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She is known for her Emmy Award winning roles as Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1973–77) and Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls (1985–92). The Writers Guild of America has included both sitcoms in its list of the 101 Best Written TV Series Of All Time.[5] A staple guest of many American game shows such as Password, Match Game and The $25,000 Pyramid, White has been dubbed the 'First Lady of Game Shows' and became the first woman to receive an Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host in 1983 for the show Just Men!.[6] From 2010 to 2015, she starred as Elka Ostrovsky in the TV Land sitcom Hot in Cleveland, for which she has won two consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards and she was nominated for an Emmy Award.
In a career that has spanned more than 75 years, she has received seven Emmy awards, three American Comedy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild awards, and a Grammy.[7] She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, is a Television Hall of Fame inductee (class of 1995), and a Disney Legend (class of 2009).
In 2013, the Guinness World Records recognized White as having the longest television career for a female entertainer.[8]
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Entertainment career
2.1 1940s
2.2 1950s
2.3 1960s
2.4 1970s
2.5 1980s
2.6 1990s
2.7 2000s
2.8 2010s
3 Personal life
3.1 Family
3.2 Friendships
3.2.1 Bea Arthur
3.2.2 Liberace
3.2.3 Mary Tyler Moore
3.3 Humanitarian work
4 Legacy
4.1 Achievements
4.2 Awards and honors
5 Filmography
5.1 Films
5.2 Television
6 Literature
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
Early life[edit]
White was born Betty Marion White in Oak Park, Illinois, on January 17, 1922. She has stated that her legal name is Betty and not a shortened version of Elizabeth.[9][10][11] She is the only child of Christine Tess (née Cachikis; July 25, 1899 - November 11, 1985), a homemaker, and Horace Logan White (May 30, 1899 - November 16, 1963),[12] a lighting company executive.[13][14] Her paternal grandfather was Danish and her maternal grandfather was Greek, with her other roots being English and Welsh (both of her grandmothers were Canadian).[15][16][17] White's family moved to Alhambra, California and later to Los Angeles, during the Great Depression.[18][19] To make extra money, her father would build radios and sell them wherever he could. Since it was the height of the Depression, and hardly anyone had a sizable income, he would trade the radios in exchange for dogs.[20]
She attended Horace Mann School Beverly Hills and Beverly Hills High School and aspired to become a forest ranger.[20][21] However, women weren't allowed to become rangers during this 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.[1] This is where she decided to become an actress.[13]
Entertainment career[edit]
1940s[edit]
White made rounds to movie studios looking for work, but was always turned down because she was "unphotogenic". So then she started to look for radio jobs where being photogenic did not matter. Her first radio jobs included reading commercials and playing bit parts, and sometimes even doing crowd noises. She made about five dollars a show. She would do just about anything, like singing on a show for no money, or making an appearance on the local game show.[13]
White began her television career in 1939, three months after high school graduation, when she and a classmate sang songs from The Merry Widow on an experimental Los Angeles channel.[22][1][23] White found work modeling, and her first professional acting job was at the Bliss Hayden Little Theatre. White's career was disrupted immediately, as World War II broke out, causing her to join the American Women's Voluntary Services.
In the 1940s, she worked in radio, appearing on shows such as Blondie, The Great Gildersleeve, and This is Your FBI. She then got her own radio show, called The Betty White Show.[24] In 1949, she began appearing as co-host with Al Jarvis on his daily live television variety show Hollywood on Television, originally called Al Jarvis' Make-Believe Ballroom on KFWB radio and on KLAC-TV in Los Angeles.[2][23]
1950s[edit]
White began hosting the show by herself in 1952 after Jarvis' departure,[2] spanning five and a half hours of live ad-lib television six days per week over a contiguous four-year span altogether. In all of her various variety series over the years, White would sing at least a couple of songs during each broadcast. In 1951, she was nominated for her first Emmy Award as "Best Actress" on television, competing with such legendary stars as Judith Anderson, Helen Hayes, and Imogene Coca (the award went to Gertrude Berg). This was the very first award and category in the new Emmy history designated for women on television.
White in 1954
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.[2] The trio worked to create new shows using existing characters from sketches shown on Hollywood on Television. White, Fedderson, and Tibbles created the television comedy Life with Elizabeth, with White portraying the title role.[2] The show was originally a live production on KLAC-TV in 1951, and won White a Regional Los Angeles Emmy in 1952.[2][10][23][25]
Life with Elizabeth was nationally syndicated from 1952 to 1955, allowing White to become one of the few women in television with full creative control in front of and behind the camera.[2] The show was unusual for a sitcom in the 1950s because it was co-produced and owned by a twenty-eight-year-old woman who still lived with her parents.