Lawrence Eisenberg

By Lawrence Eisenberg

Published By Newsday & L.A. Times Syndicate, July 5, 1987.

Any dictionary will tell you that a bore is a dull, tedious person who makes peoples' eyes glaze over by means of repetition and pointless, endless stories. So far, no dictionary has a definition of a "cute bore," but that's to be found every time Betty White comes onto the screen in "The Golden Girls" (Saturdays, NBC, 9 p.m.).

Rose is a character who has no internal editing system. Each story in her repertoire will take as long to tell as it did to happen, even if it covers years. And, since nothing ever seems to bore her, she isn't aware that anything could bore anybody else. Aside from which, she comes from a midwestern farm background with odd Scandinavian twists, and will tell some stories that most bores might kill for: about herring festivals or raising pigs with missing legs. And, to illustrate, and further lengthen her tiresome tales, she will use fractured Scandinavian words like "gefletterhoken," which she rarely defines.

"She's not really with us. She marches to a different drummer, and just thinks everything is wonderful," says White, on a recent trip to New York. She adds that if not for Jay Sandrich, who directed the pilot episode of "The Golden Girls," audiences might be seeing quite a different Rose.

"They had approached me for the part of Blanche [played by Rue McClanahan], and Jay, in his wisdom, said, 'If Betty plays man-hungry Blanche, no matter how she plays it, the audience is going to think of Sue Ann Nivens [the man-eater she played on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"]. Why don't you try her for Rose?' And I thought that was swell, but I didn't know who Rose was. Susan Harris [who created the show] said, 'She's my favorite character, but she's a little off-center.' And Jay said, 'Just keep her completely innocent. She never thinks of the second meaning of a word.' And it's been a great rule of thumb to go by."

White says that about the only thing she and Rose have in common is a love of animals. "I wish Rose could have a pet. There was that episode where they were raising minks and another where she was keeping a lost dog, but I'd love her to have a resident rabbit or a piglet. Of course, everybody's sending me pictures to audition their pets. I get rabbit pictures you won't believe, with descriptions of the tricks they do."

White, who wears a pendant in the shape of an ancient Egyptian cat, quotes her late husband, Alan Ludden, who used to tell her, "Television is your hobby. Your real work is animals."

She is president emeritus of the Morris Animal Foundation ("Nothing to do with Morris the Cat. It's a research organization that funds studies into specific diseases of dogs, cats, horses and assorted wildlife. We helped pioneer the leukemia vaccine for cats, that kind of thing"). She has also been on the board of the Los Angeles Zoo for the past 15 years. Several years ago she wrote a book, "Betty White's Pet Love," about animals used in therapy; and, when she isn't doing "The Golden Girls," she is likely to be writing an article, making a speech or going to an animal medical convention.

"My favorite animals? I don't care. Anything with a leg on each corner," she says. "I love apes, and bears crack me up. We had two pandas on loan from China at the L.A. Zoo and I would go out there and be captivated. There's a lot of lying around on your back, being adorable. Then, when they've got a good house going, they'll stre-e-e-e-tch. It boggles my mind."

Personally, she owns a black poodle called Timmy, a white dog, Cricket, "who started out the size of this coffee cup and now, if you pick him up, you get a hernia" and a black cat "that Timmy found and brought home. I named her T.K., for 'Timmy's Kitty.' And they're inseparable, always rolling around. Thank goodness one's white or we couldn't tell any of them apart."

If White's attitude towards animals is whimsical, it is no less so in any other area. "I'm a little bit off-center. I love to put people on." She becomes enchanted
when her interviewer suggests that the writers consider a show, possibly a dream sequence, in which the four actresses switch roles. "I'd love to see Bea [Arthur, who plays Dorothy] playing Rose. And you could help the audience with what they know: Rue is never still. The motor is running at all times. And you've got Sophia's white wig...That's a dynamite idea."

She swings into a story about a couple of prop men on the show who are fond of playing practical jokes on the actresses. "I was packing a lunch in a dramatic scene with my granddaughter, and for the dress rehearsal, I picked up the bag but the cookies stayed there. They'd cut out the bottom. The challenge is to see whether you can keep going no matter what happens. Once I was supposed to be carrying a suitcase. It was fine at first, and when I went to pick it up later, the handle came off because they'd stuffed it with books. It brightens the day. We do a lot of eating on the show and the other day one of the prop men carried out a tray of lasagna that Sophia [Estelle Getty] was supposed to have cooked and he tripped and it went all over us and scared us to death. But it was putty." She laughs. "I work with three theater ladies and at first they thought this was nonsense, how unprofessional. But it only took them five minutes to get into the group."

She is even amused by some of the questions from fans. "My favorite is, 'Do you have writers on your show?' I'm almost tempted to say, 'No, we make it up as we go along.' Or: 'Do you like doing television?' I think of answering, 'No, I hate it; that's why I've been doing it all my life.' And I just love it when a couple of them will stand a foot away from me in an elevator and have a discussion, as though I'm not there: 'Is that her?...No, it can't be...Sure it is...She doesn't look as old as she does on television...And she isn't as fat as I thought she was.' "
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Copyright Lawrence Eisenberg. 2008. All Rights Reserved