Rant #2,359: One Day At a Time

Today, April 23, is a special day for one of the latter day "America's Sweethearts," if you can even imagine someone getting that designation in this era where even if you look at a female, you can be charged with some type of sexual hijinks and poisoned for life by these accusations.

Me, I am Mr. Un-PC, so go ahead, charge me.

Today, Valerie Bertinelli turns 60, and yes, this lady has been "America's Sweetheart" since the 1970s, when just a teenager on the show "One Day At a Time."

She was cute, she was perky and she seemed to be the squeaky clean girl that all boys wanted to date and all girls wanted to have as a best friend and all parents wanted to have as their child.

Playing daughter Barbara Cooper on "One Day At a Time," Bertinelli grew up before our eyes during the show's 1975 to 1984 run, first playing what you can call the "agreeable" or "calmer" daughter, as opposed to MacKenzie Phillips' more "uppity" daughter portrayal, and she went from young teen to young lady seemingly in a flash.

While Phillips was having her own very out front problems in her personal life played out in the days before social media, Bertinelli--and TV mom Bonnie Franklin--seemed to be the pillars of normalcy, and the counterpoint both on the show and in real life, with Phillips helped make the show the huge hit that it became.

And Hollywood knew they had something special with Bertinelli. While still a teen and still on the sitcom, she starred in a slew of TV movies, appeared in Tiger Beat along with the male heartthrobs of the day, and was pretty ubiquitous on television in an era where racier fare was staring to crack the TV wall, stuff like "Charlie's Angels" putting its stars in bikinis every week.

Bertinelli was the true all-American girl during those years, and everybody seemed to love her.

That is why so many people were shocked when she married rocker Eddie Van Halen, one of the wild childs from the band under his and his brother's last name.

It was like two opposites attracted each other, but Miss Prim and Proper marrying this rocker, who enjoyed every excess there was? How could it be?

The marriage lasted more than a quarter century and produced one son, Wolfgang. Bertinelli later claimed that the reason the union was a rocky one for most of its existence is that she could not deal with her husband's cocaine addiction, nor could she handle the fact that he was a heavy smoker, even though he had been diagnosed with cancer and lost part of his tongue as a result of his addition to nicotine.

She moved on from that rocky marriage, and she had some devils of her own to deal with, some of which she dealt with on national TV, as the spokesman for Jenny Craig.

The once lithe actress had packed on much weight over the years, and she lost much of it when she was the weight loss company's spokesman.

Of course, like all of us, she put the weight back on, lost it again, and this happened several times. Finally, she maintained some type of weight consistency, and in the process, her sex appeal went way up, as she became a really nice looking lady with curves in the right place.

Berinelli eventually was cast in the raunchy "Hot in Cleveland" sitcom, playing alongside, among others, Betty White. The show made "One Day At a Time" look like "Leave It to Beaver," and was TV Land's most popular sitcom during its six years on the air.

On that show, Bertinelli was often the butt of jokes for 1) her relatively innocent personality and 2) because of her emerging bustline. No, this was not "One Day at a Time."

In 2011, she married her financial advisor, in a wedding where her former husband was reportedly a guest.

Today, Bertinelli appears here and there on TV, but her schedule is nothing like it was way back when, when you seemingly could not turn on the TV without seeing her cute face on either a TV show or a TV movie or a commercial.

So happy 60th birthday to Bertinelli, who remains as cute as a button and who will forever be etched in TV viewers' memories, first as a teen and then as an adult.

A solid more than 40 year career in Hollywood is something to be proud of, and yes, Berintelli has much to be happy about on her day.

And so do we.