THE FIRST TVXOHOF ENTRY FOR 2022!
It’s a new year for the Television Crossover Hall of Fame! But unfortunately, we need to deal with old business from last year with our first entry….
(CNN)
At 99, she was just weeks away from celebrating her 100th birthday on Jan. 17.
"Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever," Witjas said. "I will miss her terribly and so will the animal world that she loved so much. I don't think Betty ever feared passing because she always wanted to be with her most beloved husband Allen Ludden. She believed she would be with him again."
For the first half of her career -- eventually honored by Guinness World Records as the longest television career by a female entertainer -- White was a regular, but not widely noticed, presence on radio and television.
There were '50s sitcoms, a 1954 talk show and even a role in the 1962 film "Advise and Consent." She'd pop up on game shows occasionally, particularly "Password," hosted by her third husband, Allen Ludden.
"It was a little out of character, a little unfeminine, to be ... you shouldn't be funny," White recalled in a 2017 interview with CNN, reminiscing about her early days in Hollywood. Noting that women at the time were expected to simply "come in and be pretty," White countered: "No, it's so much more fun to get that laugh."
But starting with her performance as acerbic kitchen diva Sue Ann Nivens on the 1970s sitcom "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" -- beginning when she was 51 -- White developed a knack for portraying the apparently pure-hearted elder, full of Midwestern sincerity, who had a randy inner life. In doing so, she created a new generation of fans, a base that only grew larger as she entered her 90s.
She was the sexually experienced, if otherwise naïve, Rose Nylund on "The Golden Girls."
White also played a flinty and sometimes violent secretary on "Boston Legal." She had a guest spot on "The Simpsons," hosted "Saturday Night Live" -- the oldest person ever to do so -- and even appeared in a self-mocking ad for Snickers candy bars.
Through it all, she took her success -- if not her work -- lightly.
"I'm having the time of my life, and the fact that I'm still working -- how lucky can you get?" she told the Huffington Post in 2012.
The TVXOHOF recognized Betty White for her televersion as herself in 2008. Her roster of appearances as a member of the League of Themselves has grown since then.
But she also gave us our newest member, representing Classic TV for the Month of January…
From Wikipedia:
Rose Nylund (née Lindström) is a character from the sitcom television series ‘The Golden Girls’, and its spin-off ‘The Golden Palace’. She was portrayed by Betty White for 8 years, totaling 204 episodes. Rose was originally supposed to be played by Rue McClanahan, whereas Blanche Devereaux, one of Rose's roommates, was to be played by White. However, Jay Sandrich, the director of the show, suggested that Betty and Rue switch parts. He felt that Betty would be a better fit for Rose because she had already played Sue Ann Nivens in the television show ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’, which is similar to the character of Blanche Devereaux. In a January 2017 interview with Katie Couric, White stated she jumped at the opportunity to take the role of Rose, noting she loved the character and describing Rose as "so innocent, not the brightest nickel in the drawer, but funny."
Rose Lindström was a Norwegian American born in St. Olaf, Minnesota, to a monk named Brother Martin and a 19-year-old girl named Ingrid Kerklavoner, who died giving birth. Brother Martin claimed not to have known about Rose's existence until after she had been given up for adoption. She spent the first eight years of her life at the St. Olaf Orphanage before being adopted by Gunter and Alma Lindström (although she erroneously says "Gunter and Alma Nylund" when retelling the story).
Rose explains that she was adopted after she was left on a doorstep, in a basket with some hickory-smoked cheese and some crackers "that didn't go with anything". She used to daydream about her birth father, feeling that Bob Hope was in fact he, and she wrote the comedian many letters whenever she fell on tough times.
It is stated that she was valedictorian in her high school graduation, fourth out of nineteen, and was chosen valedictorian because she drew the longest straw. It is revealed that Rose attended St. Paul Business School, Rockport Community College, and St. Gustaf University, but also that she had never graduated from high school due to a case of mono. Nevertheless, she was voted "most likely to get stuck in a tuba" by one of her graduating classes. Her parents did not allow her to date until she was a high school senior, and between then and her wedding day, she had fifty-six boyfriends.
Rose fell in love with Charlie Nylund, a salesman, and they later married. Rose met Charlie when she was seven and he was eight, and he sold her an insurance policy for her red wagon. She and Charlie had a long and happy marriage, and a very active sex life, to the extent that she was unaware of the existence of a popular television show called ‘I Love Lucy’.
Over the course of the series, Rose names five children: Brigit, Jenella, Kirsten, Adam, and Charlie Jr. Rose also has two granddaughters by Kirsten - Charley (named for Kirsten's father) and another unnamed, mentioned in the episode where Rose had her heart attack. Of her children, only Brigit and Kirsten appeared on the show, although Kirsten was played by two different actresses.
Charlie died of a heart attack while he and Rose were making love and this gave Rose a fear of sexual intimacy for several years thereafter. Years later, a boyfriend named Al Beatty (Richard Roat) dies in a similar fashion. On one episode Rose confides to Blanche and Dorothy that she and Charlie made love twice every day, once in the morning before breakfast and then once after dinner, getting Blanche to remark "No wonder you still mourn that man".
Charlie and Rose's marriage length is unclear. Although it was mentioned in the 1985 pilot episode that Charlie had been dead for 15 years, in the first-season episode "Job Hunting", Rose says that she had been a housewife for 32 years when Charlie died in 1980. In the same episode, Rose is 55 years old in 1985, which would put her birth year in 1930. This would make her 63 when ‘The Golden Palace’ goes off the air in 1993.
Charlie is the only spouse of the four women on ‘The Golden Girls’ that the audience never sees. In an episode of ‘The Golden Palace’, a man said to bear an incredibly strong resemblance to Charlie makes an appearance; the look-alike is played by Eddie Albert.
Rose is laid off from her job at the grief counseling center in season 1, and briefly works as a waitress at the Fountain Roc Coffee Shop before being rehired at the counseling center shortly after. Later on in the series, Rose suffers financial difficulties when her late husband's employer files for bankruptcy and her pension is cut off. She suffers from age discrimination in her attempts to get a new job, but her luck changes when she gets a position as assistant to TV consumer reporter Enrique Más.
Rose finally finds a significant romance with college professor Miles Webber, though their relationship is put through a serious strain when it is revealed that Miles is actually a former mobster accountant named Nicholas Carbone, and a participant in the witness protection program. His former employer, "The Cheese Man," begins dating Rose in order to get information on Miles's whereabouts.
Eventually The Cheese Man is apprehended, Rose and Miles resume their lives together, and all goes well for approximately the next year. In season 7, Rose and Miles consider marriage, but ultimately decide against rushing into anything. Their relationship later ends permanently during an episode of ‘The Golden Palace’ when Rose discovers that Miles loves and subsequently marries another woman.
Rose Nylund in ‘The Golden Girls’ was part of the Susan Harris empire of the time, and so appeared in the other TV series under the Harris aegis, all of which were set in the Miami area. Plus there was a little off-beat appearance which nevertheless qualifies as an Earth Prime-Time entry….
Here are Rose Nylund’s qualifications for joining the Television Crossover Hall of Fame:
1985-1992
The Golden Girls177 episodes
1989-1992
Empty Nest- Strange Bedfellows (1989)
- Rambo of Neiman Marcus (1989)
- Dr. Weston and Mr. Hyde (1992)
1991
Nurses- Begone with the Wind (1991)
1992-1993
The Golden Palace24 episodes
In 1990, the Golden Girls appeared in “The Earth Day Special” which I was originally going to list as a Skitlandian version of Rose Nylund and her three friends. But having seen it, in which the Golden Girls are watching the special on TV, it qualifies a “minisode” sequel to the sitcom.
I’m sorry I was spurred to induct Rose into the Hall because of the death of Betty White. And it made me realize that it’s time for the quartet to join the TVXOHOF. So they will be sprinkled throughout the year to join Rose. (The funny thing is that for years, I’ve been thinking of inducting Sophia Petrillo into the Hall as the Queen of the May, but something always came up to bump her. Now that they’re all reunited in the Hereafter, I can do my part by bringing them back together in the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.)
Welcome to the Hall, Ms. Nylund. Enjoy the cheesecake in the commissary.
Miami and St. Olaf’s loss is the TVXOHOF’s gain.
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