Truthfully? I worry about Betty White. She’s 99 years old and I know she won’t be around forever. But, we haven’t seen a photo of her in quite some time. A couple of weeks ago, I caught an interview with Bob Newhart. He didn’t look so great, in my opinion. I hate to say it, but he looked — maybe just a little bit — like the Crypt Keeper. In his defense, he is 91 years old and still funnier than ever.
Back to Betty. There are very few celebrities that I think I’d like to meet, but she’s always been one of them. I began to like her way back when she was on the old game shows, especially Password, and Match Game, Hollywood Squares, and on. It was clear she possessed incredible comedic wit. This carried over to the small screen, when she played Sue Ann Nivens on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. And then, of course, Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls.
Her birthday has been in the news, born on this date, January 17, back in 1922, the same year my Dad came into this world. It was a different world back then, and during their very young years, the Depression gripped the United States. Betty was born in Illinois, but the family moved to Los Angeles when she was just a baby.
Her father was a lighting company executive to start out. But once the Depression hit and the bottom dropped out, he started building radios and selling them. Crystal radios. Those are the kind that only use the power of the received radio signal to produce sound, so it doesn’t need any external power. Inside is a crystal detector, which is made from a piece of crystalline mineral. Like galena. Or germanium. We know them as diodes now. Anyway. That’s how the Whites made their money back then, her father, selling little radios. He would also trade them for dogs, sometimes.
Which brings me to her love of animals. It sounds like her father must have really liked dogs. They would also take trips to the Sierra Nevadas. She credits her love of wildlife because of that exposure.
I won’t go on any further about her life. She just seems to be one of those “good people” in life. You can spot them a mile away. Somewhere along the line, they figure out that “goodness” and are able to translate it to everything they touch. The “nice guys” in life.
But, being born on a certain date isn’t the secret factor there. A lot of famous people have been born on January 17, just like Betty White. Here is a sampling of the list.
1706 Benjamin Franklin, US Founding Father, inventor, ambassador, and writer (Poor Richards Almanac), born in Boston, Massachusetts (d. 1790)
1820 Anne Brontë, English novelist/poet (Tenant of Wildfell Hall), born in Thornton, West Yorkshire (d. 1849)
1880 Mack Sennett, movie creator (Keystone Kops)
1882 Arnold Rothstein, American gambler and mobster (fixed 1919 World Series), born in NYC, New York (d. 1928)
1899 Al Capone, American gangster (Chicago bootlegging), born in Brooklyn, New York (d. 1947)
1928 Vidal Sassoon, British-American hairstylist, and CEO of Vidal Sassoon, born in London (d. 2012)
1931 James Earl Jones, American Tony, Emmy, Grammy, and Golden Globe-winning actor (The Great White Hope; Star Wars – “voice of Darth Vader”; Field Of Dreams”), born in Arkabutla, Mississippi
1934 Shari Lewis, American ventriloquist, puppeteer (Lamb Chop), born in The Bronx, New York (d. 1998)
1939 Maury Povich, TV host (Current Affair, Maury)/Mr. Connie Chung
1942 Muhammad Ali [Cassius Clay], American boxer (world heavyweight champion 1964-67 74-78), born in Louisville, Kentucky (d. 2016)
1949 Andy Kaufman, American comedian & actor (Latka Gravas-Taxi), born in New York City, New York (d. 1984)
1957 Steve Harvey, American actor, comedian, and radio personality, born in Welch, West Virginia
1962 Jim Carrey, Canadian-American actor (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dumb & Dumber, The Mask), born in Ontario, Canada
1964 Michelle Obama, 1st African-American US First Lady (2009-16), born in DeYoung, Illinois
1971 Kid Rock [Robert James Ritchie], American rapper, songwriter, musician, and actor (Devil Without a Cause), born in Romeo, Michigan
So, as you can see, a sizable list, and there are many, many more. The end of April, nine months before, must have been a busy time for a lot of people. It was Spring, and love was in the air.
Anyway, the birthday doesn’t necessarily make the person. I don’t think Betty White could have been any more different from Al Capone or Muhammed Ali.
I’m not sure what makes us the way we are in the end. Each one of us is a unique cocktail of the intellectual, the emotional, the physical, and the spiritual. And all four of those things play a combined role in our make-up.
I think there are certain things we cannot help. But there are plenty of others that we can. It still is a bit of a mystery to me, how all of this works.
So. Happy Birthday, Betty. You seem to have figured it out.
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“The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr.
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“Keep a light, hopeful heart. But expect the worst.”
― Joyce Carol Oates
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“On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”
― George Orwell
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All of these birthdays, and none like Betty White’s.
