An Early TV Critic Was So Hard on Young Betty White She Cried for Three Days Straight
While Betty White became a sitcom superstar thanks to The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Golden Girls, she also helped pioneer the genre in the 1950s.
It started when White found herself co-hosting — then solo hosting — a daytime talk show in Los Angeles called Hollywood on Television, according to comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff writing for WFMU. Because the medium was so new, White would ad-lib for hours until an enterprising producer began writing short husband-and-wife sketches for White (Elizabeth in the scripted bits) and her dullard partner Alvin. “They worked — above and beyond anyone’s expectations,” White explained.
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The sketches eventually evolved into a locally produced situation comedy called Life With Elizabeth. It was a low-rent affair, with White and producer/writer George Tibbles making up names to list in the credits so it would seem like a more robust production. KLAC’s station manager got ambitious after a month and took out ads to sell Life With Elizabeth to other stations. Since programming was scarce, the show became one of the first successful syndicated sitcoms.
White admitted the comedy was beyond tame. “We didn’t worry about relevance in those days,” she said, noting that a typical episode might deal with “Elizabeth’s biscuits not turning out.” The show was structured more like a comic strip, with three mini-episodes about inconsequential married life filling the half hour.
Kinder critics damned Life With Elizabeth with faint praise like “passable” and “good enough.” The term “inoffensive” was a selling point to local stations that didn’t want to deal with letters and calls from easily outraged viewers. But “bland” didn’t make the show any good.
John Crosby, a critic for the New York Herald Tribune, reluctantly paid attention as the show spread across the country. He didn’t care much for Betty White. “Miss White plays the wholesome side of the street for all it’s worth. While I rather hesitate to come out against wholesomeness, I think there are limits and I think Miss White transgresses beyond — well, we won’t pursue that thought any further,” he wrote. “Miss White is dimpled, fully dressed and well-upholstered. She lives with her mother, loves dogs, has a nickname of Betz, and does her own hair which looks like — well we won’t pursue that thought any further either.”
Whatever kind of “terribly wholesome” American apple pie White was selling, Crosby wasn’t buying it. “In fact,” he wrote, “I suspect that if I took a bite out of Miss White I’d absorb enough vitamin B to last all winter.”
The critique hit White where it hurt. “I didn't just get a bad review,” she said. “He didn’t like what I wore, he didn’t like my laugh, he didn’t like what I looked like, he certainly didn’t like what I did. And I cried for three solid days. I cut it out and I saved it. I still have the damn thing.”
Crosby didn’t appear to have anything against White personally — it’s just that his taste leaned in another direction. “And now, if you’ll pardon me,” he wrote, “I’m off to stare at Jane Russell and see if some of this wholesomeness will wash off.”
