Betty White Biography and Wiki
Betty White (January 17, 1922 – December 31, 2021) was an American actress and comedian, widely regarded as a pioneer of early television. With a career spanning nearly seven decades, she became known for her extensive work in sitcoms, sketch comedy, and game shows.
White made history as the first woman to produce a sitcom with Life with Elizabeth (1953–1955), in which she also starred. Transitioning from radio to television, she became a beloved panelist on popular game shows such as Password, Match Game, Tattletales, To Tell the Truth, The Hollywood Squares, and The $25,000 Pyramid. Dubbed the “First Lady of Game Shows,” she became the first woman to win a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host for Just Men! in 1983. She also made frequent guest appearances on shows like The Carol Burnett Show, Mama’s Family, The Bold and the Beautiful, and Boston Legal.
Her most iconic roles include Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1973–1977), Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls (1985–1992), and Elka Ostrovsky on Hot in Cleveland (2010–2015). White experienced a career resurgence with her role in the romantic comedy The Proposal (2009) and her Emmy-winning appearance as the host of Saturday Night Live in 2010. Her life and career were chronicled in the 2018 documentary Betty White: First Lady of Television.
White was recognized with numerous accolades, including seven Emmy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Grammy Award. She twice held the Guinness World Record for the longest TV career by a female entertainer (2014 and 2018). Honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, she was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1995.
Betty White Education
The actress attended Beverly Hills Unified School District and Beverly Hills High School. Family vacations to the Sierra Nevada sparked her interest in wildlife. White pursued a writing interest. She discovered her interest in performing after writing and performing in a graduation play at Horace Mann School. She decided to become an actress.
Betty White Age and Birthday
At the time of death, she was 99 years old in 2021. She was born Betty Marion White on 17th January 1922 in Oak Park, Illinois, United States.
Betty White Height
Her height has not been disclosed. ALSO READ: Alicia Vitarelli
Betty White Parents | Family and Siblings
She is the only child of Christine Tess her mother, a homemaker, and Horace Logan White her father (1899–1963), a lighting company executive. Her paternal grandfather was Danish and her maternal grandfather was Greek, with her other roots being English and Welsh.
Betty White Married |Husband
She was the widow of the late Allen Ludden. On June 14, 1963, White married television host and personality Allen Ludden, whom she met as a celebrity guest on his game show Password in 1961, and her legal name was changed to Betty White Ludden. He made at least two proposals to White before she accepted. The couple appeared together in an episode of The Odd Couple that featured Felix and Oscar on Password. Ludden appeared on Match Game as a guest panelist, with her wife in the audience. They appeared on the Match Game panel together in 1974, 1975, and 1980. On June 9, 1981, in Los Angeles, her husband died of stomach cancer. Following her husband’s death, the actress never married.
Previously she was in several relationships. While volunteering with the American Women’s Voluntary Services, she met her first husband Dick Barker, a United States Air Forces aircraft pilot. After the war, the couple married and moved to Ohio where Barker owned a chicken farm. The marriage ended in divorce within the year, and White returned to Los Angeles to restart her career. In 1947, she married Lane Allen, a Hollywood talent agent. This marriage ended in divorce in 1949 after Allen pressured White to give up her career to become a homemaker.
Betty White Children
She is the stepmother to his three children from his first marriage to Margaret McGloin Ludden, who died of cancer in 1961.
Betty White career
In 1939, three months after graduating from high school, she and a classmate performed songs from The Merry Widow on an experimental television show. She began modeling and landed her first professional acting role at the Bliss Hayden Little Theatre. When World War II broke out, she paused her career to join the American Women’s Voluntary Services. The actress co-founded Bandy Productions with writer George Tibbles and producer Don Fedderson in 1952, the same year she began hosting Hollywood on Television. The trio collaborated to create new shows based on existing characters from Hollywood on Television sketches. In 1951, the show debuted as a live broadcast on KCOP-TV.
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By the 1960s, she was a regular on network game shows and talk shows, including The Tonight Show with Jack Paar and later with Johnny Carson. From 1961 to 1975, she appeared frequently as a celebrity guest on the popular Password show. She later appeared on the show’s three updated versions, Password Plus, Super Password, and Million Dollar Password, having previously appeared on versions of the game hosted by five different people. The actress appeared frequently on What’s My Line? (beginning in 1955), To Tell the Truth (in 1961, 1990, and 2015), I’ve Got a Secret (in 1972-73), Match Game (1973-1982), and Pyramid (1973-1982). (starting in 1982). White’s friend Bob Stewart created both Password and Pyramid.
In 1973, the actress made several appearances in the fourth season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, as the “man-hungry” Sue Ann Nivens. The role garnered White her second and third Emmy Awards. Although considering the role a highlight of her career, she has described the character’s image as “icky sweet”, feeling she was the very definition of feminine passivity, owing to the fact she always satirized her persona onscreen in just such a way. In December 2006, White joined the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful in the role of Ann Douglas, the long-lost mother of the show’s matriarch, Stephanie Forrester, played by Susan Flannery.
White, Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves, and Wendie Malick co-starred as Elka Ostrovsky, the housekeeper, on TV Land’s original sitcom Hot in Cleveland in June 2010. She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2011 for her role as Elka, but she lost to Julie Bowen of Modern Family. The show aired 128 episodes over six seasons, with the final hour-long episode airing on June 3, 2015. In late 2010, a Betty White calendar for 2011 was released. The calendar includes photographs of White throughout her career and with various animals. On July 22, 2010, she also debuted her clothing line, which features shirts with her face on them.
She was also the recipient of the UCLA Jack Benny Award for Comedy. Betty White’s 90th Birthday Party, a television special, aired on NBC the day before her birthday, January 16, 2012. The show featured many stars with whom White has collaborated over the years, as well as a message from President Barack Obama. White’s career was honored in a PBS documentary titled Betty White: First Lady of Television, which aired on August 18, 2018. The documentary was shot over ten years and included archived footage as well as interviews with colleagues and friends. In 2019, the actress joined Pixar’s Toy Story 4 voice cast. She was the voice of Bitey White, a toy tiger named after her.
Cause of Death
On December 25, 2021, Betty White suffered a stroke. She passed away in her sleep on the morning of December 31 at her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, at the age of 99. Her remains were cremated.
White’s death prompted an outpouring of tributes from people and organizations around the world. The United States Army honored her service with the American Women’s Voluntary Services during World War II, while The Martin Luther King Jr. Center recognized her early advocacy for racial equality. Media outlets, entertainers, political figures, sports teams, and public figures also paid tribute. Within hours of her passing, fans covered her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with flowers and messages of remembrance.
Her Brentwood and Carmel homes were sold in April and June 2022, respectively, and her personal belongings were auctioned that September, with proceeds benefiting various charities. A significant portion of her television memorabilia, including wardrobe pieces, annotated notes, and five of her Emmy Awards, was donated to the National Comedy Center.
Betty White’s Net worth
Betty has an estimated net worth of around $75 million.
