🌹🤍BETTY WHITE: We're going to miss you so!🤍🌹

From Golden Girls to Sue Ann Nivens to dozens and maybe even hundreds of appearances elsewhere - including a sitcom she starred in before I was born (and I am soon to turn 68!). We'll miss her so - she was a light in the world, and you never heard her whining or complaining (which is all I seem to hear now!). I made this animation years ago from a photo shoot she did while enthusiastically eating a hot dog. 

Betty White eating a hot dog

Betty White - all right (and Bill, you're my thrill)

I realize this blog, uneven as it is, has become dominated by the gif. The reason is this: I was born in 1954, and anything that helps me capture obsolete technology (particularly old TV) is magic to me. I can illustrate a point in ten seconds. And they're easy to make, boyo, even though I have come to the conclusion that my beloved Gifsforum is no more. 

What's even more curious is the fact that I can't find ANYTHING about it, not even on one of those message boards that has been pretty much been replaced by Twitter. Where did it go? It had infinitely more flexibility than Makeagif, though I will have to admit it got the proportions wrong and stretched a lot of them. They weren't nicely cropped like most of these are. But it was fast, and you could make things run backwards.

Anyway, enough complaining. Along with William Shatner, Betty White is the only living/actively performing person who remembers/was working in TV in the 1950s. I think this is pretty astonishing. Though Betty looks like a well-preserved older woman, Shatner looks about 65. You have to wonder what these two did, what sort of bargain they struck, and with whom.

Quite a fox, he was, and well before Star Trek, versatile, fit into any show, could play just about anything, and always worked. When the work fell through after Star Trek (type-casting: he is one of the very few actors who beat it), he lived out of his truck for a while and did Loblaws commercials in Toronto, some of which survive (we'll get to them later! He still does ads which I enjoy watching, but now he doesn't need to.)

Note from his  manner of speaking that he already has the Kirkian sense of drama. Jeffrey Hunter was the original Captain Kirk, and he was let go and replaced: too dull by half, I think, and he couldn't do those wrestling moves that became his trademark. Without the histrionics that made him famous, the show would have crashed and burned before it got off the launching pad.

I just want to make a point

I don't know, maybe I don't even need to post any text here. The pictures say it all. The fabled Mary Tyler Moore Show reunion on Hot in Cleveland has shocked a few people, not so much by the age of the performers (some in their 80s now) but by their appearance.

I'm afraid Mary has gone the Joan Rivers/mausoleum route beloved of too many glamorous stars of yore. The cheek implants are ready to explode out of her face, the eyes have disappeared into her head, and her neck has that celery-stalk look of ruthlessly pulled-back skin. Compare and contrast to Betty White - who doesn't love Betty White? She was on TV before I was born! - who at well over 90 has decided to keep her own face. Granted, she has good skin and great cheekbones, and the ability to light up in front of a camera as few people can. She has a great smile and a great voice and even good hair, without all the obvious styled wispiness Mary uses to cover whatever her forehead looks like. Like William Shatner, she just doesn't seem to age like all the rest of us. 

But she is proof of one thing. Old age isn't hideous. It's old age. And if you can still smile like that, it must be a pretty good thing.

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