Betty White, who was born on a day like today in 1922, was one of the main actresses of this sitcom and The Grandma wants to pay homage to her in her 99th anniversary, talking about her career and her life.
Betty Marion White Ludden (born January 17, 1922) is an American actress and comedian.
With a television career spanning over 80 years, White has worked longer in that medium than anyone else in the television industry. Regarded as a pioneer of television, she was one of the first women to exert control in front of and behind the camera and is recognized as the first woman to produce a sitcom, Life with Elizabeth, which contributed to her receiving the honorary title Mayor of Hollywood in 1955.
White is known for her award-winning roles as Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1973–1977) and Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls (1985–1992). The Writers Guild of America has included both sitcoms in its list of the 101 Best-Written TV Series of All Time. At age 88, she returned to a weekly sitcom playing Elka Ostrovsky on Hot in Cleveland (2010–2015).
More information: ET Online
A staple panelist of American game shows such as Password, Match Game, Tattletales, The Hollywood Squares and The $25,000 Pyramid, White has been dubbed the first lady of game shows, and became the first woman to receive a Daytime Emmy Award, winning the award for Outstanding Game Show Host in 1983 for the show Just Men! She is also known for her appearances on Boston Legal, The Carol Burnett Show, and Saturday Night Live.
White has starred in such films as Advise & Consent, Lake Placid, The English dub of Ponyo, The Proposal, The Lorax, and the television film The Lost Valentine, for which her performance received critical acclaim.
White has received eight Emmy Awards in various categories, three American Comedy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Grammy Award. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, is a 1985 Television Hall of Fame inductee, and a 2009 Disney Legend.
Betty Marion White was born in Oak Park, Illinois, on January 17, 1922.
She has stated that Betty is her legal name and not a shortened version
of Elizabeth. She is the only child of Christine Tess, a home-maker,
and Horace Logan White, a lighting company executive. Her paternal
grandfather was Danish and her maternal grandfather was Greek, with her
other roots being English and Welsh, both of her grandmothers were
Canadians.
Since it was the height of the Depression, and hardly anyone had a sizable income, he would trade the radios in exchange for other goods, including dogs on some occasions. She attended the Beverly Hills Unified School District in Beverly Hills, and Beverly Hills High School, graduating in 1939. Her interest in wildlife was sparked by family holidays to the Sierra Nevada. She initially aspired to a career as a forest ranger, but was unable to accomplish this because women were not allowed to serve as rangers at that time.
Instead, White pursued an interest in writing. She wrote and played the lead in a graduation play at Horace Mann School, and discovered her interest in performing. Inspired by her idols Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, she decided to pursue a career as an actress.
White began her television career in 1939, three months after her high school graduation, when she and a classmate sang songs from The Merry Widow on an experimental television show.
White found work modelling, and her first professional acting job was at the Bliss Hayden Little Theatre. When World War II broke out, she put her career on hold and volunteered for the American Women's Voluntary Services.
Her assignment included the transportation of military supplies through
California. She also participated in events for troops before they were
deployed overseas.
More information: Television Academy Foundation
In 1952, the same year that she began hosting Hollywood on Television, White co-founded Bandy Productions with writer George Tibbles and Don Fedderson, a producer.
In July 1959, White made her professional stage debut in a week-long production of the play, Third Best Sport, at the Ephrata Legion Star Playhouse in Ephrata, Pennsylvania.
She made her feature film debut as Kansas Senator Elizabeth Ames Adams in the 1962 drama, Advise & Consent. Although her performance was well-received, it would be her only big-screen appearance for decades.
NBC offered her an anchor job on their flagship breakfast television show Today. She turned the offer down because she didn't want to move to New York, where Today is produced, permanently. The job eventually went to Barbara Walters.
In 1973, White 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.
Following the end of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1977, White was offered her own sitcom on CBS, her fourth entitled The Betty White Show, the first a quarter century earlier. She co-starred with John Hillerman and former Mary Tyler Moore co-star Georgia Engel, but it was canceled in 1978, after only one season.
In 1985, White scored her second signature role and the biggest hit of her career as the St. Olaf, Minnesota native Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls. The series chronicled the lives of four widowed or divorced women in their golden years who shared a home in Miami. The Golden Girls, which also starred Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, and Rue McClanahan, was immensely successful and ran from 1985 through 1992.
White won one Emmy Award, for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series, for the first season of The Golden Girls and was nominated in that category every year of the show's run, the only cast member to receive that distinction -Getty was also nominated every year, but in the supporting actress category.
More information: USA Today
In December 2006, White joined the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful in the role of Ann Douglas, where she would make 22 appearances.
White also starred in the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of The Lost Valentine on January 30, 2011, this presentation garnered the highest rating for a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation in the previous four years and according to the Nielsen Media Research TV rating service won first place in the prime time slot for that date and from 2012 to 2014, White hosted and executive produced Betty White's Off Their Rockers, in which senior citizens play practical jokes on the younger generation. For this show, she received three Emmy nominations.
On August 18, 2018, White's career was celebrated in a PBS documentary called Betty White: First Lady of Television. The documentary was filmed over a period of ten years, and featured archived footage and interviews from colleagues and friends.
More information: New York Post
They aren't going to get rid of me that way.
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