I know Betty White did plenty of things before The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but, was her Sue Ann character the role that turned Betty White from Mrs. Alan Ludden to superstar? Or was she always a big star before MTM?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YcsRkF6yBLI/S_f18tq4WVI/AAAAAAAAKmY/5Krqci1G0pY/s320/Betty+White+Sue+Ann+Nivens.gif

I'd say "yes" and "no". I think it was MTM that really put her into the public spotlight again after her earlier television exposure, but when you think about it, Sue Ann was really just a supporting role. She wasn't highlighted as much as Mary, Murray, Ted and Lou, or even Rhoda, and she was only in the last three seasons of the show.

Personally, I'd say the Golden Girls catapulted her into superstardom, but the MTM gig helped her immensely to build up that screen comedy cred.

I'd say "yes" and "no". I think it was MTM that really put her into the public spotlight again after her earlier television exposure, but when you think about it, Sue Ann was really just a supporting role. She wasn't highlighted as much as Mary, Murray, Ted and Lou, or even Rhoda, and she was only in the last three seasons of the show.

Personally, I'd say the Golden Girls catapulted her into superstardom, but the MTM gig helped her immensely to build up that screen comedy cred.


Great post Retro, I hear what you are saying, fact is, there probably would be no Rose Nylund if not for Sue Ann Nivens.

...and she was only in the last three seasons of the show.

Last four seasons to be technical. ;)

Last four seasons to be technical. ;)

Hmm, yep, you're right, she started in 1973. Good catch!

Betty White was well known as far back as the 1950s. She starred in two sitcoms ("Life With Elizabeth" and "A Date With the Angels") and even had her own daytime show on NBC for awhile. Look on Youtube and you'll find surprisingly crisp and well-preserved video of Betty doing commercials for Richard Hudnut hair products from a 1959 Milton Berle special. Note they identify her by name in the spots.

In the 1960s, when she married Allen Ludden, she appeared with him on "Password" (while still on their honeymoon, in fact!) and began to appear on a number of other classic game shows, to the point game show fans consider her to be royalty. At one point she had her own syndicated show about pets, and often attracted big stars and their pets to the show. I think one of those shows appears on one of the "Doris Day Show" season sets.

When she appeared once on "Petticoat Junction," she had a big part that suggested she was a well known guest star whose appearance was probably promoted heavily.

What MTM *did* do, however, was reinvent her forever, as an innocent-seeming woman with the morals and mouth of a sailor, and I credit MTM with being the reason why she'd be remotely considered at her age to guest host "Saturday Night Live" (or why she'd accept, knock it out of the park and walk home with an Emmy for it). Her Rose Nylund character, on the other hand, was likely a throwback to the character she played on "Life With Elizabeth," which she created on local TV in California before it was syndicated nationally from 1952-55.

I absolutely adore Betty White and think Sue Ann Nivens was her greatest role ever.

I agree with what several posters have said here, and I agree with the basic premise of this thread. Yes, Betty White was well known long before The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but she was not known for her tremendous comedic abilities. Yes, she had starred in a couple sitcoms in the '50s, but those shows were very light comedies where the emphasis was much more on "situation" than "comedy." Before MTM, the general public had no idea how funny she could be. And by the '70s, she was basically known just as a game show personality. If you've ever watched any of her game show appearances from back then, she was always holding back that devilish wit we so closely associate with her now. Perhaps she thought viewers at that time couldn't handle the real Betty White. :) The only reason she got the part of Sue Ann Nivens was that she and Allen Ludden were close friends of Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker, and they knew on a personal level how funny she was. They saw the dichotomy between Betty White's goodie-two-shoes public persona and her very witty (and somewhat naughty) private persona. They thought that was perfect for the role of Sue Ann. And as soon as Betty White stepped into that part, America discovered for the first time the hilarious Betty White we know today.

Her success in that role led to memorable guest appearances on The Carol Burnett Show, and then a spin-off of sorts as soon as TMTMS ended. And although that series didn't survive, she was still very much in the minds of producers and, not too long after, she was cast in the The Carol Burnett Show spin-off series, Mama's Family (in a role she had conceived on The Carol Burnett Show), which ultimately led to The Golden Girls. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was the catapult that launched her long career in comedy. I think it's a pretty safe bet that, had Betty White not been given the part of Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, we wouldn't be talking about her today. And she wouldn't still be working.

Well Betty was a well-established actress going into TMTMS, and being Mrs. Allen Ludden was just one more patch in the mosaic. But, she did such a phenomenal job in TMTMS as Sue Ann, that it surely gave her career great momentum - pushing her from a star to superstar.

I'm pretty sure I've seen Betty say somewhere that before TMTMS, people primarily knew her from her gameshow work, and not so much as an actress. So I'm sure people noticed after that that she actually could act, esp. since the character was so different than the way she had acted on most gameshows.