Former NY Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni spent some time with Betty White at the Los Angeles Zoo, talking about her late career resurgence. Even at 89, she still does pretty much everything for herself: “When Putnam asked her to sign 2,500 books in advance of publication, it offered to rent her a hotel or office suite for the task and to provide assistants to unpack the books, turn each to the title page, refresh her pens and the like. That’s pro forma, but she wasn’t having any of it. The boxes were delivered to her house, where she has lived alone since 1981, when Allen Ludden, her husband of 18 years, died. And she has been moving them around and repacking them all on her own.â€
