Betty White, an Emmy-winning comedy actress who was best known for playing a male-hungry television hostess on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s and a little widow on Golden girls in the 1980s before her late resurgence as a tough, funny and saucy old lady, died at the age of 99.

Over a career spanning seven decades, White has become one of the most endearing and enduring faces on television. She said her late husband, TV show veteran Allen Ludden, used to joke, “Meet my wife, one of the pioneers of silent television.”

He wasn’t far. She appeared on an experimental TV show in 1939 and later became a mainstay of the small screen. His trademark was disarmingly cheeky and dimpled cheek, but his impeccable comedic timing knew a wide range, from genteel innocence to stiletto bite.

She has remained an incorrigible presence on sitcoms and TV talk shows, often portraying herself as a seemingly reserved old woman who suddenly takes a detour by a saucy punchline. When talk show host David Letterman asked her how she spent her time, she opened up about her love of animals before noting that “vodka is kind of a hobby.”

Most recently, she had a recurring role on the American sitcom Hot in Cleveland and hosted a hidden camera joke show titled Betty White is out of their rockers, which featured old people playing pranks on people young enough to be their grandchildren.

Asked in 2012 about the dedicated audience that suddenly sprang up around her, she explained to an Australian newspaper: “I think when I was 90 it kind of fascinated the people I still worked with. I am very grateful that they always invite me to do things, but it surprises me as much as them.

White initially wowed critics and audiences alike in his lead role on the suburban sitcom Life with Elisabeth, aired from 1953 to 1955. New York Times TV critic Jack Gould called White a talented and “extremely likeable” actress with an “intuitive sense for prank.”

While the role helped propel White’s long career, she went on to speak contemptuously of what she saw as her dated premise. Plots centered on “Elizabeth’s cookies did not turn out,” she later said The Washington Post. “We were trying to be funny. We were more two-dimensional cartoon characters than real three-dimensional people. “

His other sitcom work at the time wasn’t much better, but his heart-shaped face and lovable personality got him a lot of work elsewhere, including long-running quiz shows like What is my line? and the hosted Ludden Password.

She said she was approached by NBC in the early 1960s to be the “new girl” on the Today morning, but refused because she didn’t want to live in New York. “They had to make do with Barbara Walters,” White told NPR. “What can I tell you? “

The Mary Tyler Moore Show provided White with one of his juiciest roles. From 1973 until the show’s cancellation in 1977, she portrayed Sue Ann Nivens, the sweet outdoors “Happy Homemaker” on fictional Minneapolis station WJM-TV who had a sexually rapacious personality off-camera.

Portraying the “neighborhood nymphomaniac,” White later said, has been key to relaunching her acting career after years of working on game shows.

After years of playing “that nice lady,” she said TV guide in 1974, “it was a lot of fun for them to see that nice ladies sometimes have claws. For me it was like being born again.

She won two Emmy Awards for her supporting role in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and was nominated for another.

Golden girls, which debuted in 1985 to rave reviews and aired for seven years on NBC, sealed White’s presence on the small screen.

She played the role of the tender-hearted but caring Rose Nylund, a widowed bereavement counselor who shares a house in Miami with three other seniors: the beautiful Southern White (McClanahan Street); the abrasive octogenarian Sophia (Estelle Getty); and Sophia’s dominant daughter, Dorothy (Bea Arthur).

Rose was inclined to doubt herself and misinterpreted everything that was said around her. Sexual innuendos often baffled her, such as Dorothy’s comment that her ex-husband had to undress to count to 21. Rose was from the town of St Olaf, Minnesota, and her rambling memories of her eccentric residents. have become a common joke. She won the 1986 Emmy for Leading Actress in a Comedy Series and was nominated six more times during the series.

Due to his memorable role in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, White was first approached to play Blanche on Golden girls. She said she was happy when the change happened, telling the post Backstage, “It was great fun, because we each had new territory to explore, and Ruesie [McClanahan] took Blanche to orbit where I never would have had the courage to go.

Betty Marion White was born in Illinois on January 17, 1922. She grew up in Los Angeles, where she took an early interest in theater and landed several acting jobs on the radio and on stage.

Her career ended after her marriage in 1945 to Dick Barker, a WWII pilot who brought her back to her family’s chicken farm in Ohio. She later called the experience a “nightmare”.

A second marriage, to actor and show business agent Lane Allen, also ended in divorce. She said Allen was unhappy about wanting to work.

In 1949 and newly single, White joined a TV talk show in Los Angeles as Al Jarvis’ sidekick. It was exhausting but exhilarating, White later told the Toronto Star. “It was live, five hours a day, six days a week,” she said. “We did 58 live commercials one day.”

White succeeded Jarvis as host of the show before winning her first leading role on national television with Life with Elisabeth, with Del Moore playing her husband. She then hosted The Betty White Show, a daytime talk show on NBC, and the national comedy Rendezvous with the angels on ABC.

Other sitcom efforts starring White failed and she became a freelance celebrity panelist on game shows, through which she met Ludden, a widower, and married him in 1963. He died in 1981 They did not have children. A full list of survivors could not be confirmed.

White said her years as a talk show panelist damaged her reputation as a serious actress. His fortune changed with The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She wasn’t initially considered for the complicated part of Nivens, but she said the show’s producers were considering “an incredibly sweet type of Betty White” for the role.

White was a friend of the show’s eponymous star, and the producers feared a problem if she didn’t play the part well. It was only after conducting an exhaustive search that the producers selected her without an audition.

After the series ended in 1977, White briefly starred in her own eponymous series on CBS, and in 1983, she won a Daytime Emmy for hosting the game show. Just men!

Daddy’s Girls endured in syndication, but the 1992 spin-off The Golden Palace, in which Rose, Blanche and Sophia run a hotel, was canceled after its first season. White became an active artist in other sitcoms and won an Emmy in 1996 playing a version of herself on The John Larroquette show.

She went on to win Emmy nominations for her guest roles in the comedy series My name is earl, Suddenly Susan, Yes my dear and the drama series The practice.

White was an animal advocate much of his life. She volunteered with animal welfare organizations, wrote a book on pet care, and hosted a series in the early 1970s, Pet set, about celebrities and their pets.

“Actors love to throw rocks on TV, but I love the medium because of its immediacy and ability to reach large audiences all at once,” she told Toronto Star in 1986. “On stage, you can’t communicate face-to-face with the public. In the cinema, you are larger than life and completely removed from the audience. Television, however, is an entity with a vitality of its own. And the beauty of this environment is that you can grow old there. I plan to be there until I’m 102.

Betty White, actress, born January 17, 1922, died December 31, 2021

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