One More Time Betty White’s New Book Tells About Her Long Career In TV And The People She Worked With

Betty White’s new autobiography is called “Here We Go Again: My Life in Television,” and the timing couldn’t be better. Because here she goes again, this time in a new ABC sitcom called “Maybe This Time.”

“I love the title, ‘Maybe This Time,’ because I keep thinking maybe this time Betty will pack it in and get off the tube,” the comedic actress says, laughing over the phone from her home in Los Angeles.

Fat chance, and not that anyone would want her to. After all, as White jokes, she is frequently introduced as a “woman who has been on television forever!”

This TV generation may think of White as man-hungry Sue Ann Nivens on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” or befuddled Rose Nylund of “The Golden Girls,” but White is a TV baby. Her career goes back to 1949, to the days when the medium was so new that viewers could watch “us or the test pattern.”

Five Emmys and five decades later, White is getting yet another chance - well, two, between her book and TV show to make audiences laugh.

In “Here We Go Again” (Lisa Drew/Scribner, $23), White’s fourth book, the actress relives her long TV career, reminisces about the people she’s worked with and recalls her three marriages, the last a very happy one to “Password” host Allen Ludden.

When she began writing her memoir, White didn’t have a clue that it would be hitting stores just as “Maybe This Time” goes on the air. (The show premiered Saturday in its regular 8:30 p.m. slot on KXLY-Channel 4 from Spokane.)

White plays a coffee-shop owner named Shirley, an expert on the male sex who has buried five husbands and who, the actress says, “hands out her phone number at the drop of a hat over the coffee counter.” Marie Osmond is her daughter, a recent divorcee who decides to help mom out at the coffee shop. While free-spirited mother and conservative daughter don’t see eye to eye, grandmother and granddaughter (11-year-old Gracie, played by Ashley Johnson) are on the same fun-loving wavelength.

White describes Shirley as “the third point of a triangle,” if Sue Ann Nivens and Rose Nylund are the other two. “She’s probably closer to me than either Rose or Sue Ann,” White says.

How so?

“She’s kind of a free spirit. Whatever comes into her head goes out her mouth. She’s outgoing and warm but not above dishing. Her methods are straightforward, but she can be devious if it’s going to benefit her daughter or her granddaughter or herself.”

Betty White, devious?

“Oh no, of course not,” she coos in her best faux naive manner.

Looking back over her 46-year TV career gave White, 73, a chance to reflect on her favorite role. Sorry Sue Ann fans, but it’s Golden Gal Rose.

“I really liked Rose. She wasn’t dumb, just terminally naive. She wanted to see the positive without being cloying. She had a fierce Viking temper and her own set of rules that made sense to her but not to the rest of the world. I loved her.”

In “Here We Go Again,” White recalls that it was awfully quiet on “The Golden Girls” set the day after she won a best-actress Emmy. Her three co-stars had also been nominated that first season and didn’t win. “The reaction had come as a real surprise, and I had learned something - I’m just not sure what the hell it was,” she writes.

She reveals that Mary Tyler Moore decided to call it quits on her classic comedy because the star dreamed of doing a musical series in which she could dance regularly.

Coincidentally, White’s pal Moore has a new TV series, a “Lou Grant”-like drama called “New York News” on CBS this fall, and an autobiography, “After All,” due from Putnam in October.

If Moore has any regrets about leaving her hit show, “I don’t think she would ever admit it,” White says. “If there were any doubts, they would be in the dark of night and very private, because she’s been really trying to get away from Mary Richards ever since.”

In her memoir, White recounts doing parades, game shows and talk shows (on Jack Paar and Johnny Carson she was queen of the double-entendre), and says she turned down an offer to be the “new girl” on “The Today Show.” (Barbara Walters got the gig instead.) She recalls the early days of live TV, when she joined Al Jarvis on “Hollywood on Television” 5 hours a day, six days a week.

She writes about her love of animals (White now has two dogs) and her love life. She got divorced after a six-month marriage to a World War II pilot and then married Lane Allan, an actor-turned-agent. There were conflicts over White’s budding career. Then, while she was dating another man, she fell in love with Ludden, a widower. He wanted to get married again; twice-divorced White was more cautious. But she never regretted her decision to marry a third time.

Writing about Ludden was bittersweet, White says. He died of complications from cancer in 1981.

“Allen Ludden is still so much a part of my life, I didn’t think it was fair to do the book and not give a little insight into what a class act he was even through that situation (his illness), because he had such a following of his own,” she says. “He handled leaving just as well as he handled everything else.”

After Ludden’s death, White writes, keeping busy was the answer. Television hasn’t let her down yet. And she and the rest of the cast have high hopes for “Maybe This Time.”

“I’m having a ball and we’re all very, very excited,” White says. “We all want it to work so much that we’re superstitious. We want it so bad we’re afraid we might jinx it.”

And if “Maybe This Time” doesn’t make it, there’s sure to be a next time on TV for Betty White.