two books listen up and the zoo and i betty and her friends and we are currently enjoying her in hot in cleveland you can find her star on the hollywood walk of fame and tonight we're happy to say you can find her here on our stage the actors studio is very proud to welcome betty white uh [Applause] now this is just ridiculous you know how to spoil a woman thank you james as the world knows betty has just won another emmy as the host of saturday night live [Applause] we also know betty that you were unable to attend the ceremony to receive the award so the television academy and we thought that maybe tonight we ought to do this from erston young and the emmy goes to betty white saturday [Applause] and i've got some golden girls who keep her company at home now to our traditional beginning where were you born betty in oak park illinois and your father's name was horace lawrence white and your mother's name tess curtis white what was your mother's lineage english but half greek did you ever hear greek spoken in your home oh katana's kala good evening is that what it is i was hoping it was clean because i didn't really know what it meant what was your father's profession he was in the electrical business he put flood lights up on the rose bowl and then he sold the floodlights i should say he didn't put him up there he sold him how old were you when your family moved to california a year and a half i don't think california was a state at that time i think they were a terrorist maybe we were a territory did you have any awareness of or or contact with the movie industry around you not really not really i uh first i wanted to be a forest ranger and girls couldn't be forest rangers back in those days right and i want to be a zookeeper and the same thing pertained that i wanted to be a writer that's what i really wanted to be what is the land of the rising sun that was the grammar school graduation play i wrote it and i like any red-blooded american girl i wrote myself into the lead and so that was my that was my debut you went to beverly hills highs yes did it have a drama program yes i i was in the graduation play pride and prejudice and what did you do after graduation i a little thing came along called world war ii so i i did war work i joined the american women's voluntary services what was the bliss hayden little theater group bliss hayden was a little theater group in beverly hills and after i graduated from high school and after the war i uh by paying fifty dollars a month you could go there and act in their plays so i asked my dad if if you know if i could borrow the fifty dollars and yeah so i got the lead in a in a play and then when the play ended they asked me to do another another play so about another fifty dollars from that draft you had to pay them to act in their place times have changed if my information is correct of the more than 250 guests who have appeared on our stage you are the first to have appeared on television what happened in 1939 three months after you graduated from high school it was a an experimental thing we went down to the packard automobile uh showroom downtown yeah and on the fifth floor we did the merry widow and for anybody like parents who wanted to watch us they had to stand down among all the packard cars down in the show and watch this little bitty monitor and that was my television debut it was everybody's television debut there was no television before that you're going to hear a lot of firsts tonight this is the first first who was al jarvis and how did he and his show change your life al jarvis was a disc jockey on radio here he had a marathon radio show like five and a half hours something six hours a day and played records and it was when television first started he called me he said i'm starting a show and i i'd like you to be my girl friday and he said you just don't have to do anything but just be there for me to have somebody to talk to and we'll do a couple of commercials and well i went i found out when i got there we were on five and a half hours a day six days a week with no script no nothing was like going to television college when jarvis left the show didn't you ultimately wind up as the well i inherited the show just because i was there how did that show lead to the series called life with elizabeth i sang three songs during the show but we'd lead into the song with a little sketch and the payoff the joke of the the end of the sketch would be the title of the song and i'd instead of saying the line i'd start the song right don fetterson was the station manager yeah and don called us into the office and he said that husband and wife thing you do do you think do you think you could make that into a half hour series it went all over the all over the world they syndicated it and i think it's still running somewhere out in the outback of australia the kangaroos the kangaroos loved it you were its co-creator its producer and its star were you not yes betty was the first woman on tv to have creative control of her show now another first did you not get your first emmy for that show right for elizabeth yes wasn't that when you were declared the honorary mayor of hollywood yes yes i uh with a silk hat the whole thing in the 1950s and 60s and 70s you were called the first lady of game shows what shows did you appear on oh yeah well i love games i've always loved games so game shows were just sort of a natural and one day a show came along called password and it was hosted by a fellow called alan ludden and bob stewart who who conceived all these shows i treasure he said the first time i did password allen london came back into the office afterwards and said i'm going to marry that woman did he yeah and in fact he did it was a legendary marriage in our profession what was he like oh he was what you saw was what you got he was i think i fell in love with his enthusiasm he was interested in everything he could talk into that camera and be so natural and be so himself that you have to fall in love with somebody like that they were a golden couple it ended suddenly and much too soon in 1980. yes we missed 18 years by three days and what happened bladder cancer and it took him very quickly they needed a seekingly sweet neighborhood nymphomania now we approach a milestone not only for you but for television how did the role of suanne nivens on the mary tyler moore show come to you after the show was on about four years they called me one day and said uh we have an idea for a for a happy homemaker character and she's i found out afterwards they were looking for a sickeningly sweet type a betty white type and no i did i heard that and the casting lady bless her heart said well why don't you get betty and they said oh no we can't because mary and betty are friends and if it didn't work it might be awkward for mary so i guess they finally couldn't find anybody sickeningly sweet enough so they called me and said would you do the show we had a wonderful show so they kept bringing suanne back and she got worse all the time but they needed a seekingly sweet neighborhood nymphomania wasn't she a kind of forerunner of martha stewart she was that kind of a an on-camera person she could do anything she could cook anything but i don't i don't know that martha isn't a neighborhood nymphomaniac but i doubt it maybe you know better than i i don't know on that very point she was about to begin her television show within the show one day and she was suddenly confronted by the woman with whose husband she was having this sizzling affair is dr mr in mrs lindstrom i see thank you he is with a patient he will call me back first chance he gets so now you see that is the sort of relationship lars i'll be right back after this brief look at my chocolate souffle i think what we have to talk about is more important than your chocolate souffle i'm sorry but this is a very critical time well i'm sorry this is a very critical time for me too oh my poor baby well there was no need for violence why and where sitting and talking is one thing but why you should deliberately destroy an innocent souffle that never did you anymore i think you've gone too far you're bananas you know that the heart and soul of that show was of course mary tyler moore tell me about working with mary we became the deepest dearest friends which we still are of course that whole company was magic and mary is one of those people that she can say won't you sit down and she owns the scene how many emmys did you win on the mary tyler moore shoot two for mary 1985 is another landmark year in television because it marks the birth of a series called the golden girls what roles were you and roo mcclanahan initially offered on that show they offered me the part of blanche and they offered the part of rose jay sandwich who had directed most of the mary tyler moore shows in his wisdom said if betty white plays another neighborhood nymphomaniac what they're going to think blanche and suanne are the same character so he said why don't we switch them well i fell in love with rose i loved rose she she believed life was a musical comedy that was always going to have a happy ending and she really believed that and real mcclanahan took blanche out into orbit where i never would have dared to go and she made it her own and she was just wonderful one of the things that betty does very well and she will often play a part and the actors in our audience will appreciate this that is multi-layered with all the innocence and ignorance of that character there was another side of rose both sides are apparent in this scene in which dorothy's bratty granddaughter holds rose's beloved teddy bear fernando hostage i changed my mind i was wrong to ask for all those gifts dorothy you see i knew she'd come to her senses i decided cash is better that way i can buy exactly what i want i'll get my purse no blanche i'm not gonna let you do that i've been doing a lot of thinking and if after all the years of love and companionship fernando and i are meant to part company i'll just have to accept that time to time life deals you an unfriendly hand there's nothing you can do about it i guess there's a lesson to be learned here sometimes life just isn't fair kiddo how much of betty white was in rosen island i think a lot i think more than than i might have realized at the time because i'm not a good negativist i like the i'm a positivist and i know that gets people up to here sometimes because i do try to always look at the positive side it beats the alternative as far as i'm concerned when i was doing sue ann nivens they would ask alan how close is that character to betty he said they're very much alike except betty can't cook but with rose even allen saw there was a lot of betty in rose next to the name of each golden girl in the internet database is the number 180 that's the number of episodes in which there were to the pleasure of millions of us four golden girls is it amazing that they could do that many things about four old broads and now as hard as it is to imagine there's one golden girl everyone who has come to our stage from the world of episodic tv has said that over time series casts become a family i assume that that was so oh my goodness yes we truly loved each other and that's why when we lost the still it was it was heartbreaking and losing b was such a it was almost more than you could take but the other day when we lost not long ago when we lost roosie it almost finished me i just i just can't believe that the emmys when they did the memorium thing yes all of a sudden there she is up there and it it was murder she's there forever all of them are there forever the golden girls the one thing about television that's absolutely wonderful that they'll never go away right i understand how can you you lock three members of your family off and you just you never get over it where did you get all those cars i made them myself i have look you people are privileged to be with betty for a couple of hours tonight i've just spent the last month of my life with betty and he's up to here through much of the series rose was convinced for some mysterious reason that she was the biological daughter of whom bob hope she was sure she was sure she was bob hope's daughter i don't know where it came from or how she figured that out betty and i met a long time ago 22 years ago in 1988 when i was producing bob hope's birthday specials and since i wrote broadway musicals and i was writing with psy coleman the great composer of sweet charity and and so many classic songs he wrote a score each of the songs celebrated one aspect of bob's amazing life and i would like you to share with us a piece of one of those numbers which is called simply vaudeville [Applause] tonight we jump from san diego to dallas costumes won't show up our sketches will blow up two poodles will throw up the glass will be mean critics may hate us and hectors may pay us the public may raid us the lowest they've seen but no one they laugh i know when they cheer that makes your day hell that makes your year an older ovation that's warm and sincere that's what [Music] glorious that's how we met [Applause] she was singing my lyrics and you never called you're never right but i collected the royalties that was donald o'connor of course and tony randall dancing and singing with betty for 16 years i've been hectoring the people in that chair please would they just dance a step for our students and perhaps with a little encouragement tonight's guest might consent to show you a move or two [Applause] i don't have the right shoes on because you know [Applause] [Applause] and there's no host in the world happier than i am at this moment i didn't understand that that had anything wrong with it just because i have a dusty muffin every time i prepare for one of these evenings as a pleasant surprise in this case it's a movie called the proposal with whom did you appear in it sandra bullock and ryan reynolds and it's a it's just and directed by a wonderful lady ann fletcher is there a different sensibility when a woman is directing the sometimes there is she was a an ex-choreographer so she wouldn't move from set to set you'd love her if she wouldn't move from set to set she'd tours at a and then all right action it is we had a good guy you played another blunt outspoken character what else is new i know in his review roger ebert described you as the unsinkable betty white that's evident in what he called the film's key scene when you fit sandra with what was your wedding dress that is one of the nicest ladies in show business oh there's no movie star about her at all she's just this down to earth that we're going to be friends forever i have a feeling you wind up friends with virtually everyone you work with the 2010 super bowl telecast featured a contest for the best commercial which commercial won the snickers it was a sneakers thing it was early in the morning and it was cold and there was a a pool of muddy water and i was out on the field playing football with with a bunch of young guys which i do every saturday but at this one point the stunt woman took this dive into the muddy pool and then they cut and then i just lay down on the muddy water and and for that just to lay down in the mud yeah and cold icy cold but it's so unfair the stunt woman did all the work she didn't die but i got the laugh that's not fair you got a lot more than that one of the offshoots of that commercial was a history making appearance on saturday night live and it began like this snl works its hosts harder than any show on tv it yanks them off the stage to change costumes in real time and change wigs during the commercials minute and a quarter they drag you into a closet about the size of this chair and somebody's doing your wig somebody's doing your makeup somebody's taking your clothes off somebody else is putting them on and then they drag you back on stage and you think which sketch is this i don't have a clue saturday night lives delicious dish on national public radio may be the dirtiest sketch on all of television this is a case of single entendre you appeared on it as florence dusty what were you discussing my muffins well i mean i didn't i didn't understand that that had anything wrong with it oh god just because i have a dusty muffin once again the golden girl went gold this is how the new york times began its snl review all it took to reinvigorate a 35 year old comedy show was the presence of an 88 year old woman on saturday after more than 70 years in show business six emmy awards and one improbable facebook campaign betty white finally got her shot at hosting saturday night live do you remember the show's ratings no they were the highest ratings since 2008. they had to wait for betty white to go through the roof when you're hot you're hot and now you're hot in cleveland how did this project come to you they sent me a pilot script and i agreed to do a guest shot on the pilot with the proviso that i would not be involved should it get picked up for series because my schedule is kind of swamped you know so we did the pilot and they picked us up for 10 shows and the producers called and would i do what i do you know some more shows and i said no that wasn't that wasn't the idea that i had made the proviso that i guess who wound up doing all 10 shows it's such a delightful show to do because again the chemistry between those girls is so wonderful that you just you get the feeling that something good is happening for those who haven't yet sampled the show's wares what is the show's premise these three gals who lived in los angeles uh nothing much was happening romantically so they decided to treat themselves to a trip to paris and maybe find some romance they had to make an emergency landing in cleveland and so they're going through the airport to find another airline to you know continue with their journey but everywhere they went the guys would be eyeing them and hitting on them and trying to buy them a drink and they they thought why should we spend all that money and go to paris when we're hot in cleveland what a simple wonderful premise they rent a house and along with the house they they get this gal who's been house-sitting for 50 years and she's not the nicest lady in the world but they inherit her you're at the beginning of a journey that you've taken before once again you are joining a family of of women tell us about working with this cast valerie bertinelli oh valerie is a delight she's the fine actress and she's a sweet warm gal that the audience just wants to you know hug and protect again the chemistry it's like four points on accomplice again wendy malek is a funny funny lady from just shoot me and jane leaves was the housekeeper on frasier and she has a wicked sense of humor that's just delicious you were in on the creation of your character elka from the very beginning she's much more like suanne than rose she's much more like suen than rose but she's not a sexy lady although now they brought carl reiner on the show and she's dated carl reiner and tim conway she been hit on him so i think maybe there's hope for elka after all as each episode begins a voice sometimes yours says recorded in front of a live studio audience that takes us back to a golden age of television oh do you like it shooting in front oh it's such a joy it's a live theater isn't it oh it's like live theater you go in you've got your your studio audience like we have here and they help you they tell you you know when when you have to pause for a laugh that happens or when you start to put a pause in that there's no laugh you move right along [Music] in one of the early episodes the girls decide to give each other the gifts they really want which of course are men the one who shows up for elka has just been mentioned by betty he is played by a certifiable comedic genius his name is carl reiner yes and of course he meets his match in betty later in this episode elka tells the three women that her engagement is broken once again we are in the land of off color do you remember why the engagement was broken you explained to the ladies that he wouldn't go downtown i'm not being critical betty no but fortunately i don't understand any of these things in respect to your youth i will not explain it thank you what is there in you that has been bringing out this raunch in your writers for half a century i don't know it it's just something that i i don't understand and they can write anything and i'll i'll read it [Applause] i don't i don't i don't want to be disobedient we're entering our 17th year i've had over 250 guests this may be the sexiest guest we've ever had [Applause] [Music] fight fight fight for beverly high it's understandable that with a full-time job on hot in cleveland you would look around for something to fill your idle hours which i estimate to be once a week between three and five a.m i understand you've signed a two book contract with putnam yes what are you writing at the zoo we have this magnificent photographer tad moriyama because i've worked with the zoo for 47 years and he gives me copies of everything he does and i know a lot of those animals as personal friends so i i the book is his picture and i write an anecdote about that individual animal and the other one is just short like little essays on various subjects it's called listen up yeah yeah and the the lessons i'm given to understand are love life sex aging and tv right would you like to wet our appetites with a word or two on any of those subjects i don't think so we begin our classroom with a questionnaire that was asked for 26 years by the best talk show host who ever lived beyond people in france betty what is your favorite word kindness what is your least favorite word drone what is your favorite sound or noise a kitty's purr what is your least favorite sound the sound of my voice after the last two hours nobody here agrees with you what turned you on being with animals of course what turns you off meanness coolly now we come to the moment we've all been waiting betty white what's your favorite curse word son of a what profession other than your own would you like to undertake oh zookeeper no no no question what profession would you absolutely not like to practice under any circumstance i really don't know i think you'd find something pretty interesting about almost anything what a good answer finally if heaven exists what would you like to hear god say to you when you arrive at the pearly gates come on in betty here's alan and for the moment here are your students miss white i told myself i would not leave without telling you that you and i both attended horace mann and beverly hills high school oh do you want to do the fight song i don't remember it fight fight fight beverly high win the victory come on and win the fight for orange and white best in the west you know you'll all do your best so on on on fight to the end for honor and glory

Channel: SophiaPetrillosBuddy

Views: 335,640

Keywords: betty white, inside the actors studio, james lipton, Inside the Actors Studio betty white

Id: 5GP_nYq_UR0

Length: 37min 16sec (2236 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 31 2021

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[u/getawayfrommenow]

We did not deserve her.