Nedeff - The Life (and Wife) of Allen Ludden

Betty White is a pop culture institution, theres no arguing that. Generations have watched her on television, on Life with Elizabeth, Date with the Angels, The Betty White Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, hundreds of commercials, and virtually every talk show, variety show, and game show spanning the first 70 years of television.

From the 1980s onward, though, there was a consistent element of the characters she depicted: On The Golden Girls and The Golden Palace, she was Rose Nylund from St. Olaf, who spoke lovingly of her departed husband Charlie. On Mamas Family, she was Ellen Jackson, divorcee. In the film Lake Placid (1999), she was the crocodile advocate whose husband died under mysterious circumstances. On Hot in Cleveland, she was Elka Ostrovsky, a feisty widow.

And her public image isnt that much different. Shes posed in a variety of tongue-in-cheek publicity stills surrounded by buff young studs. And when she walks a red carpet, she walks it alone. Two generations of TV lovers cant picture Betty White walking arm-in-arm with anybody. Shes on her own.

But once upon a time, it was impossible to imagine Betty White without somebody. In public, she was always arm-in-arm with a special man. They did talk show interviews together. They competed together and sometimes against each other on TV game shows. They crisscrossed the country, appearing on stage after stage in the lead roles of one play or another. The man in Betty Whites life was Allen Ludden.

For nearly twenty years, Allen Ludden and Betty White, or Betty White and Allen Ludden, either way, their names were almost always spoken together, as if they formed a single long word. As far as star power was concerned, they were equals, with credentials that complemented each other nicely. She was a primetime star; he dominated daytime and weekends. She acted on television; he appeared on television almost exclusively as himself. The general public saw her as a funny lady; they saw him as a professorial type. They were the most perfect yin and yang that television ever brought together.

Allen Ludden died in 1981, and Betty picked up the pieces and moved on with her career. Despite the projects they had pursued as a couple, their entertainment industry legacies were distinctive, even contrasting. She co-starred on a handful of acclaimed primetime shows that enjoyed decades of extended life in reruns, while he thrived largely on game shows which, by and large, didnt earn that kind of adulation. Ultimately, Betty, through no extraordinary effort other than continuing to perform decades after her husbands death, eclipsed her husband professionally.

Fans of Betty White, therefore, may know little to nothing about the husband she so adored the educator and pioneer broadcaster who starred in one of the most popular daytime programs in history and was co-creator of an iconic competition measuring academic achievement. For fans of TV game shows, though, Allen Ludden is an old friend that you remember or may have forgotten until now. His life was cut short, but his story is long with insight into the workings of both mid-20th century television and the rare commodity of a happy Hollywood marriage.

Fred Wostbrock Collection

Chapter One: Name

The Ellsworths and the Luddens lived in two very different worlds.

Reuben and Charlotte Coker Ellsworth were farmers in Cobb, Wisconsin. Reubens parents had been early settlers in southwest Wisconsin, arriving in 1846. Charlottes grandparents, Pierre and Sarah Calame, were there even earlier, putting up a log cabin in Clifton in 1836. Pierre, an immigrant born in Bordeaux, France, was described in a magazine article as a colorful Frenchman of the early days who possessed such remarkable strength that he once carried a wood beam fourteen-inch stubble plow, weighing about 150 pounds, home from Galena, forty miles, on his shoulder, making the journey both ways afoot.

In 1889, Reuben and Charlotte Ellsworth, along with their four daughters, uprooted to Nebraska. In 1892 the Ellsworths welcomed a son, Elmer. By 1900, when Reuben and Charlotte were awaiting the arrival of their tenth child, the whole clan returned to Iowa County, Wisconsin, and moved into a piece of property called Spensley Farm. Young Elmer loved the farm and quite literally left his mark on it. Decades later, the family living in the house pointed out numerous spots in the barn with EE carved into the wood work, and the attic still boasted a large ELMER ELLSWORTH painted on one wall.

Whatever you could say about the Ellsworths life on the farm, you couldnt call it boring. Broken arms and legs were a stunningly common occurrence every winter, as the ten children enjoyed riding toboggans down the steep hill behind the farm and could not be discouraged from the activity, no matter how many fractures they accumulated. Most of the boys lost fingers during woodworking accidents, too. While Elmer managed to keep all of his fingers, keeping him in shoes was another matter. Elmer wore out his leather shoes faster than his parents could afford to replace them. A nearby farmer cut up his copper washboiler a machine that boiled laundry and used the strips to patch up Elmers shoes.