I got my love of playing games from my mother, Fern. When I was growing up, we watched all the TV game shows that our manually-adjusted outdoor antenna (with TV watchers inside the house shouting outside to the antenna-turner, “Too far!” or “Keep turning!” or “You had it! Turn back!”) and our black-and-white Philco allowed. One of our favorites was Password, and our favorite Password shows were those that featured Betty White as one of the guest celebrities. We loved Betty. She was smart, beautiful, funny, and Fern never failed to point out that she was married to the host of Password, Allen Ludden. Having a husband who hosted a TV game show on which you were a celebrity guest was, I always figured, Fern’s dream marriage, not, as reality would have it, marriage to a farmer from Indiana who rehabilitated castoff horses by turning our farm into a riding stable open to a public that by and large did not know how to ride. Fern’s game was much harder to play and, for her, not nearly as much fun as Betty’s was.
A few years ago, I was asked by a network executive to videotape interviews with the alumnae of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, including Betty White. The show had been off the air for many years but Mary clearly maintained her star status, and the rest of the cast deferred to her as such. I, however, only had eyes for Betty. Then, as now, she lit up the room with those smiling, sparkling eyes, and the sincere attention she gave to those around her. Listening, I am more convinced all the time, is the secret to relating to the world, and Betty listens with the best. Her ego does not get in the way of her reception, and as a result, her picture is always crystal clear. What you experience is not the illusion of a human being, it is human. It is not a portrayal, not a role. It is true character.
After we had completed our interview, Betty and I had a chance to talk, and I got to tell her the one thing I really wanted to tell her, how my mom had been a big fan of hers since the Password days, and how she celebrated the relationship between Ms. White and her dream husband, Allen Ludden. Then, on pure impulse, I asked Betty she’d mind calling Fern on my mobile phone and saying hello. This was a no-no for someone doing my job, a line you did not cross, it was like kitchen help taking a seat at the dinner table. But all I could think about was how happy Fern would be to get a phone call from Betty White. “Of course I will” Betty said.
Fern was not home. The call went to voice mail. Betty didn’t miss a beat. “Fern, this is Betty White,” she said. “I’m standing here with a handsome young man who claims to be your son, and he tells me you’re a Password fan. That is so sweet of you. We had so much fun on that show, didn’t we?…” I don’t remember the rest of what she said, but I remember that the tone of her message was as if she and Fern were old high school classmates who hadn’t seen each other in ages. Which, in a way, they were.
A couple of days later, the network executive called and the conversation eventually came around, as I figured it would, to the subject of the call I’d asked Betty to make to Fern. “At first, I thought what you did was okay, and later I thought it wasn’t okay,” said the exec. She said she had no choice but to fire me. I could not have cared less. The happiness in my mother’s voice when she phoned to tell me about the voice mail from her BFF, Betty, was worth a thousand gigs.
I imagine that Betty White’s life has been a series of encounters just like this one, in which she has given the gift of herself, and treated her fans as her equals, her collaborators in a joyful conversation. (”We had fun, didn’t we, Fern?”) This is why she is still young and her world is still unfolding at the age of 88, and she’s hosting Saturday Night Live tomorrow night.
3 AM, French Lick (Indiana) Casino
I see this same spirit in my mother, who, at the age of 82, still lives on the farm in Indiana, quilts, bowls, plays bingo, gambles in Vegas, sings in the choir, gardens, cooks amazing meals, mows the huge yard and can drink with the young folks at the Shamrock Pub until closing time. When I talk to her on the phone, she’s usually the one who ends the conversation because, hey, she’s got things to do and has to get going.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mother! Break a leg, Betty! We love you both!
The extraordinary improviser, 
The most basic concept in all of improvisation is ‘Yes and’. If we are in a scene together and you make a statement, it is my obligation as an improviser to ‘yes-and’ your statement. By ‘yes-anding’ you, I not only agree to your reality, I add to it with perspective of my own. In this way, we can ‘triangulate’ on the problem to be solved, and also bring dimension, and new levels of collaboration to the scene.
