Years undefeated woman
Author | Grapefruit
Tell a story.
An elderly man named Betty White stopped breathing before the 2022 New Year's bell rang, just 17 days before her 100th birthday. Today, January 17, is her 100th birthday.
The name may not be familiar to Chinese, but in the United States, her name is thunderous. Biden tweeted, "Betty White has brought smiles to generations of Americans. She is a cultural icon that will be deeply remembered. Former First Lady Michelle said: "White broke down barriers and people around the world miss the laughter she brought. ”
More than eighty years of acting career, for Betty White left countless world-famous honors, she won a number of Emmy Awards, Grammy Awards, Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Awards, etc., but Betty White's most touching thing is not the work and glory behind her, but the amazing vitality she showed.
Although she began her show business as a teenager, she went around for many years without getting on track, and at the age of 28 she had her first chance to truly belong to her, she had two failed marriages until she met her true destiny at the age of 42, and at the age of 56 she was given the first opportunity to play the lead role in a TV series, and at the age of 88 she became the oldest host in the history of "Saturday Night Live" (SNL) ...
She seems to take every step at a slower pace than her peers. But in Betty White's dictionary of life, age never made her anxious.
1、
In 1948.
Betty White was 27 years old, working on the radio station, divorced twice, and her career had not yet begun.
When she graduated from high school, she originally wanted to be a ranger, because when she was a child, her father often took her family to camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and adopted stray dogs with her, which made her a staunch animal fan, dreaming of working with nature and animals for a lifetime, but when she graduated from high school, she really went out to look for a job and found that no one wanted a woman to be a ranger.
Fortunately, she is in Los Angeles, a stone's throw away from Hollywood, near the water tower. So Betty White quickly switched to auditions for various films and television, trying to take the first step towards show business.
But this step did not go well, and casting directors generally believed that she was not photogenic enough, so Betty auditioned countless times but did not get even one role.
After several failures, Betty went back to interviewing a faceless radio station, and thankfully, this time it finally worked out, and Betty White became a radio anchor, although at first she only provided voiceover for advertising.
It was a very inconspicuous job, but Betty was still motivated. However, within a few years, as the United States entered the battlefield of World War II, Betty's work was also interrupted. Although the fighting did not spread to the United States, many young people joined the army.
Betty was no exception, joining the U.S. Women's Volunteer Service Corps, serving in the U.S. Army until the end of the war.
In 1945, after the end of the war, Betty White, who was supposed to return to Hollywood, followed the pilot Dick Barker to the Ohio chicken farm for love, but this hasty marriage was terminated by personality discord after only a few months, betty packed her bags, or returned to Los Angeles to work as a radio stationer.
However, a failed marriage was not enough for Betty White to learn her lesson, and just two years later, she married Ryan Allen, who worked as an agent. This marriage was as short as the last time, mainly because the other party wanted her to meet her husband and teach her children at home.
Betty ate twice from love and man. Of course, this can't all be blamed on herself. This is the United States after the war in the forties and fifties, people no longer because of the lack of wartime labor force and the overwhelming promotion of the image of women like "Diamond Losi", from the government to the media are happy to portray women as "happy housewives", "Life" magazine characterized housewives as the benchmark of women of the times, and more women's journals openly declared that housewives are the best job for women: "Be a good wife, a good mother, in short, be a good housewife is the most important thing in all the work in the world." ”
The overall social atmosphere is so good, it is not easy to get rid of the truth, fortunately, Betty is a person who insists on herself, after planting two heels, she finally decided not to easily entrust her heart and life to others again.
Focusing on work is what Betty wants to do now.
However, she is 27 years old, and she does not have much age advantage in Hollywood, where she eats youth, divorced twice, still lives with her parents, does an ordinary job, and most of the women around her are proud to be "happy housewives".
Will she be able to build an impressive career?
2 、
Soon, the opportunity that belonged to Betty came.
In 1949, at the age of 28, Betty finally got the chance to appear as a live-up host, and she would host a daytime show called Hollywood on Tv.
The show was a chore in the eyes of many people at the time, the broadcast time was not prime time, it also needed to be broadcast live, six days a week, up to five and a half hours, and there was no script, but also needed to interact with the audience.
No one wants to do it, Betty wants to do it.
Betty was really willing to do it. Many people thought she was gritting her teeth and insisting, but Betty later said in an interview that the job was perfect for her, and how comfortable it was to interact with the audience without a script!
There is no script, it needs to be played on the spot, and it needs to be flexible in front of the audience. Betty's untapped advantages met the right time, and a handful of hot potatoes was also met by the right person to take over. The show was hosted by Betty, and her witty and humorous hosting style and witty and dexterous reflexes firmly transformed the hearts of the audience.
This was undoubtedly a great encouragement to Betty, and she soon had the idea of starting her own production company, which seemed like a fantasy.
This matter seems to be a bit hasty, she has only been a TV host for a few years, it can be said that she has just learned to walk on the ground and think about the 100-meter race.
Moreover, you know, the young women in the show business in this era are mainly actors, hosts and the like, and the production staff are all men, at least until Betty started, few people can think that women can do this.
Betty doesn't care what other people think.
She founded her own production company with the help of friends and adapted a short scene from Hollywood on TV into the sitcom Elizabeth's Life, in which Betty co-starred and produced.
This drama was limited by the scale of production, and did not make a big splash in the market at that time, but because its main actors and producers were women, it could be said that it was unprecedented at the time, so it still paid wide attention to this work in the media and industry.
Ultimately, because of the producer and the avant-garde nature of her work, Elizabeth's Life won an Emmy Award in 1952, the first Emmy in Betty's life. Fate often rewards those who dare to eat crabs.
Of course, as the first female person to double-head the front and back of the stage, it also encourages future latecomers to join.
3、
Over the next decade, Betty's career grew to fame, becoming a popular show host and game show guest.
What people did not expect is that love has also quietly patronized at this moment.
The man," Alan Luden, was the host of the fire-hit talk show Code.
Allen often wore a pair of thin-rimmed glasses and looked mild-mannered. This gave him the first impression of being more of a scholar sitting at a university seminar than a talk show host.
Despite his bookish appearance, Allen became the most popular TV game host of the time for his characteristic enthusiasm and appeal.
Alan was in love with Betty at first sight, and when Betty first attended the show's intermission, Alan ran back to the office in a daze and said to his colleagues, "I'm going to marry her!" ”
Allen was straight and clumsy. The same is true of his confession.
One day, the two co-hosted a ceremony, and Alan thought it through and decided that this was the perfect time, so he stepped forward, greeted White warmly, and said, "Hello! Can you marry me? ”
Both were talk show hosts, used to jokes, and on this occasion, White was confused, naturally did not agree, not only did not agree, but also seemed to leave a somewhat frivolous dangerous impression, and later several times ridiculed him: "Ellen seems to fall in love easily." ”
The mind is treated as a joke, which can be said to be a comedy tragedy in a way, but fortunately, Allen has a tenacious heart. This road is not passable, naturally the sword takes the side.
He began to seduce the two dogs around White, and soon won the dog's heart. After capturing the dog's heart, animal lovers White loves The House and U, and the more Alan looks at it, the more pleasing it is, and finally when the real time is ripe, Alan officially proposes.
Many years later Betty still remembers vividly the scene when Ellen proposed to her.
It was Thanksgiving Day in 1963, and Allen suddenly handed Betty a white doll rabbit that she didn't know where to pull out, with jeweled earrings and diamonds as an engagement ring hanging from its ears.
Such confusing and somewhat cute behavior is obviously Alan's style.
Betty gladly agreed, and the two soon entered the palace of marriage.
This year Betty was 42 years old, and after many years of wandering, she finally met the right person.
Of her marriage to Ellen, Betty said many years later: "It was a relationship. ”
4、
While harvesting love, Betty's career has ushered in another round of development.
In fact, in the first many years, she was not as loved as later, and people kept using "too much" and "big chest and no brain" to describe her, but she never cared about these negative evaluations.
In 1973, Betty was 52 years old and was already a well-known host in Hollywood. The producers of the hit variety show Mary Tyler Moore wanted to find a guest actor who was "disgustingly sweet as Betty White," but didn't want to look for betty because he didn't like her.
After Hearing this, Betty didn't care, and responded with four or two pounds: "I dare swear, he will never find a more disgusting person than me." ”
In the end, sure enough, the producer searched in many ways and found that a style like Betty was really the only one, irreplaceable, so he finally found her, apologized and asked The Buddha to come out of the mountain as a guest actor in the show.
Betty agreed, and at first she made a cameo appearance in a funny role called Su Ann, but her excellent acting skills and endless laughs became so popular that she eventually became a resident role and even became one of her most widely known screen images at the time.
In addition to hosting, Betty's acting career has also developed. Although she began experimenting as an actor in '52 and starred in her first film, Advise and Consent, it wasn't until 1977 that Betty had her own iconic role, Ross Nirend in the TV series Blonde. This "Friends" for the elderly was very popular in the United States as soon as it was broadcast, and it was broadcast live for 7 seasons, and Betty won the third Emmy Award in her life, but she was very humble, and she believed that the award was due to the pioneering nature of the subject.
"The Golden Girl is a big breakthrough. A sitcom about an old woman? What is that? I think it changed a lot of thinking and opened the way for a lot of older women. ”
But in fact, a TV series that seems so niche has achieved such great success and love, if the content is not exciting enough, it is not enough to have a pioneering theme.
The year she won her third Emmy, Betty was 65 years old, and she was already an old man. Although life and career were a bit bumpy at the beginning, they were all smooth and happy later.
However, fate once again made a joke with Betty.
5、
Although Alan was diagnosed with stomach cancer as early as 1970, he was planning to build a "dream hut" with White himself.
But the couple was optimistic, and for the next 11 years, Betty and Allen fought cancer together while building their own "dream hut". But by the time the Dream Lodge was built in 1981, Allen was terminally ill.
In the last days of Alan's life, they spent time in the "dream hut" that had already been built.
Betty and Alan stayed together in the upstairs room, not going out, rarely talking, and surrounded only by dogs dozing off on Alan's robes.
On June 9, 1981, Alan passed away peacefully in his sleep, accompanied by his loved ones.
After that, Betty never fell in love with anyone else again.
Experiencing the pain of love may not be easy for a person to be dead set on love, thinking that they just haven't met the right person, but when they experience a nearly perfect love with a real soulmate, it seems easier to close their hearts.
As Betty puts it: "I made two mistakes before Alan, but the person you love in your life doesn't show up every time, and now I'm grateful that I ended up finding him." ”
In a word, there have been shipwrecks in the sea.
Betty didn't stop, and her long acting career went on. She is still active on the screen stage, starring in TV dramas in her eighties, which were very popular, shooting for six seasons in a row, and starring in movies, which were nominated for Golden Globe Awards.
She even lived to be young, making friends with young people, taking avant-garde and trendy photos, making unbridled jokes, drinking cold whiskey with hot dogs at loud parties, and declaring to the media that the secret of longevity was to avoid eating green food, and so on.
But for years, in a home where no one knew about it, she kept a picture of Alan on the bedside table and gave him a good morning kiss every morning. In the evening, Betty would open the shutters and give Alan a goodnight kiss to the stars.
In 1988, at the unveiling ceremony of the Luden Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the comedian, who has been laughing for many years, could not help but cry in front of the camera for the first time: "Don't be surprised if in the early hours of the morning, someone sees the stars of the two of us wandering around." 」 ”