TV Time Capsule

Betty White, Carol Channing Sail Aboard ‘The Love Boat’

“Betty, White Hot!, a series of periodic flashbacks to key moments in Betty White’s amazing television career, concludes.

On December 11, 1982, Betty White and pal Carol Channing guest starred on ABC’s “The Love Boat” as aging showgirls with a love/hate relationship – roles that almost earned the actresses their own series.

White played penny-pinching Betsy and Channing was extravagant Sylvia, whose niece was cruise director Julie (Lauren Tewes).

The actresses played the roles four times on “The Love Boat” – first in 1981, then again in 1984 and 1985.

White recalled working with Channing in her 1995 memoir “Here We Go Again: My Life in Television:”

We had such a good time that we thought it would be great fun to do a series together. We had an idea that we liked a lot for “The Pickle Sisters,” but we seemed to like it better than anyone else, because it never got off the ground.

Stupid network executives!

Then again, if “The Pickle Sisters” had taken off, White might have been unable to star on NBC’s “The Golden Girls” – and then how empty would our lives be?

See for yourself: Unfortunately, Betty White’s “Love Boat” episodes aren’t online or on video.

 

On TV

Here’s the prime-time lineup for Saturday, December 12, 1982:

8: “T.J. Hooker”* (ABC), “Walt Disney: Winnie the Pooh and Friends”* (CBS), “Diff’rent Strokes” (NBC)

8:30: “Silver Spoons” (NBC)

9: “The Love Boat” (ABC), “Cry for the Strangers” (CBS), “Gimme a Break” (NBC)

9:30: “Love, Sidney” (NBC)

10: “Fantasy Island” (ABC), “The Devlin Connection” (NBC) 

* Repeat

 

The Record

For the week of December 5, 1982:

Top novel: “Space” by James A. Michener

Top song: “Truly” by Lionel Richie

Top movie: “The Toy”

Top TV show: “Dallas” (CBS)

In the news: NATO urged the Soviets to be nice

 

 

Caption: Carol Channing and Betty White play Sylvia and Betsy on ABC’s “The Love Boat” (photograph appears courtesy of StyleList).

C’est la Vie! ‘The Facts of Life Goes to Paris’

“Sitcoms Go to the Movies,” a retrospective of TV-movies based on sitcoms, continues.

On September 25, 1982, NBC aired the two-hour TV-movie “The Facts of Life Goes to Paris.”

The plot: Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae), housemother and dietitian at Eastland, an all-girls boarding school in upstate New York, travels to the City of Lights to study haute cuisine.

She brings along her four favorite charges – snobby Blair (Lisa Whelchel), streetwise Jo (Nancy McKeon), wisecracking Natalie (Mindy Cohn) and excitable Tootie (Kim Fields) – enrolling them at the Gerard School, one of Eastland’s European counterparts.

Mrs. Garrett gets off to a rough start, as she fails time and again to impress her demanding instructor, the imposing Chef Antoine (Roger Til). She receives help from her innkeeper, Pierre Petit (Jacques Ferrière), with whom she enjoys a mild flirtation.

Meanwhile, the girls struggle to please their strict headmistress, Miss Southwick (Vivian Brown). Eventually, they give her the slip and embark upon their own adventures: Blair wanders the streets, finding herself; Jo falls for David LeClair (Frédéric Andréi), a dreamy Frenchman who rides motorcycles and reads literature; and Natalie and Tootie help down-on-his-luck American writer Garth Kiley (Frank Bonner of “WKRP in Cincinnati”) recover his mojo.

The cast and crew spent three weeks filming the movie on location during the summer of 1982, and each actress brought along friends and relatives.

Fields’s entourage included her mother Chip Fields, who occasionally appeared on “The Facts of Life” series as Tootie’s mom but plays Garth’s impatient agent in the movie. (She’s probably best remembered for playing Janet Jackson’s mom on “Good Times” in the late ’70s.)

Kim, then 13, told the Associated Press that filming in Paris was thrilling at first, but she eventually developed “a homesickness for English-speaking people.

“We … got to tour Europe, but after the overall shock of actually being there wore off, we realized we’d be stuck there for awhile longer and it started to drag on.”

Spoken like a teenage sitcom star.

“The Facts of Life Goes to Paris” aired four days before the sitcom opened its fifth season. The movie failed to crack Nielsen’s weekly top 20, but ratings were strong enough to persuade NBC to order a second film: “The Facts of Life Down Under,” which aired in February 1987.

 

Also on TV

On September 25, 1982, NBC also aired a “Diff’rent Strokes” rerun and the debut of “Silver Spoons,” ABC broadcast the season premiere of “T.J. Hooker” and a two-hour “Love Boat” rerun (the Pacific Princess sails with Lloyd Bridges, Linda Evans, Beth Howland and Jessica Walter) and CBS showed the first half of 1979’s “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again,” a “Walt Disney” presentation, and repeated the 1975 flick “Revenge of the Pink Panther.”

 

The Record

During the week of September 19, 1982, the number ones were Sidney Sheldon’s “Master of the Game” (novel), Chicago’s “Hard to Say I’m Sorry” (song) and “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” (movie). In New York, Democrat Mario Cuomo began his march to victory in the gubernatorial race.

 

  

Captions: “The Facts of Life” cast members, from top left, Nancy McKeon, Charlotte Rae, Lisa Whelchel, Kim Fields and Mindy Cohn on TV Guide’s July 18, 1982, cover (top, photo by Peter Kredenser); NBC’s advertisement for “The Facts of Life Goes to Paris,” from the magazine’s September 25, 1982, issue (bottom).