Betty White mini-bio: Betty White (born January 17, 1922) is a five-time Emmy Award-winning American film and television actress with a career spanning sixty years, sometimes referred to as "The First Lady of Television" and "America's Sweetheart." [citation needed] She also appeared in radio programs, in movies and the theater, in commercials, and was also a talk show host and a game show host, but is best known for her roles in the sitcoms The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls.
White was born Betty Marion White in Oak Park, Illinois to Tess, a homemaker, and Horace White, a traveling salesman and electrical engineer. She was raised in Los Angeles, California. White attended Horace Mann Middle School in Beverly Hills, California, and then went to Beverly Hills High School in Beverly Hills, California, where she graduated in 1940.
She was previously married and divorced twice before becoming the second wife of game-show host Allen Ludden, with whom she remained married until his death.
Before embarking on her television career, White found work modeling as a glamour model. White launched her television career with her portrayal of Elizabeth on Life With Elizabeth from 1953 to 1955. The show, which garnered White her first Emmy Award, was co-produced by White. She also appeared as Vicki Angel on the sitcom A Date With the Angels from 1957 to 1958. She also had her own talk show briefly in 1954 with the original The Betty White Show (not to be confused with her 1970s sitcom of the same name). White made many appearances on the hit game show Password, which she was a regular guest celebrity on from 1961 through 1975; it was through her early appearances on Password that she met the show's host, Allen Ludden, whom she married in 1963 (Ludden died in 1981. White's two previous marriages ended in divorce). In the 1970s and 1980s, White appeared on the updated versions of Password on NBC - Password Plus and Super Password.
White also made frequent game show appearances on What's My Line? (starting in 1955), To Tell the Truth (in 1961 and in 1990), 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 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 has done with game shows, she has been deemed the "First Lady of Game Shows".
White played sardonic, man-hungry Sue Ann Nivens, the host of The Happy Homemaker Show, on The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1973 to 1977. The running gag of the Sue Ann character was that her hard-edged private personality was the complete opposite of how she presented herself on her show. "We need somebody sickeningly sweet, like Betty White," Moore herself suggested at a production meeting, with the result of casting White. White won two Emmy Awards for her role in the hugely popular series. Following that show's end, she was given her own sitcom on CBS, The Betty White Show, during the 1977-78 season, in which she co-starred with John Hillerman and (former Mary Tyler Moore co-star) Georgia Engel.
From 1983 through 1985, she played Ellen Harper Jackson on the classic show Mama's Family along with future Golden Girls co-star Rue McClanahan. When Mama's Family was picked up in syndication after being cancelled by NBC in 1985, White left the show and scored perhaps her most memorable role as the ditzy St. Olaf, Minnesota, native Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls, a show about the lives of four widowed or divorced women in their golden age who shared a home in Miami. The Golden Girls, which also starred Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty, was immensely successful and ran from 1985 through 1992. When Bea Arthur left the show in 1992, it was renamed The Golden Palace and moved to another network, CBS. It still featured the characters of Rose, Sophia and Blanche, who sold their Miami home and bought a hotel. The show ran until 1993. White won an Emmy Award, for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series, for the first season of The Golden Girls and was nominated again every year of the show's run.
After Golden Girls, White frequently guest starred on a number of television programs including Ally McBeal, The Ellen Show, My Wife and Kids, That 70s Show, Everwood, Joey and Malcolm in the Middle. She received Emmy Award nominations for her appearances on Suddenly Susan, Yes, Dear and The Practice. She won an Emmy Award, 1996, for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series, appearing as herself on a memorable episode of The John Larroquette Show. In the episode, titled "Here We Go Again", which is a spoof on Sunset Boulevard, a diva-like White convinces Larroquette to help her write her memoirs. In one bit, fellow Golden Girls co-stars Rue McClanahan and Estelle 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. White makes fun of herself as she envisions her character of Rose as the central character with the other cast members as mere supporting players.
Currently, White has a recurring role in ABC's Boston Legal. She plays the vicious, calculating, blackmailing gossip-monger Catherine Piper, a role she originally portrayed as a guest star on The Practice.
Along with her guest appearances in several of writer-producer David E. Kelley's television series, White appeared in the Kelley-scripted horror film Lake Placid. She also appeared in Hard Rain. Her film debut was in the Otto Preminger-directed political drama Advise and Consent, in which she played a U.S. Senator. She is also a cartoon voice actress who had worked on The Simpsons, King of the Hill, The Wild Thornberries and Family Guy.
White is well known as a pet enthusiast and animal welfare activist and works with a number of animal organizations including the Los Angeles Zoo Commission, the Morris Animal Foundation, and Actors & Others for Animals.
In 2006 she joined in the Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner.
In December of 2006, White began to appear on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful in the role of Ann Douglas, the long-lost mother of the show's matriarch Stephanie Forrester, who is played by Susan Flannery. In February 2007, White returned as Ann, who had an intent to move to L.A. to be near her daughters.
In January 2007, she became the official spokesperson for 1-800-PetMeds and was featured in their new for 2007 advertising campaign.
On the April 22, 2007 airing of The 2007 TV Land Awards, White starred in a parody of "Ugly Betty", aptly titled Ugly Betty White, in which she played America Ferrera's title character, with Charo playing Betty's sister Hilda and Erik Estrada playing her father Ignacio. Thanks to her performance as Ugly Betty White, the producers of Ugly Betty surprisingly cast her as Wilhelmina Slater's mother, Victoria Smith-Slater, for the episode, "Family Affair," which will air in the second season.
Also in the same year on TV Land, White starred in an episode of Back to the Grind, a show on which television celebrities get to try the jobs their television characters had. White attempted to be a "happy homemaker" in the style of her Mary Tyler Moore Show character, Sue Ann Nivens.
White has won five Emmys, 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 alongside the star of her late husband Allen Ludden.
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