If You Ask Me by Betty White Read Free Book Online Page B

remoteness to film stars. As an accessible television performer, you have to be careful walking down the street—you might pick up a hundred new best friends. It’s so unlike film stars, it’s a different genetic makeup.
    Television and I discovered each other together. It was a very short window to get in, timing-wise.
    I was blessed with that timing, because we were inventing as we went along in those first days of television. And I joined the parade.

    On Boston Legal with James Spader.
    RON TOM/© FOX/COURTESY: EVERETT COLLECTION

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

    Our wedding day — June 6, 1963.
    GLOBE PHOTOS

FULL CIRCLE
    L ife does have a way of coming full circle.
    As of this writing, I have just finished shooting a movie ( You Again ) starring three great gals—Jamie Lee Curtis, Kristen Bell, and Sigourney Weaver. I thoroughly enjoyed working with all three but got a special kick out of getting to know Sigourney. It was her father, Pat Weaver, who was at the time the president of NBC, where I got my first network job ( The Betty White Show ) more than half a century ago.
    After several years of doing local television, going “national” was a major turning point in my career, and it was a dream come true.
    At the time, I was working five and a half hours a day, six days a week, with Al Jarvis in a live broadcast. No script—all ad-libbed—on KLAC’s Channel Thirteen in the local Los Angeles area. The show was called Hollywood on Television .
    After two years, Al left and I inherited the show and worked solo for two and a half years. Every Thursday night I was also doing a one-hour variety show that was something like a small-scale American Idol (like they say, there’s nothing entirely “new” in this world!). It was all local. People would come on the Thursday-night show and sing, and whoever won the variety show, whoever got voted the best performer, would have a week appearing on our daytime show. Here I should mention that I would sing, too—and I don’t know how they could tell me from the amateurs!
    So after the five-and-a-half-hour daily broadcast on KLAC, we would hold auditions to screen the candidates for the variety show. They’d sing for us, and some you wouldn’t believe—you just didn’t know where to look. You’d think, This is the longest song that was ever sung! And you felt so sorry for these people. . .. But sometimes we’d get lucky. The most memorable winner was a young Gogi Grant, who went on to achieve a great career.
    On Hollywood on Television , we finally got music—a guitar player named Roc Hillman. I would sing three songs each day to his accompaniment.
    Then came Pat Weaver’s job offer, which was a godsend. Pat warned me what it would entail:
    “Do you think you can handle doing a half-hour show every day, five days a week?”
    Well, after five and a half hours a day, six days a week, I wondered what I would do with all the time off! I would also have a five-piece band, led by well-known music man Frank De Vol. Roc Hillman, of course, was still on guitar.
    Pat Weaver was a real mover and shaker in the television business, and many of his innovations are still extant today. It was Pat, I believe, who first divided television time into segments like on the Today show and The Tonight Show .
    Little did I dream that all these years later I would be working with his star of a daughter. Sigourney wasn’t even a gleam in her father’s eye at that time.
    Nice as he was, I was in total awe of Pat when I worked for him back then. I must admit, at first I felt a bit of the same when I started working with Sigourney, since I have been a devout fan of hers, especially her fine performance as Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist .
    I am delighted to say that we have grown into warm and loving friends. You can’t imagine how thrilled I was when I came offstage after Saturday Night Live to find her waiting to say hello in my dressing room. She and Victor Garber (also in You Again ) had come