Funny Ladies from the Dawn of Television Have All Left the Soundstage

 

by Pa Rock

Television Fool

When Betty White passed away unexpectedly on New Year's Eve, less than three weeks shy of her 100th birthday, she closed out a lot of television history.  Not only was she the last remaining "Golden Girl," Betty White was also the last survivor of the main characters of the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" - and she was one of the original funny ladies of television.

I'm old and I remember Betty White back in the really early days of television, back when most of the country had, at best, three television options - CBS, NBC, or ABC - and some places, like out in the sticks where I lived, had even less.  In extreme southwest Missouri we had Channel 12 (CBS) and Channel 7 (NBC), both of which ran some of the network shows and added a lot of local programming.  Sometimes both stations would buy taped programs from other sources and run those to fill up empty spaces in their schedules.  

Finding good shows to watch took some effort and a lot of channel-flipping, and flipping channels in those days meant sitting down right in front of the television and turning the channel knob.  ("Remote control" was a parent sitting on the couch and telling a child which channel to switch to.). 

Late one night in the early 1950's, probably after my parents had already gone to bed, I was flipping between the two available channels one last time when I came across a comedy called "Life With Elizabeth" that starred a lady named Betty White in the title role.  It was a "sketch" show about a young married couple, and each thirty-minute episode contained three independent sketches dealing with their lives.  It doesn't seem like it was around long, at least not on that local station, but it was a show that I enjoyed when I happened to find it.  (Nationally the show ran from 1952-1955 and had forty episodes, but it seems like my local station just used it to fill-in as needed.)

The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) write-up on "Life with Elizabeth" said that the show would often "break the imaginary fourth wall," which means that the actors would break character and speak directly to the audience.    Another television show from that era, "The Burns and Allen Show," was known for using the same theatrical device.  George Burins would would invite the viewers into his study where he would turn on his special television set and then watch his wife, Gracie Allen, and their neighbor, Blanche, hatching some scheme.  George may have tried to impose some order on the situation,, but he could rarely keep up with the disorder that Gracie generated.  Gracie Allen turned "scatter-brained" into an art form!

And then there were the likes of Imogene Coca, Eve Arden, Gale Storm, and, of course, Lucy!  Television was home some very funny women in the 1950's, but with the passing of Betty White, they have all left the soundstage.