Betty White was one of television's earliest pioneers
-
Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Betty White
Makitabe — 4 years ago(January 01, 2022 02:18 PM)
Everyone knows her for her Golden Girls days, but that came decades after she began her TV career back in 1949, near the dawn of television. She would quickly get her own show which she did 6 days a week for 5 and a half hours a day, completely without a script. She did it for 4 years.
In 1949, she began appearing as co-host with Al Jarvis on his daily live television variety show Hollywood on Television, originally called Make Believe Ballroom, on KFWB and on KCOP-TV in Los Angeles.
White began hosting the show by herself in 1952 after Jarvis's departure, spanning five and a half hours of live ad lib television six days per week, over a continuous four-year span. In all of her various variety series over the years, White would sing at least a couple of songs during each broadcast. In 1951, she was nominated for her first Emmy Award as "Best Actress" on television, competing with Judith Anderson, Helen Hayes, and Imogene Coca; the award went to Gertrude Berg. At this point, the award was for body of work, with no shows named in nominations.
Here is part of an episode.
More about her early television career:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_White#Early_work
In 1952, the same year that she began hosting Hollywood on Television, White co-founded Bandy Productions with writer George Tibbles and Don Fedderson, a producer. The trio worked to create new shows using existing characters from sketches shown on Hollywood on Television. White, Fedderson, and Tibbles created the television comedy Life with Elizabeth, with White portraying the title character. The show was originally a live production on KCOP-TV in 1951, and won White a Los Angeles Emmy Award in 1952.
Life with Elizabeth was nationally syndicated from 1952 to 1955, allowing White to become one of the few women in television with full creative control in front of and behind the camera. The show was unusual for a sitcom in the 1950s because it was co-produced and owned by a twenty-eight-year-old woman who still lived with her parents. White said they did not worry about relevance in those days, and that usually the incidents were based on real life situations that happened to her, the actor who played Alvin, and the writer.
White also performed in television advertisement seen on live television in Los Angeles, including a rendition of the "Dr. Ross Dog Food" advertisement at KTLA during the 1950s. She guest starred on The Millionaire in the episode "The Virginia Lennart Story", as the owner of a small town diner that received an anonymous gift of $1,000,000, in 1956.
In 1954, White hosted and produced her own daily talk/variety show, The Betty White Show, on NBC (her second show to feature that title). Like her sitcom, she had creative control over the series, and was able to hire a female director. The show faced criticism for the inclusion of Arthur Duncan, an African-American performer, as a regular cast member. The criticism followed when NBC expanded the show nationally. Local Southern stations threatened to boycott unless Duncan was removed from the series. In response, White said "I'm sorry. Live with it," and gave Duncan more airtime. Initially a ratings success, the show repeatedly changed time slots and suffered lower viewership. By the end of the year, NBC quietly cancelled the series.
Following the end of Life with Elizabeth, she appeared as Vicki Angel on the ABC sitcom Date with the Angels from 1957 to 1958. As originally intended, the show, loosely based on the Elmer Rice play Dream Girl, would focus on Vicki's daydreaming tendencies. However, the sponsor was not pleased with the fantasy elements, and pressured to have them eliminated. "I can honestly say that was the only time I have ever wanted to get out of a show," White later said. The sitcom was a critical and ratings disaster, but ABC wouldn't allow White out of her contractual agreement and required her to fill the remaining thirteen weeks in their deal. Instead of a retooled version of the sitcom, White rebooted her old talk/variety show, The Betty White Show, which aired until her contract was fulfilled."
The sitcom did give White some positive experiences: she first met Lucille Ball while working on it, as both Date With the Angels and I Love Lucy were filmed on the same Culver Studios lot. The two quickly struck up a friendship over their accomplishments in taking on the male dominated television business of the '50s. They relied on one another through divorce, illness, personal loss, and even competed against one another on various game shows.