Jennifer Love Hewitt Betty White and The Lost Valentine

 

The film earned Betty a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor.⁠

Hallmark “Honoring Betty White”

America’s sweetheart Betty White was just several weeks away from celebrating her 100th birthday when she died on New Year’s Eve.

As the world continues to remember the “Golden Girl,” the Hallmark Channel has revealed it will pay tribute to White with a marathon of her work airing on January 17, which would have been her centennial birthday.

In an announcement exclusively reported by Southern Living, Hallmark will host “Honoring Betty White.”

Beginning at midnight on the 17th, the Hallmark Channel will air a 40-episode marathon of “The Golden Girls." Fans will be able to watch curated episodes of the classic show until the 2011 Hallmark movie “The Lost Valentine,” starring White and Jennifer Love Hewitt, airs at 8pm ET/PT. The "GG" marathon will resume following the movie and conclude on January 18 at 5:00 am ET/PT.

Developed for Hallmark, The Lost Valentine originally aired in 2011. Based on a novel by James Michael Pratt, the film is directed by Darnell Martin and stars Betty White alongside Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sean Faris. The film earned White a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor.

The official synopsis for The Lost Valentine reads: "During World War II, Navy Lt. Neil Thomas bids Caroline, his pregnant young wife, farewell at Union Station. Before their son is born, Neil's plane goes down in the Pacific and he's declared missing in action. Caroline is devastated. But love never dies, and for the next 65 years Caroline (Betty White) returns to Union Station on the anniversary of her loss, to salute the memory of her handsome and brave husband."

The marathon includes specially selected episodes of The Golden Girls that highlight Rose’s surprising competitive streak; visits by her St. Olaf relatives; funny career moments from the grief center and assisting consumer reporter Enrique Mas; along with plenty of romance, including boyfriends Dr. Jonathan Newman, Mister Terrific and of course, Miles Webber,” the network said in a statement, per the outlet.

In addition, the Hallmark Channel will also participate in the viral Betty White Challenge by donating to the North Shore Animal League America.

White was an advocate for animal rights and worked closely with many organizations to help get animals adopted and promote more humane treatment of animals.

The Betty White Challenge is a movement on social media where fans encourage others to donate to a local or national animal shelter, organization, or agency in White’s name to celebrate her birthday and the cause closest to her heart.

A report this week confirmed that White died from a stroke. The death certificate listed the cause of death as “a cerebrovascular accident,” which is a loss of blood flow to part of the brain that results in brain tissue damage. It reveals that she suffered the stroke six days before her death.

via Movie web and Audacy

In memory of Betty White

 

At her eightieth birthday celebration, in 2001, at KC’s Leawood-South Country Club, the entire family gathered to celebrate my mother’s endless good spirits and hospitality. Dancing and telling jokes and winking, she reigned over the event like the dowager empress she’d become, wearing her signature red dress. and looking for all the world like Betty White on a good day.

My mother was a force larger than life.  

Oddly enough, I met Betty White because of Mom.

An aspiring novelist and former Mormon bishop named James Michael Pratt sent me a copy of his self-published book, The Last Valentine. I read the description on the back cover and thought it was maybe too romantic even for “Mr. Romance,” as I’d been dubbed during my years in Montreal producing Shades of Love.

But the concept nagged at me, so I sent the book to Mom and asked her to read it.

She called me two days later.

“You must get involved in this book,” she said. “It’s wonderful.”

I asked her for details. Her response was sketchy—she was already becoming forgetful, especially of things she’d read, which is why I’d learned to return her call the minute she reached out to me after a read. But it was clear emotionally: Mom didn’t use must loosely. This was beyond should!

Long story short, I did get involved. My Writers Lifeline company helped Jim perfect the story and my management company sold it, at auction, for a bunch of money to St. Martin’s Press. It became a New York Times bestseller, and led to four or five further bestselling books for Jim.

At one point in his book tour, we converged in KC where Jim was being hosted by Barnes and Noble—and he insisted on meeting Mom. “She’s the one who got this book published,” he said. I certainly wasn’t going to argue with that.

You’d think a New York Times bestseller would have an easy route to the screen. But I knew one lesson by heart: nothing is easy in Hollywood. It took over ten years before Valentine was picked up by Hallmark Hall of Fame. Their president, meeting me over breakfast at the Alameda Plaza overlooking KC’s Country Club Plaza, brought up a ticklish subject. “You know this company will never call a movie ‘The Last Valentine,’” he told me—then tipped his orange juice in a toast.

I laughed, at what I thought was a joke. But it wasn’t. The movie was retitled, “The Lost Valentine,” and starred Jennifer Love Hewitt and Betty.

It was one thing to meet the voluptuous Jennifer Love Hewitt—“Don’t avoid  these,” she scolded our Director of Photography, having checked the replay of a  wedding moment where the camera discreetly hovered above her cleavage line, “I  built my career on these beauties.”  Unleashing the camera, they did a more  revealing take.

But it was meeting Betty White on the set in Atlanta that truly thrilled me, for two reasons. In her red dress, white hair, and feisty countenance, she looked exactly like Mom. And I was given the chance to tell Betty the story of how my mother had gotten this book published and this movie made.

Alas, Mom was no longer around to glory in the moment, or in the Screen Actor's Guild's "Outstanding Performance by an Actor" Award Betty received for our film. 

Excerpt from My Obit: Vol 2: My Multi-Storied Mother, forthcoming 2022.