Betty White’s comic timing unparalleled to the end
There’s a term in music known as the “grand pause,” where a fermata is held for an indefinite amount of time until the musician decides it’s the right moment to resume the score. In comedy, Betty White was the master of grand pauses, deploying them with such precision that she could manipulate the beat of a joke like few others. Her skilled timing was so evident during her seven decades on television and film that audiences adjusted their own rhythms waiting for the delayed gratification of a Betty White punch line.
There was her role as Sue Ann Nivens on four seasons of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” where the sexually voracious “Happy Homemaker” would drip sweetness while offering domestic tips, then gently hesitate before decimating the other characters with a withering putdown. As the lovable, naive Rose Nylund on “The Golden Girls” and its spin-off series “The Golden Palace,” White used her pauses to extend Rose’s stories about her hometown of St. Olaf, Minn., in a way that emphasized the absurdity of her character’s worldview while also allowing us to revel in the humor of her phrasing.
A much-shared clip of Rose discussing “the Great Herring War” builds slowly with her piscine references getting more exaggerated — at one point saying that only one fish was ever shot out of a cannon at the herring circus because, after it got stuck in a tree, “no other herring would do it” — until finally White and her costars Rue McClanahan and Bea Arthur break into hysterics.
San Francisco drag performer D’Arcy Drollinger, who has played Rose seven times in the 14-year history of the “Golden Girls Live” drag production at San Francisco’s Victoria Theatre, said that in channeling White, “the timing and her intonation are so crucial so it’s not two-dimensional.” While Rose might be perceived by some viewers as ditzy, Drollinger pointed out that “you’ve got to be smart playing a dumb character.”
“When you see these clips of her going head to head with Joan Rivers, you realize what a quick wit she was,” Drollinger added.
White’s adept timing extended beyond sitcoms. During numerous appearances on game shows (some hosted by her husband, Allen Ludden, who died in 1981) and talk shows, she would keep the thread of a conversation unwinding in such a measured way that she could casually drop outrageous statements others would have pounded for a fraction of the laughter.
As part of a long-running segment on “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” in the 2000s, for instance, White claimed to be working a side job for the
John McCain presidential campaign because of money problems. In the sketch, she claimed that McCain used only carrier pigeons for communication. But that was just the buildup. After saying vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin frequently shot the birds down, White took the grandest of pauses before proclaiming Palin as “one crazy bitch,” getting a roar from the studio audience.
Through a mix of that timing and her unwinking, sunny persona, White got away with jokes on subjects like identity, sexuality and aging that other performers wouldn’t dare to touch, especially in recent years. But she didn’t just get away with it, she reveled in the naughtiness her eternal “girl next door” persona allowed and subverted our expectations at every turn.
When White died on Dec. 31, just 17 days shy of her 100th birthday, the laughter paused only briefly. Almost immediately, generations of fans began sharing their favorite Betty White moments on social media and initiated streaming binges and TV marathons to celebrate her run as America’s longestlasting sweetheart, our favorite adopted grandmother and the peroxide-haired Puck who created brilliant comedy mischief.
In spite of her death, plans for a theatrical screening of a new documentary, originally titled “Betty White: 100 Years Young — A Birthday Celebration” but now simply “Betty White: A Celebration,” are still set for Jan. 17, which feels fitting. In a highly polarized America, White was one of the few entertainers who was almost universally beloved, for her work onscreen as well as her friendly public image and devotion to animal welfare.
It seemed as though White had always been on television, and that was only a slight exaggeration. Although she officially began her career on the airwaves in 1949, she performed on an experimental TV broadcast during the infancy of the medium while still a senior at Beverly Hills High School. By the 1970s, with White in her early 50s, she had become a familiar face.
But at an age when many other performers were leaving the entertainment industry, White had a second major career breakthrough when Moore cast her as Sue Ann Nivens. In the sitcom, Sue Ann is introduced as the host of a cooking show at WJM who is having an affair with the husband of Mary’s friend Phyllis. Watching White stop and study her fallen souffle before slamming the oven shut with her knee revealed everything viewers needed to know about Sue Ann. The role, which earned White the first two of her five career Emmy Awards, established her expertise in playing against the audience’s expectations for laughs.
In 1985, White was offered the role of man-hungry Blanche on “The Golden Girls.” But finding the part too close to Sue Ann, she and castmate McClanahan swapped characters, allowing her to bring a warmth and unexpected grounding to Midwestern innocent Rose that helped make the sitcom a hit, and a lasting cultural landmark in its depiction of women over 50. (White won her third Emmy for the role.)
While White never really went away in pop culture, winning another Emmy in 1996 for a guest appearance on “The John Larroquette Show,” she had a career resurgence in her late 80s that became one of the greatest third acts in Hollywood.
In 2009, she had a scenestealing turn as Ryan Reynolds’ grandmother in the film “The Proposal,” and in 2010, she starred in a viral Super Bowl commercial for the candy bar Snickers. That same year, a Facebook campaign was started by fans to get White to host “Saturday Night Live,” which she did on May 8, 2010 — becoming, at “88½ years old,” the oldest person to host the show.
In the show’s opening monologue, she discussed her career’s longevity, saying “I’m not new to live TV. In 1952, I starred in my first live sitcom, which was ‘Life With Elizabeth.’ And, of course, back then we didn’t want to do it live, we just didn’t know how to tape things.” Employing the grand pause to maximum effect, she added: “So I don’t know what this show’s excuse is.”
The episode, which re-aired the Saturday after her death, also featured a score of returning female cast members such as Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph — all funny women White undoubtedly paved the way for in television. She won her final Emmy for the appearance.
While guest-hosting “SNL” would have been a remarkable note for any performer to go out on, White wasn’t finished. After filming what was supposed to be a one-off appearance on the pilot of the TV Land sitcom “Hot in Cleveland,” a kind of riff on the female-centric “Golden Girls” starring Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick as housemates, White became a series regular for the show’s six seasons. Her role as Elka Ostrovsky, caretaker of the house the three other women rent, allowed her to continue to challenge cultural expectations of older women. Her timing remained as well considered as ever, extending those grand pauses just slightly for the outsize responses her every utterance elicited.
Though White’s career in show business extended from her 20s through 99, for many viewers, she is most associated with the second half of her career, giving fans hope that the best might be yet to come as we get older.
Some things (and some people) do get better with age, and White’s ability to milk a moment for maximum laughter with a grand pause was one of them. It is perhaps the ultimate testament to White’s timing that when she died, she left audiences wanting more.