The Intern

This fall, Robert De Niro Betty White will be the intern of a certain age America will fall in love with – trust.

That’s because Hollywood’s reigning It Lady has landed a guesting role on TV’s long-running Bones.

Indeed, La White will play a new squintern (it’s a Bones thing...), a forensic anthropologist whose more than half a century of experience will come in handy in solving whatever case of the week beckons Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and Booth (David Boreanaz).

Loves it. Long live Betty White!

Photo: ETOnline.com.

Another Party Fit for an It Lady

Last year, NBC threw Betty White a party to celebrate her 90th birthday.

It was an incredibly thoughtful and nice thing to do, as well as a ratings magnet.

So the Peacock’s doing it again.

To celebrate White’s 91st (her b-day was Jan. 17), NBC is organizing Betty White’s 2nd Annual 90th Birthday, a new special that will air on Feb. 5.

Among the celebrity guests invited to this year’s hootenanny? Bill Cosby, Sean Hayes, Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves, Wendie Malick, Blake Shelton, and Bill friggin’ Clinton.

Good for her – long live Betty White!

Photo: PennLive.com.

Frisky Lady

Betty Lady is going to school Jennifer Love Hewitt.

No, Hollywood’s reigning It Lady won’t be playing a madame or anything of the sort when she guests on the first season finale of Hewitt’s new Lifetime show The Client List (at least I don’t think so), but White will share a few words of wisdom with J. Love’s character, who counts the former’s husband as one of her happy customers (she plays a very accommodating masseuse, y’ see).

Hope the Golden Lady gets scrappy.

Oh, look for her ep in June.

Photo: People.com.

A Party Fit for an It Lady

Don’t be tardy for the Betty party this winter, y’all.

NBC has announced plans to celebrate Betty White’s 90th by hosting and airing (natch) a dinner-style birthday bash for the Golden Girl.

The special will hit the tube close to the blessed day on Jan. 17.

I know it’s super-early, but let me be among the first to say Happy Birthday, Betty, you hottie, you, and to many, many more!

Photo: ChickWeLike.com.

No Ball for the It Lady of Hollywood
It was only a matter of time before Betty White got herself invited to a Marine Corps. ball, just like Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake.

And why wouldn’t she – the Golden Girl is the s---.

White was, indeed, invited to be Sgt. Ray Lewis’ date, via YouTube...but, alas, she has declined the sergeant’s kind offer, saying she is “deeply flattered, [for] as everyone knows, I love a man in uniform...but, unfortunately, I cannot accept, as I will be taping an episode of Hot in Cleveland.”

Had that excuse been used by anyone else I think the country would be calling them out, but White, with her old-Tinseltown charm, can get away with it (although I still think she could ask for the day off, no?).

Photo: NYPost.com.

Update: In an awesome turn of events, Terminator star Linda Hamilton has asked Lewis to ask her to be his date for the ball.

Betty White Gets Real

Just when you’re starting to think the last standing Golden Girl is taking a break, she goes and surprises ya with the announcement of another project.

That’s right, beeyotches: This is Betty White’s world – we’re just living in it.

The 89-year-old It Lady has signed on to host Betty White’s Off Their Rockers, a new, 12-ep, hidden-came reality-TV offering from NBC.

“People have been telling me that I’m ‘Off My Rocker’ for years,” the lovely said. “Now I can prove it.”

The show will follow seven seniors who play pranks on unsuspecting young’uns. Hilarity ensues.

You go, Betty, with your bad, funny self!

Photo: Technorati.com.

Community Service

The ubiquitous Betty White (this is how you do being everywhere without ridicule, Paris Hilton et al. – by earning it) is gonna school the peeps of Community.

I mean, check her out keeping it real in this hilarious preview (Community ain’t Glee, Betty).

Show star Joel McHale seems to have had fun with the actress, and from the sound of what he had to say about her character, so will we.

“She is my lover,” he said. “And she is really experimental – it was disturbing.”

Seriously, though, White will play a demented anthropology professor, and hilarity will ensue. See Exhibit B.

So, obviously, I cannot wait for the NBC comedy to return on Sept. 23.

Cannot, I tell ya.

Photo: EW.com.

Schmemmys for...

Betty White is on a roll – we all know that – and now the actress has another another to prove it.

The It Lady bagged her fifth career Emmy for her critically acclaimed, fan-fueled Saturday Night Live hosting gig last season.

Among the other folks picking up Schmemmys over the weekend were Ryan Seacrest, whose Jaime Oliver’s Food Revolution beat Kathy Griffin’s Life on the D-List (the irony is Griffin is the one who started calling the awards “Schmemmys” to begin with – the real ones air next week – and Seacrest is her sworn frenemy).

Anne Hathaway also won an Emmy, for her voice work on The Simpsons.

Photo: NYMag.com.

Betty Writes

The Itness of Betty White knows no bounds.

The Golden Girl has signed on to add author to her already-rich résumé.

White reportedly will pen two books for G. P. Putnam’s Sons, with the first, Listen Up!, set to be published next spring.

The collection of lessons learned and observations made during her long tenure in Hollywood will be followed by a second book titled The Zoo and I: Betty and Her Friends that will focus more on White’s work as an animal-rights activist.

Must reads, right?

Photo: iVillage.com.

That’s Professor White, Punk

Ain’t no stoppin’ Betty White now.

The hotter-than-ever Golden Girl will leave basic cable, where she’s smoking on TV Land’s Hot in Cleveland, to guest (and earn herself another Guest Actress Emmy nod for 2011, obvs) on the second-season premiere of NBC’s Community.

The actress will play June Bauer, “an esteemed, albeit slightly unhinged, anthropology professor.”

This piece of casting gets an A+, IMHO.

Photo: TVLand.com.

TV’s Ever the Golden Girl

Betty White’s much-anticipated outing as a Saturday Night Live host – at last! – a couple of nights ago was met with deafening applause…and it delivered both quality and ratings.

In other words: It was a hit! Thanks, in no small measure, to the actress’ professionalism and enduring talent. And I have to say that bringing back several of the shows female MVPs – hey there, Maya Rudolph, Anna Gasteyer, and Rachel Dratch…so nice to see ya! – was a stroke of genius that guaranteed a night full of laughs. (Jay-Z, you were pretty good, too.)

Especially memorable to me was the digital short tribute from the cast to B.W., to the tune of the Golden Girls’ theme song, “Thank You for Being a Friend”:



It just sums up the episode so nicely, and shows White at her gamest.

Bitch from the Past

I love it: Kristen Bell is coming to a movie theater near me – and she’s bringing Betty White with her when she goes.

In Sept. 24’s You Again, Bell plays a woman whose brother intends to marry the bitch from high school (Odette Yustman) who made her teenage years a living hell.

The comedy co-stars Jamie Lee Curtis as Bell’s mom, Sigourney Weaver as Bell’s mom’s own rival, and Kristin Chenoweth, and White as – what else? – Bell’s force-of-nature grandma:

A Night with Betty

Well, the fans have done it: Betty White will host Saturday Night Live on May 8, Mother’s Day weekend.

Show creator-producer Lorne Michaels acknowledged the Facebook campaign to get White on the show, which kicked in after her Super Bowl commercial for Snickers, saying it “took on a groundswell. [White as the host] isn’t something we would have said no to, [but the campaign] validated that, ‘Oh, that’d be fun’…. It was the outpouring of affection from fans, and we feel the same way.”

White lead a pack of SNL alumnae for the night that will feature Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Molly Shannon, Rachel Dratch, Maya Rudolph, and Ana Gasteyer – all valuable players, indeed.

Although I do wish Michaels had gone a bit edgier and asked Sarah Silverman back, too, or included Sandra Bernhard, you know.

White’s a tough chica – she can make any ladies her bitches if she needs to.

Anyway, consider my TiVo set!

Photo: Variety.com.

Update: Said La Bernhard of my suggestion she be on the show, via Twitter: “thank you for your wish! looks like they are sticking with snl alumni for the women’s comedy show with betty white.”

Sandy Hearts Betty

2009’s It Woman Sandra Bullock will do the honors and present her ever-It Proposal co-star Betty White with a SAG Life Achievement Award at the Jan. 23 Screen Actors Guild Awards.

The 16th annual awards show will include a tribute to the 87-year-old White’s long, celebrated career, which includes turns in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls.

Her next role will be in the Disney feature You Again with Kristen Bell.

Off screen, White is a passionate animal-rights activist, affiliated with groups such as Actors and Others for Animals and the Morris Animal Foundation.

It couldn’t happen to a better gal, I say.

Photo: SheKnows.com.

In It to Win It

I wouldn’t call The Proposal a romantic comedy or a chick flick if I was you. That’d be too easy.

I’d call the Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds vehicle an accurate (ish) description of the desperate and often hilarious measures an immigrant might take to stay put in the United States.

High jinks emerge from the most mundane of situations, even from one as glossy as the one in which Bullock’s high-powered and imperious New York City-based book editor finds herself.

Bullock’s crisply dressed and tightly pony-tailed Margaret Tate is a woman with many problems, none of which we get to see at first because she’s not only highly efficient but also mightily assisted by the man in her shadow, her younger executive assistant Andrew (Reynolds).

The one problem we’re let in on is Margaret has an expired visa (she’s Canadian, which is just a little ironic because they’re supposed to be so nice and she’s not), and she’s facing the big D: deportation.

A quick thinker, Margaret solves her predicament by forcing Andrew to marry her in a green-card wedding.

But Andrew, who’s put up with her for three years with a smile on his face, is happy to turn around the situation and make it work to his advantage, too, and gets a promotion out of it.

And, natch, they both get more than they bargained for after they’re forced to visit his family…in Alaska…after USCIS (f.k.a. INS) gets word of their intentions. The best part of this conceit is that we get to learn more about these two characters, see what makes them tick, and realize that these problems that they have (Andrew, for instance, doesn’t like to go back home all that much because of familial differences) could problems that you and I could have.

Of course, this happens with a healthy dose of humor, courtesy of Betty White, who as Reynolds’ blunt-spoken, 90th birthday-celebrating grandma, gives Margaret and Andrew the perfect opportunity to sell their “relationship.”

And that’s the jig up The Proposal – which obviously and unsurprisingly, eventually will be up. The fun, however, is in seeing it unfold. There may not be guffaws galore in this movie, but there’s a lot of…realism, relevance, and really tasteful-and-nice-to-look-at nudity (yep, both stars go there).

In a summer of blockbusters, The Proposal is a breath of fresh air.

Who’s playing who is not as important (or entertaining) as seeing these two get it: they are loath to admit that they love each other – but that’s the kinda thing they just can’t help.

But, attention filmmakers (I’m looking at you, Anne Fletcher): I never want to see any more scenes in which – Spoiler Alert! (ish) – a Betty White character is put in such a dire situation. It’s a good thing Bullock and Reynolds have a chemical rapport that should be bottled. It made not want to go get a refund after such a too-painful-to-consider sight.

My Rating ***

Photo: Walt Disney Pictures.