Betty White Biography
Betty Marion White Ludden is also known professionally as Betty White, is an American actress, comedian, author, and animal rights advocate. White is known for her roles as Sue Ann Nivens on the CBS sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1973–1977). Now widely regarded as a pioneer of television, with a career lasting over 80 years, she was also one of the first women to exert control in front of and behind the camera.
She is also recognized as the first woman to produce a sitcom, which contributed to her receiving the honorary title Mayor of Hollywood in 1955. She has worked longer in that medium than anyone else in the television industry and was awarded the Guinness World Record in 2018. She has received eight Emmy Awards in various categories. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and is a 1985 Television Hall of Fame inductee.
How old is Betty White? – Age
The American actress is 99 years old as of 17th January 2021. She was born in 1922 in Oak Park, Illinois, United States.
Who are Betty White Parents? – Father and Mother
The actress 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.
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 other goods, including dogs on some occasions.
Betty White Education
The actress 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 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. she decided to pursue a career as an actress.
Who is Betty White Married to? – Husband
The actress is a married woman. She is married to the late Allen Ludden. 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. Ludden appeared as a guest panelist on Match Game, with her wife sitting in the audience. The two appeared together on the Match Game panel in 1974, 1975 and 1980. Sadly, her husband died from stomach cancer on June 9, 1981, in Los Angeles. The actress never married after her husband’s death.
Previously she was in several relationship. 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
The American actress after the death of her husband, Allen, they had no children together. she is the stepmother to his three children from his first marriage to Margaret McGloin Ludden, who died of cancer in 1961. She has been raising her children with love and support.
Betty White career
The American actress 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. She found work modeling, 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.
In 1952, the same year that she began hosting Hollywood on Television, the actress 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. The show was originally a live production on KCOP-TV in 1951, and won White a Los Angeles Emmy Award in 1952.
By the 60’s, the actress 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 subsequently appeared on the show’s three updated versions, Password Plus, Super Password, and Million Dollar Password, having been on versions of the game with five different hosts.
The actress 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). Both Password and Pyramid were created by White’s friend Bob Stewart.
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 own 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 Doughas, the long-lost mother of the show’s matriarch, Stephanie Forrester, played by Susan Flannery.
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. 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.
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 supports.
White’s success continued in 2012 with her first Grammy Award for a spoken word recording for her bestseller If You Ask Me. She also won the UCLA Jack Benny Award for Comedy. 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 with whom White has worked over the years, as well as a message from sitting president Barack Obama.
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, the actress joined the voice cast of Pixar’s Toy Story 4. She provided 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.
Betty White Net worth
The American actress has an estimated net worth of around $75 million as of 2021.
