“Betty, White Hot!” a series of periodic flashbacks to key moments in Betty White’s amazing television career, continues.
On September 15, 1973, CBS aired “The Lars Affair,” the classic “Mary Tyler Moore Show” episode that introduced Betty White as TV hostess Sue Ann Nivens, whose dimpled smile masked a deliciously bitchy personality.
The episode, which served as the sitcom’s fourth season premiere, finds snobbish Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman) devastated to learn henpecked husband Lars is having an affair with Sue Ann, the star of “The Happy Homemaker” on WJM, the Minneapolis TV station where Phyllis’s friend Mary Richards (Moore) works.
Phyllis confronts Sue Ann on “The Happy Homemaker” set, where she slams the oven door, deliberately destroying a chocolate soufflé Sue Ann is baking. (“My poor baby!” Sue Ann wails.)
Before Sue Ann, White was known for playing sweet-as-spun-sugar characters such as newlywed Vicki Angel, her role on the 1950s sitcom “Date With the Angels.”
In White’s expert hands, Sue Ann became a precursor to Martha Stewart: a perfectionist with a helpful hint for every occasion.
In “The Lars Affair,” as Mary’s neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper) helps tidy up after a dinner party, Sue Ann admonishes the “dear” for throwing out the coffee grounds (“They’re the perfect plant food for Mary’s geraniums!”). In “Happy Birthday, Lou!,” a December 22, 1973, episode, Sue Ann objects to the chafing dish Mary plans to use at another party (“What do we plan to do about the tarnish?”).
Sue Ann’s favorite sparring partner was WJM newsroom writer Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod): He zinged her for being promiscuous, she zapped him for being bald.
From “Not With My Wife, I Don’t,” a January 3, 1976, broadcast:
SUE ANN: Mary, I just dropped by, dear, to tell you to be sure to stop in my studio this week. I’m devoting all my shows to you poor unfortunate single girls.
MARY: Sue Ann, in case you’ve forgotten, you are single also.
SUE ANN: Oh yes, but that’s only because I don’t happen to place my love life above my profession.
MURRAY: I thought that was your profession.
SUE ANN: Oh Murray, witty Murray. Jokes fall from your lips – almost as fast as hair falls from your head.
The show’s writers occasionally explored Sue Ann’s vulnerable side. In “The Happy Homemaker Takes Lou Home” – a December 6, 1975, installment – Sue Ann finds herself spurned by her favorite target, gruff Lou Grant (Ed Asner), who gently tells her she’s “too good” to keep throwing herself at him.
“Isn’t life funny?” Sue Ann says. “I’ve been accepted by lots of men and felt rotten. You’ve just rejected me and I feel like a million dollars. Thanks, Lou.”
Sue Ann was conceived as a one-time character, but White proved so popular that producers made her a semi-regular. She appeared in 33 episodes after “The Lars Affair,” twice winning Emmys for her performance.
In White’s 1995 memoir “Here We Go Again: My Life in Television,” she credited Moore, her longtime friend, with Sue Ann’s success:
No matter how funny the part is, if a guest character is someone the lead character doesn’t like, the audience can often get protective and not respond well to the newcomer. It might work in drama, but that syndrome can do you in when you’re going for comedy. It was thanks to Mary’s choice as an actress that Sue Ann worked. Rather than disliking her, Mary Richards found Sue Ann Nivens laughable, so the audience could relax and laugh with her.
“The Lars Affair” can be rented for 99 cents or purchased for $1.99 at iTunes and downloaded for 99 cents from Amazon.com. The episode is also part of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show: The Complete Fourth Season” DVD set. The next “Betty, White Hot!” installment will be posted tomorrow.
Also on TV
On September 15, 1973, CBS also aired the season premieres of “All in the Family,” “M*A*S*H,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and “The Carol Burnett Show” (guest: Jim Nabors, natch); ABC broadcast the season premiere of “The Partridge Family” and showed “Irma La Douce,” a 1963 flick starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine; and NBC carried “America Goes Public,” a Democratic Party telethon.
The Record
During the week of September 9, 1973, the number ones included Mary Stewart’s “The Hollow Hills” (book) and Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” (song). “American Graffiti” was new at the movies, and in Washington, President Nixon and special prosecutor Archibald Cox were at an impasse in their dispute over the Watergate tapes.
Captions: Mary Tyler Moore and Betty White in a 1976 photograph by Ken Whitmore (top, courtesy IMDB.com, via MPTV); CBS’s advertisement for “The Lars Affair” from TV Guide’s September 15, 1973, issue (bottom).
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