‘Take Her Sweetly, Take Her Gently . . . ‘

He recalls her with laughter and with tears, his beloved Betsy, so filled with the tradition of the stage that she honored it to her last breath.

Her real name was Beatrice Colen. She was the wry, roller-skating carhop in the old TV series “Happy Days,” a woman never without a comeback, always owning the last line.

She died last month at age 51, still in character.

“She was sweet and she was funny,” says her husband of 22 years, Patrick Cronin. “She died as she lived, and she never said, ‘Why me?’ ”

We are in the living room of their Westside home. The day gleams with intensity, its skies swept clean by blustery autumn winds.

As he talks, Cronin must fight to maintain his composure. Laughter and grief are tight companions here.

“When she learned she was dying she said, ‘I don’t expect you to remain celibate,’ ” he remembers. “Then she added quickly, ‘I’ve picked out three fat ladies for you in Encino.’ ”

He laughs wildly at the memory, then pauses, half-smiling, his eyes filling, still remembering.

“Near the end, I leaned over her and said, ‘You can’t die!’ I loved her so much.”

Semi-comatose, she still managed to open her eyes and say, “Why the hell not?”

Surprised at her quick response, and at a momentary loss to respond, Cronin finally replied, “You haven’t given me the phone numbers of the fat ladies from Encino.”

“She drifted back to sleep,” he says, his voice catching, “then five or six hours later awoke again and whispered, ‘Sorry, Pat. They’ve moved to Ventura.’ ”

*

In so many ways, this is a show biz story, laced with dramatic love, with history and with that shiny tradition of the show going on.

Betsy was the granddaughter of George S. Kaufman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who co-wrote “The Man Who Came to Dinner.”

She and Patrick, also an actor, met while he was a drama teacher and she a student at Philadelphia’s Temple University. She was 18, he 25. While still a student, she was stricken with Hodgkin’s disease. It was cured with massive radiation, but the treatment planted a time bomb that was to explode years later.

Betsy went on to win a role in “Happy Days” and later in “Wonder Woman.” Cronin came to L.A., as he says, “With a thousand bucks and an unemployment claim.” In 1977 he landed a role in Kaufman’s “Merton of the Movies” at the Ahmanson.

Betsy’s mother, Kaufman’s daughter, asked Betsy to go to rehearsals of “Merton” to be sure it was done right. There Betsy saw her former teacher. They met, they talked, they fell in love. A month later they were married.

But that’s only part of the story.

*

Told they could never have children, they defied the odds and became the parents of two sons, James, now 17, and Charlie, 16. Both attend a private school, Brentwood High.

A robust kid, Charlie plays tackle for the school’s football team. James, his father says, is also a jock, but upon meeting a girl studying drama, decided the drama department was a good place to be.

After winning a small part in “Macbeth,” James was given the lead role of Sheridan Whiteside this year in a George Kaufman play. It was “The Man Who Came to Dinner.”

Kaufman’s spirit hovered over their lives like a shadow from the grave.

Betsy, meanwhile, had been diagnosed with lung cancer, which later spread to her brain. It was the result, she was told, of the radiation treatment years earlier. Her days were few.

“We told the boys the truth,” Cronin says. “We didn’t tell them mom had the flu.”

She desperately wanted to live long enough to see her son perform in her grandfather’s play, but she knew she wouldn’t. James wanted to give up the play to be with his mother. She refused to let him.

Only days away from death, she told him he had to fulfill his obligation to his audience and his fellow actors. He had to go on. The play was to be on a Thursday. Charlie was to be in a football game on Saturday. He too wanted to give it up to be with her.

Cronin remembers her words to them: “She said, ‘If you really want to remember me, don’t use my death as an excuse for screwing up.’ ” He cries openly as he finishes. “She said, ‘You will honor me with a good life.’ ”

Betsy Colen died the night James played the lead in her grandfather’s play, honoring the tradition she was born into.

At the end, Cronin held her and said, “Lord, take your servant. Take her kindly, take her sweetly, take her gently.”

She left this world still in his arms.

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.