American actress and comedian, refreshingly open, focused and patient who found great popularity on network TV from 1952 and is best known for the mega-hit sitcom The Golden Girls (1985-1992), one of the many highlights of her eight-decade career in the entertainment industry.
Her many other sitcoms include Life With Elizabeth (1953-1955), Date With An Angel (1957-1958) and The Betty White Show (1977-1978). She rated an Emmy for her role on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1973-1977) leading to a total of eight Emmys achieved in her career. She narrated the Tournament of Roses Parade for 20 years and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for ten years. In 1995 White was indicted into the Television Hall of Fame. Her autobiography, Betty White In Person was published in paperback in 1988.
A pioneer of early television, White was among the first women to exert control in front of and behind the camera and the first woman to produce a sitcom (Life with Elizabeth), which contributed to her being named honorary Mayor of Hollywood in 1955.
She was married three times. Her first marriage in 1945 to Dick Barker ended the same year. She married Lane Allen in 1947 but it was also a short-lived relationship. The couple divorced in 1949. Her third marriage, to TV host Allen Ludden, the love of her life, lasted for 18 years, 1963-1981, when he died of cancer. She was able to spend three years nursing her mother after the death of her husband and admitted that she was grateful that she didn’t have to deal with the losses simultaneously.
She hosted a syndicated series about animals, wrote five pet books, and served for 26 years as the President emeritus of the Morris Foundation, which seeks cures for animal diseases, accomplishing the development of vaccines for dogs, cats and horses in destroying a number of previously fatal diseases. White was also a trustee for the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association since 1974.
In May 2010 by popular demand she hosted Saturday Night Live. Her last sitcom was Hot in Cleveland (2010-2015), upbeat as ever, she was still acting well into her 90s. In 2019, White joined the voice cast of Pixar’s Toy Story 4. She provided the voice of Bitey White, a toy tiger that was named after her.
White worked longer in television than anyone else in that medium, earning her a Guinness World Record in 2018.
Betty White, the “First Lady of Television,” died of natural causes at her home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles on the morning of 31 December 2021, seventeen days before what would have been her 100th birthday.
Link to Wikipedia biography