It`s Sunday morning, 9 a.m. Carmel time, and Betty White is on the telephone from her oceanfront home. She`s as chipper as a bird as she flies furiously from subject to subject.
Occasionally, she kids, ”Do you have writer`s cramp yet?” or ”My poor dear, your ears must be exhausted.”
”I haven`t seen the Lincoln Park Zoo in 10 years,” she says. ”Isn`t it a shame? Is Lester Fisher still the director? He`s a great guy.”
White is flying here Saturday, and will be honored that night at a Museum of Broadcast Communications gala at the Chicago Hilton and Towers (tickets are available for $200 per person; call 312-987-1514). She says she`ll have to fly back to Los Angeles Sunday morning because NBC`s ”The Golden Girls” is in production. (A 50-program retrospective of White`s career will be running at the museum through Sept. 29.)
White and Lincoln Park Zoo`s Fisher once were board members of the Morris Animal Foundation. White is now the group`s chairman of the board emeritus. But she still attends the meetings, as she often does at the Los Angeles Zoo, where she`s a board member.
”She`s not the kind of celebrity who simply lends her name,” Fisher says. ”She really shows up at meetings, and most importantly, she genuinely cares.”
At home, White`s ”best pals” are three dogs and a cat. ”Animals have always been a source of unending fascination,” she says. ”You know, anything with a leg on each corner.” White is the author of ”Pet Love,” once hosted a TV show called ”The Pet Set,” and is a tireless campaigner on behalf of the animal kingdom.
”For five years, I`ve been saying that Rose should have a pet,” White says, referring to Rose Nylund, the modern-day Gracie Allen she plays on ”The Golden Girls.”
”She loves animals, but Bea (Arthur) doesn`t believe animals should be on the stage,” she says. ”Everyone has their own angle. I believe it can be done without putting too much stress on the animal. And it can be a valuable role model for those without pets, especially inner-city children. ”
That is all light-years away from the supermarket tabloids, which assert that White is giving up dieting and is gorging herself on up to nine hot dogs a day. One also says that the women are fighting like cats and dogs on the set and that this will be their last season.
White says it angers her that ”people don`t find time to read newspapers, but they manage to read this rubbish. Then, they quote this garbage to their friends.”
She says the truth is probably ”too boring.”
She explains that the women have contracts through next season. ”I can`t speak for the others,” she says, ”but I`ll hang in as long as they stand for it. ”
White was at first pegged to play Rue McClanahan`s Blanche character, but no matter how she played it, the producers thought she would be compared to the nymphomaniac homemaker Sue Ann Nivens that White played on ”The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
White picked up two Emmys for her work on the Moore show. ”If the time comes, `The Golden Girls` should leave on top, just as Mary did,” White says. From her days as a regular on Jack Paar`s show to the myriad game show appearances she still makes, White`s most common part on TV has been playing her glib, sometimes bawdy and always upbeat self.
In 1981, she lost her husband of 18 years, Allen Ludden, the longtime
”Password” host.
”When Allen was very sick in his last 1 1/2 months, I`d come home at night and read (naturalist) George Schaller`s `Stone of Silence,` about sheep and goats in Europe,” she says. ”It beat taking a pill. We built this house together, then about halfway through, we knew he wasn`t going to make it. He hung on to sleep two nights here. I`ll always be grateful. I`ll tell you, there was a time when I didn`t know whether I was going to make it through the day, let alone the week. It`s still an open wound.”
White, an only child, lost her mother six years later. ”We played Trivial Pursuit up until the very end, and she creamed me too.”
”I`m proof that you can make it back,” White says. Besides adding another Emmy to her collection for ”The Golden Girls,” (she`s nominated again as best supporting actress), and being inducted to the Comedy Hall of Fame, she`s now being honored by her hometown at Saturday`s gala.
Well, almost her hometown. White is from Oak Park, though she doesn`t remember much. She moved to Los Angeles when she was 1/2. ”Don`t blame me,” she says. ”I didn`t decide to go, my folks did.”
