Betty White starred in four distinct programs called The Betty White Show over her lengthy career. In fact, The Betty White Show could virtually be applied to all of television. She was a constant presence on the air and behind the scenes from the beginning of television, and she arguably spent more time on camera than any other woman in history. She won eight Emmys during a 75-year career, starred in two all-time classic sitcoms, and was still garnering new admirers for her sharp comedy manner when she died on December 31, just weeks shy of turning 100, according to People.
In a statement to the magazine, Betty's representative, Jeff Witjas, said, "Even though Betty was set to become 100, I imagined she would live forever." "I'll miss her dearly, as will the animal world, which she adored. Betty never seemed to be afraid of dying since she always wanted to be with her loving husband Allen Ludden. She was confident that she would see him again."
White seems to have worked in every television position imaginable. She was the first woman to host a talk show and also worked as a writer, producer, and game-show host, in addition to being an actor. She had an uncanny ability to be at the right place at the right moment. She was born in Oak Park, Illinois, and relocated to Los Angeles with her family during the Great Depression, where she graduated from Beverly Hills High School. She wanted to write and act, but she was too unattractive for movies, so she went into radio. She made her first TV appearance at the age of 17 in 1939, singing songs from The Merry Widow, when television was still a new medium.
She and Al Jarvis took their Los Angeles radio show to local television in 1949 as Hollywood on Television, a variety show that required its hosts to come up with five and a half hours of new live content each day, long before television sets were prevalent in households. She was the show's presenter for four years, and a regular routine was turned into the comedy Life with Elizabeth, which she not only starred in but also produced and syndicated. Her national fame was cemented during the 1953–55 series.
White married three times, the most notable being to Allen Ludden, the presenter of the game show Password, whom she married in 1963 after acting as a panelist on his show. They were together till he died in 1981, and she never married again.
Given her popularity on television in the 1950s and 1960s, White was chastised for her perkiness, which was interpreted as a sign of the new medium's worst qualities. Of fact, she wasn't vacuous in the least, even if it didn't always show on the tiny screen. John Steinbeck was a friend of hers and Ludden's (Ludden having been a college classmate of the novelist's wife, Elaine). Both Sam Peckinpah (a stagehand on Life with Elizabeth before becoming a revolutionary film director) and David Letterman, then a droll Indianapolis weatherman who interviewed Ludden and White during a late-'60s promotional tour, received early career boosts from White as a talent scout. When he relocated to Los Angeles in the 1970s, she assisted him in landing some of his first national TV appearances on game shows.
In fact, White appeared on so many game shows throughout their marriage—including Password, What's My Line, To Tell the Truth, Pyramid, and Match Game—that fans could be forgiven for believing she was more known as a game-show panelist than an actress.
That changed when White was cast as Sue Ann Nivens, the "Happy Homemaker" hostess whose benign TV demeanor belied her man-hungry private life, on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. She was a regular on the iconic series for five years, winning two Emmys and cementing her position in television history.
It wasn't going to be her final major series. She first appeared on The Golden Girls in the 1980s as Blanche Devereaux, a sultry Southern beauty who was a Miami senior. However, she and the producers decided that the part was too close to Sue Ann's, so she moved to Rose Nylund, the quartet's naive Midwestern ditz. Blanche was played by Rue McClanahan, while Rose was played by White, who won an Emmy and had six nominations throughout the series' seven-year run.
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