Betty Marion White Ludden (January
17, 1922 – December 31, 2021) was an American actress and comedian.
A pioneer of early television, with a career spanning over eight
decades, White was noted for her vast work in the entertainment
industry and being one of the first women to work both in front of
and behind the camera. She was the first woman to produce a sitcom
(Life with Elizabeth) in the United States, which contributed
to her being named honorary Mayor of Hollywood in 1955. White is
often referred to as the "First Lady of Television",
a title used for a 2018 documentary detailing her life and career.
After making the transition to
television from radio, White became a staple panelist of American
game shows, including Password, Match Game, Tattletales, To Tell
the Truth, The Hollywood Squares, and The $25,000 Pyramid;
dubbed "the first lady of game shows", White became
the first woman to receive the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding
Game Show Host for the show Just Men! In 1983. She was
also known for her appearances on The Bold and the Beautiful,
Boston Legal, and The Carol Burnett Show. Her biggest
roles include Sue Ann Nivens on the CBS sitcom The Mary
Tyler Moore Show (1973–1977), Rose Nylund on the NBC
sitcom The Golden Girls (1985–1992), and Elka Ostrovsky
on the TV Land sitcom Hot in Cleveland (2010–2015). She
gained renewed popularity after her appearance in the 2009 romantic
comedy film The Proposal (2009), and was subsequently the
subject of a successful Facebook-based campaign to host Saturday
Night Live in 2010, garnering her a Primetime Emmy Award for
Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
White earned a Guinness World Record
for "Longest TV career by an entertainer (female)" in
2014 and in 2018 for her lengthy work in television. White 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, and was a 1995
Television Hall of Fame inductee.
Early life
Betty Marion White was born in Oak
Park, Illinois, on January 17, 1922. She stated that Betty was her
legal name and not a shortened version of Elizabeth. She was the
only child of Christine Tess (née Cachikis), a homemaker, and Horace
Logan White, a lighting company executive from Michigan. 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).
White's family moved to Alhambra,
California, in 1923 when she was a little over a year old, and later
to Los Angeles during the Great Depression. To make extra money, her
father built crystal radios and sold 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 other goods,
including dogs on some occasions.
White attended Horace Mann Elementary
School in Beverly Hills and Beverly Hills High School, graduating in
1939. Her interest in wildlife was sparked by family vacations 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.
Career
1939–1953: Radio work, early
television and Bandy Productions
One month after her high school
graduation, she and a classmate sang songs from The Merry Widow
on an experimental television show, as the medium of television
itself was still in development. White found work modeling, and her
first professional acting job was at the Bliss Hayden Little Theatre.
After the United States entered World
War II in 1941, White volunteered for the American Women's Voluntary
Services. Her assignment included driving a PX truck with military
supplies to the Hollywood Hills. She also participated in events for
troops before they were deployed overseas. Commenting on her wartime
service, White said, "It was a strange time and out of
balance with everything."
After the war, White made the rounds to
movie studios looking for work, but was turned down because she was
"not photogenic". 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 pay. She
appeared on shows such as Blondie, The Great Gildersleeve, and
This Is Your FBI. She was then offered her own radio show,
called The Betty White Show. In 1949, she began appearing as
co-host with Al Jarvis on his daily live television variety show
Hollywood on Television, originally called Make Believe Ballroom,
on KFWB and on then KLAC-TV (now KCOP-TV) in Los Angeles.
White began hosting the show by herself
in 1952 after Jarvis's departure, spanning five and a half hours of
live ad lib television six days per week, over a continuous four-year
span. 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 Judith Anderson, Helen Hayes, and
Imogene Coca; the award went to Gertrude Berg. At this point, the
award was for body of work, with no shows named in nominations.
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. 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 character. The show
was originally a live production on KLAC-TV in 1951, and won White a
Los Angeles Emmy Award in 1952.
Life with Elizabeth was nationally
syndicated from 1953 to 1955, allowing White to become one of the few
women in television with full creative control in front of and behind
the camera. 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. White said they did not worry about
relevance in those days, and that usually the incidents were based on
real life situations that happened to her, the actor who played
Alvin, and the writer.
White also performed in television
advertisement seen on live television in Los Angeles, including a
rendition of the "Dr. Ross Dog Food" advertisement
at KTLA during the 1950s. She guest starred on The Millionaire in the
1956 episode "The Virginia Lennart Story", as the
owner of a small town diner that received an anonymous gift of $1
million.
1952–1959: The Betty White Show
and Date with the Angels
From 1952 to 1954, White hosted and
produced her own daily talk/variety show, The Betty White Show,
first on KLAC-TV and then on NBC (her first television, but second
show to feature that title). Like her sitcom, she had creative
control over the series, and was able to hire a female director. In
a first for American network variety television, her show featured an
African-American performer, but the show faced criticism for the
inclusion of tap dancer Arthur Duncan as a regular cast member. The
criticism followed when NBC expanded the show nationally. Local
Southern stations in the Jim Crow era threatened to boycott unless
Duncan was removed from the series. In response, White said "I'm
sorry. Live with it," and gave Duncan more airtime.
Initially a ratings success, the show repeatedly changed time slots
and suffered lower viewership. By the end of the year, NBC quietly
canceled the series.
Following the end of Life with
Elizabeth, she appeared as Vicki Angel on the ABC sitcom
Date with the Angels from 1957 to 1958. As originally
intended, the show, loosely based on the Elmer Rice play Dream
Girl, would focus on Vicki's daydreaming tendencies. However, the
sponsor was not pleased with the fantasy elements, and pressured to
have them eliminated. "I can honestly say that was the only
time I have ever wanted to get out of a show," White later
said. The sitcom was a critical and ratings disaster, but ABC
wouldn't allow White out of her contractual agreement and required
her to fill the remaining thirteen weeks in their deal. Instead of a
retooled version of the sitcom, White rebooted her old talk/variety
show, “The Betty White Show, which aired until her contract was
fulfilled."
The sitcom did give White some positive
experiences: she first met Lucille Ball while working on it, as both
Date With the Angels and I Love Lucy were filmed on the
same Culver Studios lot. The two quickly struck up a friendship over
their accomplishments in taking on the male dominated television
business of the '50s. They relied on one another through divorce,
illness, personal loss, and even competed against one another on
various game shows.
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.
1960s: First Lady of Gameshows,
Password and Advise & Consent
By the 1960s, White was a staple of
network game shows and talk shows: including both Jack Paar and later
Johnny Carson's era of The Tonight Show. She made many
appearances on the hit Password show as a celebrity guest from
1961 through 1975. She married the show's host, Allen Ludden, in
1963. She subsequently appeared on the show's three updated
versions, Password Plus, Super Password, and Million Dollar
Password. White made frequent game show appearances on What's
My Line? (starting 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 (starting in 1982). She
made her feature film debut as fictional Kansas Senator Elizabeth
Ames Adams in the 1962 drama Advise & Consent; in
2004, on talk show Q&A, host Brian Lamb remarked on
White's longevity as an actress besides the fact she was playing a
strong female senator in 1962. He and Donald A. Ritchie noted that
viewers would have seen the Senator Adams character to reflect
Margaret Chase Smith.
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 permanently to New York City
(where Today is produced). The job eventually went to Barbara
Walters. Through the 1950s and 1960s, White began a nineteen-year run
as hostess and commentator on the annual Rose Parade broadcast
on NBC (co-hosting with Roy Neal and later Lorne Greene), and
appeared on a number of late-night talk shows, including Jack
Paar's The Tonight Show, and various other daytime game shows.
1970s: The Mary Tyler Moore Show and
The Betty White Show
White made several appearances in the
fourth season (1973–74) of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, as the
"man-hungry" Sue Ann Nivens. Although considering
the role a highlight of her career, White 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 own persona onscreen in just such a way. The Mary
Tyler Moore Show's producers made Sue Ann Nivens a regular
character and brought White into the main cast starting with the
fifth season, after Valerie Harper, who played Rhoda Morgenstern,
left the program.
A running gag was how Sue Ann's
aggressive, cynical personality was the complete opposite of her
relentlessly perky TV persona on the fictional WJM-TV show, The
Happy Homemaker. "We need somebody who can play
sickeningly sweet, like Betty White," Moore suggested at a
production meeting, which resulted in casting White herself. White
won two Emmy Awards back-to-back for her role in the hugely popular
series, in 1975 and 1976.
Mary Tyler Moore and her husband Grant
Tinker were close friends with White and her husband Allen Ludden. In
a 2010 The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
interview, Moore explained that producers, aware of Moore and White's
friendship, were initially hesitant to audition White for the role,
for fear that if she hadn't been right, it would create awkwardness
between the two.
In 1975, NBC replaced White as
commentator hostess of the Tournament of Roses Parade, feeling
that she was identified too heavily with rival network CBS's The
Mary Tyler Moore Show. White admitted to People that it was
difficult "watching someone else do my parade",
although she would soon start a ten-year run as hostess of the Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade for CBS. 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), in which she co-starred with John Hillerman
and former Mary Tyler Moore co-star Georgia Engel. Up against Monday
Night Football in its timeslot, the ratings were poor and it was
canceled after one season.
White appeared several times on The
Carol Burnett Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
appearing in many sketches, and began guest-starring in a number of
television movies and television miniseries, including With This
Ring, The Best Place to Be, Before and After, and The Gossip
Columnist.
1980s: Mama's Family and The Golden
Girls
In 1983, White became the first woman
to win a Daytime Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding
Game Show Host, for the NBC entry Just Men! Due to the
amount of work she did on them, she was deemed the "First
Lady of Game Shows".
From 1983 to 1984, White had a
recurring role playing Ellen Harper Jackson on the series
Mama's Family, along with future Golden Girls co-star
Rue McClanahan. White had originated this character in a series of
sketches on The Carol Burnett Show in the 1970s.
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
(Getty was also nominated every year, but in the supporting actress
category).
White had a strained relationship with
her The Golden Girls co-star Bea Arthur on and off the set of
their television show, commenting that Arthur "was not that
fond of me" and that "she found me a pain in the
neck sometimes. It was my positive attitude – and that made Bea mad
sometimes. Sometimes if I was happy, she'd be furious."
After Arthur's death in 2009, White said, "I knew it would
hurt, I just didn't know it would hurt this much." Despite
their differences, The Golden Girls was a positive experience
for both actresses and they had great mutual respect for the show,
their roles, and the achievements made as an ensemble cast. Arthur
would often insist on waiting to leave for lunch until all four (she
and White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty) had finished their work
and could leave together.
White was originally offered the role
of Blanche in The Golden Girls, and Rue McClanahan was
offered the role of Rose (the two characters being similar to
roles they had played in Mary Tyler Moore and Maude, respectively).
Jay Sandrich, the director of the pilot, suggested that since they
had played similar roles in the past, they should switch roles, Rue
McClanahan later said in a documentary on the series. White
originally had doubts about her ability to play Rose, until Sandrich
explained to her that Rose was "terminally naive."
White says "if you told Rose you were so hungry you could eat
a horse, she'd call the ASPCA."
1990–2009: Guest roles and return
to the big screen in The Proposal
The Golden Girls ended in 1992
after Arthur announced her decision to depart the series. White,
McClanahan, and Getty reprised their roles as Rose, Blanche,
and Sophia in the spin-off The Golden Palace. The
series was short-lived, lasting only one season. In addition, White
reprised her Rose Nylund character in guest appearances on the
NBC shows Empty Nest and Nurses, both set in Miami.
After The Golden Palace ended,
White guest-starred on a number of television programs including
Suddenly Susan, The Practice, and Yes, Dear where she
received Emmy nominations for her individual appearances. She won an
Emmy in 1996 for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series,
appearing as herself on an episode of The John Larroquette
Show. In that episode, titled "Here We Go Again",
a parody on Sunset Boulevard, a diva-like White convinces Larroquette
to help write her memoir. At one point Golden Girls co-stars
McClanahan and Getty appear as themselves. Larroquette is forced to
dress in drag as Bea Arthur, when all four appear in public as the
"original" cast members.
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), the long-lost mother of the
show's matriarch, Stephanie Forrester, played by Susan
Flannery. She also began a recurring role in ABC's Boston Legal
from 2005 to 2008 as the calculating, blackmailing gossip-monger
Catherine Piper, a role she originally played as a guest star
on The Practice in 2004.
White appeared several times on The
Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Late Late Show with Craig
Ferguson appearing in many sketches and returned to Password
in its latest incarnation, Million Dollar Password, on June
12, 2008, (episode #3), participating in the Million Dollar
challenge at the end of the show. On May 19, 2008, she appeared
on The Oprah Winfrey Show, taking part in the host's Mary
Tyler Moore Show reunion special alongside every surviving cast
member of the series. Beginning in 2007, White was featured in
television commercials for PetMed Express, highlighting her
interest in animal welfare.
In 2009, White starred in the romantic
comedy The Proposal alongside Sandra Bullock and Ryan
Reynolds. Also in 2009, the candy company Mars, Incorporated
launched a global campaign for their Snickers bar; the
campaign's slogan was: "You're not you when you're hungry".
White appeared, alongside Abe Vigoda, in the company's advertisement
for the candy during the 2010 Super Bowl XLIV. The
advertisement became very popular, and won the top spot on the Super
Bowl Ad Meter.
2010–2021: Career resurgence,
Saturday Night Live and Hot in Cleveland
Following the success of the Snickers
advertisement, a grassroots campaign on Facebook called
"Betty White to Host SNL (Please)" began in January
2010. The group was approaching 500,000 members when NBC confirmed on
March 11, 2010, that White would in fact host Saturday Night Live
on May 8. The appearance made her, at age 88, the oldest person to
host the show, beating Miskel Spillman, the winner of SNL's "Anybody
Can Host" contest, who was 80 when she hosted in 1977.m In
her opening monologue, White thanked Facebook and joked that she
"didn't know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what
it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time."
The appearance earned her a 2010 Primetime Emmy Award for
Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
In June 2010, White took on the role of
Elka Ostrovsky, the house caretaker on TV Land's original
sitcom Hot in Cleveland along with Valerie Bertinelli, Jane
Leeves, and Wendie Malick. Hot in Cleveland was TV Land's
first attempt at a first-run scripted comedy (the channel has rerun
other sitcoms since its debut). White was only meant to appear in the
pilot of the show but was asked to stay on for the entire series. In
2011, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding
Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Elka,
but lost to Julie Bowen for Modern Family. The series ran for
six seasons, a total of 128 episodes, with the hour-long final
episode airing on June 3, 2015.
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.
A Betty White calendar for 2011 was
published in late 2010. The calendar features photos from White's
career and with various animals. She also launched her own clothing
line on July 22, 2010, which features shirts with her face on them.
All proceeds go to various animal charities she supported.
White's success continued in 2012 with
her first Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Recording
for her bestseller If You Ask Me. She also won the UCLA
Jack Benny Award for Comedy, recognizing her significant
contribution to comedy in television, and was roasted at the New
York Friars Club. A television special, Betty White's 90th
Birthday Party, aired on NBC a day before her birthday on January
16, 2012. The show featured appearances of many stars whom White
worked with over the years as well as a message from then sitting
president Barack Obama. In January 2013, NBC once again celebrated
White's birthday with a TV special featuring celebrity friends,
including former president Bill Clinton; the special aired on
February 5.
On February 15, 2015, White made her
final appearance on Saturday Night Live when she attended the
40th Anniversary Special. She participated in "The
Californians" sketch alongside members of the current SNL
cast members as well as Bill Hader, Taylor Swift and Kerry
Washington. In the memorable sketch White ends up kissing Bradley
Cooper.
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. In 2019, White appeared in Pixar's Toy Story 4,
providing the voice of Bitey White, a toy tiger that was named
after her. The other toys she shared a scene with were named and
played by Carol Burnett, Carl Reiner, and Mel Brooks. White commented
that "It was wonderful the way they incorporated our names
into the characters ... And I'm a sucker for animals, so the tiger
was perfect!"
Betty White: A Celebration
In December 2021, before White's death,
it was announced that a new documentary-style movie about her, Betty
White: A Celebration would be released in US theaters on
her 100th birthday, January 17, 2022. It is set to feature a cast of
friends including Ryan Reynolds, Tina Fey, Robert Redford, Lin-Manuel
Miranda, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Jay Leno, Carol Burnett,
Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel, Valerie Bertinelli, James Corden,
Wendie Malick, and Jennifer Love Hewitt. In addition to the planned
documentary, People magazine featured her as the cover story
of its January 10, 2022, newsstand publication and a separate
commemorative edition to celebrate the anticipated milestone, which
were released days before her death.
Following White's death, producers
Steve Boettcher and Mike Trinklein of the event distributors Fathom
Events announced in a Facebook post that the pre-filmed
production would be going ahead as scheduled.
Achievements and honors
White won five Primetime Emmy
Awards, two Daytime Emmy Awards (including the 2015 Daytime
Emmy for Lifetime Achievement), and received a Los Angeles
Emmy Award in 1952. White was the only woman to have received an
Emmy in all performing comedic categories, and also holds the
record for longest span between Emmy nominations for
performances—her first was in 1951 and her last was in 2014, a span
of over 60 years. In 2015, she received the Lifetime Achievement
Daytime Emmy. She also won three American Comedy Awards
(including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990), and two
Viewers for Quality Television Awards. She was inducted into
the Television Hall of Fame in 1995 and has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at Hollywood Boulevard alongside the star
of her late husband Allen Ludden. In 2009, White received the TCA
Career Achievement Award from the Television Critics
Association.
White was the recipient of The
Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters Golden Ike Award and the Genii
Award from the Alliance for Women in Media in 1976. The
American Comedy Awards awarded her the award for Funniest
Female in 1987 as well as the list of lifetime achievement awards
in 1990.
The American Veterinary Medical
Association awarded White with its Humane Award in 1987 for her
charitable work with animals. The City of Los Angeles further
honored her for her philanthropic work with animals in 2006 with a
bronze commemorative plaque near the Gorilla Exhibit at the Los
Angeles Zoo. The City of Los Angeles named her "Ambassador
to the Animals" at the dedication ceremony.
In September 2009, the Screen Actors
Guild (SAG) announced plans to honor White with the Screen
Actors Guild Life Achievement Award at the 16th Screen Actors
Guild Awards. Actress Sandra Bullock presented White with the
award on January 23, 2010, at the ceremony, which took place at the
Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. She was a Kentucky Colonel.
In 2009, White and her Golden Girls cast mates Bea Arthur,
Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty were awarded Disney Legends
awards. White was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in
December 2010. In 2010, she was chosen as the Associated Press's
Entertainer of the Year.
On November 9, 2010, the USDA Forest
Service, along with Smokey Bear, made White an honorary
forest ranger, fulfilling her lifelong dream. White said in previous
interviews that she wanted to be a forest ranger as a little girl but
that women were not allowed to do that then. When White received the
honor, more than one-third of Forest Service employees were
women.
In January 2011, White received a SAG
Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy
Series for her role as Elka Ostrovsky in Hot in
Cleveland. The show itself was also nominated for an award as
Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series, but
lost to the cast of Modern Family. She won the same award
again in 2012, and later received a third nomination.
In October 2011, White was awarded an
honorary degree and white doctor's coat by Washington State
University at the Washington State Veterinary Medical
Association's centennial gala in Yakima, Washington.
A 2011 poll conducted by Reuters and
Ipsos revealed that White was considered the most popular and most
trusted celebrity among Americans, beating the likes of Denzel
Washington, Sandra Bullock, and Tom Hanks.
In 2017, after 70 years in the
industry, White was invited to become a member of the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. At age 95, this made her the
oldest new member at the time.
Personal life
While volunteering with the American
Women's Voluntary Services, White met her first husband Dick
Barker, a United States Army Air Forces P-38 pilot. After the war,
the couple married and moved to Belle Center, Ohio, where Barker
owned a chicken farm; he wanted to embrace a simpler life, but White
did not enjoy this. They returned to Los Angeles and divorced within
a year.
In 1947, she married Lane Allen, a
Hollywood talent agent. They divorced in 1949 because he wanted a
family but she wanted a career rather than children.
On June 14, 1963, White married
television host and personality Allen Ludden, whom she had met on his
game show Password as a celebrity guest in 1961, and her legal
name was changed to Betty White Ludden. He proposed to White at
least twice before she accepted. The couple appeared together in an
episode of The Odd Couple featuring Felix's and Oscar's
appearance on Password.
Among the couple's high-profile friends
was writer John Steinbeck. In her 2011 book If You Ask Me (And of
Course You Won't), White writes about her friendship with the
author. Ludden had attended the same school as Steinbeck's wife
Elaine Anderson Steinbeck. Steinbeck gave an early draft of his Nobel
Prize in Literature acceptance speech to Ludden for his birthday.
While they had no children together,
White was stepmother to Ludden's three children with Margaret McGloin
Ludden, who died of cancer in 1961. Allen Ludden died from stomach
cancer on June 9, 1981, in Los Angeles. White never remarried. When
asked the reason for this in an interview with Larry King, White
responded by saying "Once you've had the best, who needs the
rest?". When asked by James Lipton on Inside The Actor's
Studio that should Heaven exist, what would she like God to say
to her when she walked through the Pearly gates, White replied "Come
on in Betty. Here's Allen."
White attended the Unity Church, part
of the New Thought movement.
Death
On December 31, 2021, White died at the
age of 99, seventeen days before her 100th birthday, at her home in
the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, from a stroke she had on
Christmas Day. White's remains were cremated and given to Glenn
Kaplan, who was entrusted with carrying out her advanced health care
directive.
Her death was met with sympathy and
statements from many people and organizations. President Joe Biden
released a statement upon her death, describing her as a "lovely
lady" and a "cultural icon who will be sorely
missed." Barack and Michelle Obama also expressed sympathy
on social media. The United States Army released a statement, as
White had volunteered with the American Women's Voluntary Services
during World War II. Additionally, the Martin Luther King Jr. Center
tweeted their condolences and praised White for her early support of
racial equality. There were additional tributes from numerous media
organizations, celebrities, political commentators, sports teams,
musicians, and other public figures. White's star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame was flooded with flowers and tributes within hours of
the announcement of her death.
Causes and advocacy
Animal welfare
White was a pet enthusiast and animal
welfare advocate, who worked with organizations including the Los
Angeles Zoo Commission, The Morris Animal Foundation, African
Wildlife Foundation, and Actors and Others for Animals. Her interest
in animal welfare began in the early 1970s while she was producing
and hosting the syndicated series The Pet Set, which
spotlighted celebrities and their pets. As of 2009, White was the
president emerita of the Morris Animal Foundation, where she served
as a trustee of the organization beginning in 1971. She was a member
of the board of directors of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association
since 1974. Additionally, White served the association as a Zoo
Commissioner for eight years.
According to the Los Angeles Zoo &
Botanical Garden's ZooScape member newsletter, White hosted "History
on Film" from 2000 to 2002. White donated nearly $100,000 to
the zoo in the month of April 2008 alone. White served as a judge at
the 2011 American Humane Hero Dog Awards ceremony at The Beverly
Hilton hotel on October 1, 2011, in Los Angeles.
White served as a judge alongside
Whoopi Goldberg and Wendy Diamond for the American Humane's Hero Dog
Awards on the Hallmark Channel on November 8, 2011.
Opposing racial injustice
In 1954, as The Betty White Show became
national across the United States, White was criticized by many in
the Southern states for having Arthur Duncan, a Black tap dancer, on
her variety show and was asked to remove him. In the 2018 documentary
Betty White: First Lady of Television, White recalled threats to take
the show off-air "if we didn’t get rid of Arthur, because
he was Black." She refused, saying "he stays, live
with it".
In 2017, sixty-three years after the
show was canceled, Duncan appeared as a surprise guest on the series
premiere of the reality talent series Little Big Shots: Forever
Young, where he performed and reunited with White, later thanking
her again for her support.
LGBT rights
A supporter and advocate of LGBT
rights, White said that "If a couple has been together all
that time – and there are gay relationships that are more solid
than some heterosexual ones – I think it's fine if they want to get
married. I don't know how people can get so anti-something. Mind your
own business, take care of your affairs, and don't worry about other
people so much." In a 2011 interview, White said that she
always knew her close friend Liberace was gay and that she sometimes
accompanied him to premieres.
Discography
In September 2011, White teamed up with
English singer Luciana to produce a remix of her song "I'm
Still Hot". The song was released digitally on September 22
and the video later premiered on October 6. It was made for a
campaign for a life settlement company, The Lifeline Program, and it
is her only commercial single to date, peaking at number 1 on the
Dance Club Songs chart. White has also covered songs on her live
television shows, such as "Nevertheless (I'm In Love With
You)," "It's A Good Day," "Getting To Know You"
and "A No That Sounds Like Yes."
Filmography
Bibliography
White published several books. In
August 2010, she entered a deal with G.P. Putnam's Sons to produce
two more books, the first of which, If You Ask Me (And of Course
You Won't), was released in 2011. In February 2012, White
received her first Grammy Award ("Best Spoken Word
Recording") for the audio recording of the book.
Books
Betty White's Pet-Love: How Pets
Take Care of Us. W. Morrow. 1983.
Betty White in Person. Doubleday.
1987.
The Leading Lady: Dinah's Story.
Bantam Books. 1991. ISBN 9780385421683. (with Tom Sullivan)
Here We Go Again: My Life In
Television. Scribner. 1995. ISBN 9780684800424.
Together: A Novel of Shared Vision.
Center Point Pub. 2008. ISBN 9781602852488. (with Tom Sullivan)
If You Ask Me (And of Course You
Won't). Penguin. 2011. ISBN 9781101514467.
Betty & Friends: My Life at the
Zoo. Penguin. 2011. ISBN 9781101558928.
Audiobooks
2004: Here We Go Again (read by the
author) ISBN 978-1451613698
2011: If You Ask Me: (And of Course
You Won't) (read by the author), Penguin Audio, ISBN
978-0-1424-2936-5</ref>
