E-mail a friendBetty White
original airdate June 2, 2008
Emmy-winning actress Betty White has worked in radio, TV and film. She's starred in successful sitcoms, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls, guest-starred in hits like Boston Legal and lent her voice to several animated shows, including Family Guy. White started out in radio, which led to TV, in the early days of the medium. An avid animal activist, she collaborated with Tom Sullivan on the novel Together, about a special dog. She also appears on the new game show, Million Dollar Password.
Actress describes some lessons she learned from her time with animals plus one bad experience she had with a swan. (2:32)
Full Interview (12:32)
Betty White
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Betty White to this problem. The multiple Emmy-winning actress has been a fixture on television for years with roles in similar shows like "Mary Tyler Moore," and of course the '"Golden Girls," which I was just watching last night.
More recently, she's been recurring on the hit ABC series "Boston Legal," but she's also co-author of a new book with Tom Sullivan called "Together: A Novel of Shared Vision." Betty White, what an honor to have you on the program.
Betty White: Well, aren't you nice, Tavis? Thank you very much. It's nice to meet you.
Tavis: Delighted to meet you. I feel like I know you, I see you so many times every day.
White: You can't get rid of me. (Laughter)
Tavis: What's it feel like to have gotten to a point in your career where you have done so much stuff, and obviously enough stuff that's good, that I can catch you three or four times a day on three or four different shows?
White: Oh, it's embarrassing, because whatever you did then pretty soon shows up in reruns, so it comes back to haunt you no matter what. (Laughter)
Tavis: But that's got to be a good feeling, though, to have been associated with shows like the "Golden Girls" and "Mary Tyler Moore" and even "Password," the game show. This stuff - you're on TV every day somewhere.
White: Well, it's embarrassing but it's wonderful. It'll be 60 years next year, so you can't - my husband used to say I was a pioneer in silent television. (Laughter)
Tavis: Sixty years, take me back to the beginning. How did you get started?
White: I was just doing - television was just starting out here. It had started in New York about, mm, almost a year before, but then we got some kinescopes and things like that, and a local disc jockey, Al Jarvis, called one day and he said he needed a Girl Friday. And I don't know even where he got my name and stuff, so I thought well, sure.
I was doing another little show where I was getting $5 a show, and I thought gee, another $5, that's $10 a week for heaven's sake. (Laughter) And so when I got there, it turned out that his Girl Friday was also his Girl Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and we were on the air for two weeks and they extended it to Saturday.
So for four years, five and a half hours a day, six days a week, no script, no nothing, you just went out there and took your chances.
Tavis: Sounds like this show every night. (Laughter) I just come on and take my chances.
White: But that's what makes good television.
Tavis: I think so, I think so.
White: Not all the - you know what I like most about your show is that they - well, not most, but that you don't do a pre-interview. We can just come out and get acquainted.
Tavis: And just talk, yeah.
White: And that's lovely.
Tavis: You like that tightrope kind of experience?
White: Oh, yes.
Tavis: Just walking like that?
White: Oh, sure. You fall off a lot, you slip off a lot, but -
Tavis: Yeah, don't I know. (Laughter)
White: But you just keep plowing ahead.
Tavis: How do you do this - how do you? Somebody else might have a different answer to this, but how does Betty White do this for 60 years and not get tired of it? Still love it, still enjoy it?
White: I love it, I really do. I'm the luckiest old broad on two feet, because my life is divided into half. Half is show business, which I love, and the other half is animal work, which I love. I have to stay in show business to pay for my animal business, but it's a joy, it really is. To be able to go and still be asked to do things at my age is kind of nice.
Tavis: I'm going to get to the book in just a second, because since you mentioned the other half of your work is a love of animals, the other half of your life is your love of animals and animals certainly figure into this book, we'll come to that in just a second.
Tell me, though, now that I know how you got started in acting, where the love of animals came from.
White: Oh, in the womb. Tavis, my folks were just as bad. I think they were - as an only child, and I think they were so disappointed when I only had two legs and no tail, (laughter) I think they were ready - well, my mother used to tell me, we had an orange marmalade cat, Toby, when I was - when she had me. And Toby used to sit on the edge of my crib and supervise things.
And she said, "If Toby hadn't liked you, we'd have sent you right back to the hospital." (Laughter)
Tavis: So since you were a child, you have been in love with animals.
White: Fascinated by them. I really -
Tavis: What fascinates you so much about them?
White: Oh, the variety. I love nature, because when you think of animals and plants and bugs and birds and flowers, there's so much variety, and it's all around us. And I just find it intriguing. I love it. I worked with the Los Angeles Zoo for 38 years, and I've been with the Morris Animal Foundation, it's a health organization, for 40 years. So it's really my real work, and I just stay in show business to underwrite it.
Tavis: What has most of your work with regard to animals centered on? Health issues, saving animals? What's been the epicenter for you?
White: Animal health and welfare.
Tavis: Animal health and welfare.
White: Morris Animal Foundation, we fund humane studies into specific health problems of dogs, cats, horses, and zoo and wildlife, and so though I'm not into animal rights, I'm not into any of the political side of it, I'm into just animal health and welfare.
Tavis: I respect that. I mentioned a moment ago that there is an animal that factors into this story. This new book, "Together: A Novel of Shared Vision." The novel is based in part on a true story. I'll let you explain what the storyline is, though.
White: Tom Sullivan and I are great and dear friends. This is our second book that we've done together. But let me assure you, it's Tom Sullivan with Betty White, it's not and Betty White. I did a couple of chapters, but it's mostly I did the visual stuff; Tom's been blind since birth.
And our first book together was about his guide dog Dinah, and I took Dinah when she had to retire from working because she couldn't handle the new guide dog that came into his life. So that new guide dog, Nelson, is the one who figures in this book, but then it's Tom's storyline, and it's interesting.
It's this guide dog that was so in love with his trainer at the guide dog school, he didn't want any part of going into any house and helping. And he was a bit of a mischievous - he would keep getting sent back and rejected. And Brendon, the hero, is a mountain climber and falls and is blinded, and he wants no part of being blind.
So these two antisocial creatures get together, and it's the way they work it out. I love it. I just think - it's coming out this week, as a matter of fact.
Tavis: I've got my copy already, so. Mine's the bootleg, I guess, since it's just coming out. I got mine already. What is it, you think - this goes back to part of our earlier conversation - what is it from your perspective about animals that so intrigues all the rest of us?
And I ask that in part because I was just looking the other day at "The New York Times" bestseller list, and sometimes it just makes me laugh when I look at the list and I see the number of books on the list about dogs, people's relationship with dogs. There are so many books on the list from time to time about animals.
White: Well, and how many articles or stories - not just dogs, but all animals. I think it's because we get a response from them that we don't always get from people. You can go to Tibet or you can go to the mailbox and pick up the mail, you're going to get the same greeting when you come back in. And I find working with the zoo animals so fascinating because in the wild, a lot of our animals are disappearing.
So the zoos now, it's a whole new community. It's not like the old "we have one of this and one of that." The zoos now all work with the wild community to try to save species that are going extinct or replenish species that need help in the wild. So I'm in hog heaven doing what I like the best.
Tavis: Speaking of animals, hog heaven. What have your experiences taught you, being so close to animals? I assume that there must be some lessons you've learned over the years.
White: You can't lie to them. You cannot lie. They'll read your body language, and what I find fascinating is if you pay attention, you can read them almost as well as they read you. But not any better than they read you. They can tell by your facial expressions, by your - you're just - well, and animals also can tell - animals respond to me, and I love it, but I think it's because they don't sense any fear.
I'm talking about wild animals, even at the zoo. And they don't sense any fear, so they trust you. And it's such a thrill for me, because I'm an animal nut, to get that total trust and be able to sit there, and it shows patience, too. It teaches you patience, to wait it out until it happens.
Tavis: So you've never had a bad experience with an animal?
White: Only once.
Tavis: Only once?
White: I've only been hurt by an animal in all these umpteen decades - a swan. (Laughter) I was driving - is that -
Tavis: I don't mean to laugh at your hurt and harm, but that's pretty funny, though. A swan, of all animals?
White: That's why I'm telling you. And Alan was - my husband, Alan Ludden, was doing a play, and I went to see the play. But during the day he was rehearsing, so I took a drive. It was up in Michigan, and I took a drive to see this beautiful country. And there were these trumpeter swans, and they were in the river. And so I parked to watch them for a while.
And then I got out of the car to go over and see. Well, it was my fault. This swan said, "I've got a nest in there, and you stay away from here," and he hissed at me. And I didn't go closer, but I didn't back up, either. I just had to see. And he was hissing at me, and all of a sudden, he took off up to me and took his wing and hit my leg here. It was like being hit with a baseball bat.
I've never - he could have broken a leg easily, I was very lucky. But then after all these umpteen years with animals, the only time I've been hurt was by a swan. (Laughter) It's ridiculous, you're right to laugh.
Tavis: That's a story for the ages. Yeah, forgive me for laughing, but it was funny, though.
White: It is funny. It hits me funny.
Tavis: Let me close by - I mentioned earlier all the shows you've done, the similar shows you've done. So is it "Million-Dollar Password?" Is that what it's called? Is it "Million-Dollar Password?"
White: It's the new one, that's the new one that's coming out.
Tavis: The new one, with Regis.
White: Yeah, they did six of them, and I did the third one. The first one I think started last night, as a matter of fact. But it's not your old-fashioned "Password."
Tavis: I was about to ask how it compares to the original "Password" that you were on.
White: Well, it is so - "Password" was a little, intimate, two people here, two people there, and Alan Ludden in the middle. This one is this enormous stage with a million lights and music and noise and special effects and all. I keep thinking - but it's the same game. It's a wonderful game. Ten cameras, Tavis. How do you use 10 cameras on a game show?
Tavis: I only have two or three. Maybe it's that million-dollar budget they have over there. (Laughter) Anyway, I'm delighted to have you on the program.
White: Well, it's - and I enjoyed meeting you, thank you so much.
Tavis: It is such a pleasure. So tonight, when I see you on "Golden Girls" on reruns, I'll say, "I've met her, finally."
White: You're stuck with (unintelligible). And thank you for the plug. Really appreciate it.
Tavis: Thank you for the book. The book by Betty White with Tom Sullivan is called "Together, A Novel -"
White: The book by Tom Sullivan with Betty White.
Tavis: I knew - (laughter) I knew that was coming the minute I screwed that up. Get it right, Tavis, get it right. Let's try that again. Put it back up, Jonathan. Tom Sullivan, with Betty White - "Together: A Novel of Shared Vision." Are you happy now?
White: I'm happy, Tav, thank you so much.
Tavis: There you go. My pleasure.
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