Who was Betty White and when was she born?
Betty Marion White Ludden was born on 17th January, 1922 in Oak Park, Illinois U.S.A. and died on 31st December, 2021 in Brentwood in Los Angeles, California, U.S. She was a renowned American actress and comedian setting stage for early Television by contributing seven decades of her life to her career, the entertainment industry and proved to be the very first woman to not only work in front of the camera but also behind it. White went on to be referred to as the “First Lady of Television” after a 2018 documentary which elaborated on her life and career altogether. She was also 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 also talked about how she wanted to be known as the lover of animals on most occasions. Throughout her life she worked with organizations like the American Humane Association and the Fund for Animals. In the early 1970s her talk show, The Pet Set was a major hit where celebrities talked about their pets. In 2006, the Los Angeles Zoo honored her by naming her as an “ambassador to the animals” and unveiling a plaque as a tribute to her efforts. At her interview with The Chicago Sun-Times in 1990 Betty stated, “Being remembered for Rose and Sue Ann and the others would be wonderful but I also want to be remembered as a lady who helped the animals.”
Early Life of the Young Betty White
She was born to Horace Logan White, a lighting company executive from Michigan and child of Christine Tess, a homemaker. She was their only child. Her paternal grandfather was Danish while her maternal grandfather was Greek. White’s other origins were a combination of English and Welsh for both her grandmothers were Canadians based in Ontario. When White was over a year old, her family moved to Alhambra, California and then later to Los Angeles during the Great Depression. At the time of this economic recession, her father made extra money by building crystal radios and selling them on every opportunity he got. At this tough time rarely any people had income so her father would exchange the radios for any sort of goods, even dogs on some occasions.
Betty’s interest in environment and wildlife peaked when her family visited Sierra Nevada for vacations and she initially wanted to serve as a forest ranger for a career. However, women empowerment and emancipation hadn’t expanded much and this profession was not open to females who aspired to shatter the metaphorical glass window. She attended the Horace Mann Elementary School in Beverly Hills and Beverly Hills High School, graduating in 1939. Later, she went on to pursue her fascination for writing. She wrote and played the lead role in the play at Horace Mann School. After being inspired by her role-models Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, White wanted to move towards the profession of performing as an actress on-screen. She even found work as a model and her first official acting job was at the Bliss Hayden Little Theater.
Betty White’s Spouses
During her lifetime she had many suitors and romantic interests. She was married thrice and her first two marriages were rather short. First she married an Army pilot, Dick Barker in 1945. She divorced him the same year. She was engaged to Dick for most of the war but when the war ended, their marriage also fell apart. Partly because Dick lived on a chicken farm in Ohio and Betty realized that this lifestyle did not meet her needs. Next she married Lane Allen in 1947. Allen worked as a casting director and actor known for his work on Project U.F.O. (1978), New Wine (1941), and Gemini Man (1976), per IMDb.They divorced in 1949 and after that White’s career in show business sky-rocketed when she landed a role in show Hollywood on Television.
Finally she married Allen Ludden in 1963 after first meeting him in 1961. He was a widowed father of three and hosted game shows and White was invited as a guest on one of his shows called Password. He died of stomach cancer in 1981 and White told Oprah Winfrey in an interview that what she regretted the most was how she had wasted an entire year the both of them could have spent together by being stubborn about not marrying Allen early for not wanting to move out from California to New York. In fact she rejected his proposal thrice and finally agreed to marry him in an intimate ceremony held at the former Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nev.
They went on to star together in the play Critic’s Choice in 1972 and the romantic comedy movie Janus in 1963 before their wedding that same year. They spent 18 years together and White claimed him to be the love of her life and didn’t remarry until her own death in 2022. She even stated that her first two marriages were mistakes so that she could eventually find her soulmate. Many people suggest that White didn’t fear dying as she awaited meeting Allen in the next life.
Betty White’s Children
Betty never had her own biological children but shouldered the burden of raising three stepchildren – David, Martha and Sarah – from her third husband, Allen Ludden who died on 9th June, 1981. Allen remarried Betty two years after the death of his first wife, Margaret McGloin (and the mother of his three kids), from cancer on October 30, 1961.
In an interview with the “People” newsletter in 2009, Sandra Bullock who was Betty’s co-star in the romantic comedy, The Proposal, recalled that Betty never chose to have her own kids because her three step kids had filled this void for her. She considered them a blessing and never regretted not giving birth personally. Later on in a 2012 interview with CBS, the Golden Girls star herself confirmed the reason behind this decision of hers. She projected herself as being very compulsive and wanting to achieve perfection in whatever she did, hence if she had gotten pregnant, this would have taken her entire focus away from the career she had dedicated her whole life to.
David Ludden was the eldest child of Allen and step-child of Betty, born on March 15, 1948. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978 and taught South Asian History and developmental studies there till 2007.
His publications include a 2013 book, India and South Asia: A Short History and his 1999 study, An Agrarian History of South Asia. He’s also received several awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities Award in 2002. He currently teaches Asian history at New York University. Martha Ludden, the second child of Allen was born in 1950 and she was a teenger when her father remarried Betty. It is reported that Martha was deeply against their marriage.
Marth already had a strained relationship with her father and after associating with Betty, the conditions only aggravated. Later on Martha grew up to earn a law degree in 1990 and helps people with disabilities and her relationship with Betty also seems to have improved.
Sarah Ludden, the youngest child of Allen was born in 1952 and was only 9 years old when her mother died. According to a source, Sarah and Betty had a good relationship and the young girl would often intervene when Martha was being disrespectful to her step mother. She worked as an audiologist and a dancer before her actual career in karate. In 2009, Sarah received the Cook County Unsung Heroines Award and earned a fifth-degree black belt in the World Seido Karate Organization and in Kajukenbo Kung Fu. She also founded the Thousand Waves Scholarship Fund, which has provided more than $100,000 of tuition to karate students.
Betty White in her 20s
The 99 year old actress is a very familiar face in the fashion and beauty Industry. Even at her old age she managed to fight the aging wrinkles or draping skin and remained relevant in the show-bizz Industry of Hollywood. This is something very few actors, models or celebrities can bring about. Although her white hair still kept her graceful personality intact, her younger days were marked by darker, supple hair with voluminous locks and a figure that was perfect for Hollywood criteria. Like every middle class person in the U.S. Betty also suffered the effects of The Great Depression however she was destined to study at schools where filmmakers used to shoot a lot of films. She was a member of the 1939 graduating class of the Beverly Hills High School when movies such as Clueless and It’s a Wonderful Life were filmed.
Nevertheless Betty, having no particular interest in acting wanted to be a forest ranger due to her inclination towards wildfires. Being a woman at that time posed an obstacle for her and so she turned to writing instead. At Horace Mann School she wrote and acted in the graduation play and from this point on her performing career took off to great heights. During the 40s when Betty was in her youthful 20s, she began her successful Hollywood career. Her charismatic personality and immaculate acting remained unparalleled even in her old age.
The glimmering eyes and a laugh full of emotions were just the features that even time could not fade. She had this strength and resilience which encouraged her to continue her seven decade journey as an actress. This is a great achievement for anyone let alone a woman in those restraining times when bankruptcy and inflation were at their peak. When comparing both the pictures of Betty as young and old there are obvious physical differences which come with aging. However, what remains the same is her lively spirit, legacy to entertain her audience with the best content and to stay committed to her passion through an exceptional work ethic.
Movies and T.V Shows
In the 1940s, White acted on various radio shows but it was not until 1949 that she regularly started appearing on her first television show as a “girl Friday” on Hollywood on Television. The same year her sitcom, “Life with Elizabeth” premierced which showcased her as a married woman whose many dilemmas tested the patience of her husband. She not only acted out but also aided in co-creating and producing this television series that aired until 1955. Two years later she starred in the series, Date with the Angels which presented domestic life in a comedic light. From here onwards she became a frequent guest at television game shows due to her incredible presence on-air. Some of the note-worthy ones were To Tell the Truth, What’s My Line?, and Password. The latter was hosted by Allen Luden to whom Betty White was later married.
In 1973, White started to appear in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a sitcom which was originally set in a television newsroom. Her acting out of the role of Sue Ann Nivens, the cunning and flirtatious of the station’s “Happy Homemaker Show” earned her the applause of many fans. Subsequently she was nominated thrice for the Emmy Award due to her exceptional performance and won two of them in 1975 and 1976. This show ended in 1977 but White still remained as the main focus of attention and hence was offered to star on The Betty White Show from 1977-78. She even played diverse roles on shows like Mama’s Family and The Love Boat.
Betty White’s Age in Golden Girls
White was 63 years old when the series began in 1985, she adroitly played the role of a younger naive and optimistic character, Rose Nylund on the smash-hit NBC sitcom The Golden Girls. Rose was 55 when the series began, as Dorothy revealed in the Season 1 episode “Job Hunting.” The show comprises 7 seasons portraying Rose and her young-at-heart roommates Blanche Devereaux, Dorothy Zbornak and Sophia Petrillo as they navigated the single life as seniors in Miami. For this White earned seven Emmy nominations and won the award in 1986. When the show ended in 1992, White played Nylund on the spin-off series The Golden Palace, which ran for one season.
White then proceeded to act on That ’70s Show, Boston Legal, and the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. In 1996 she won an Emmy for her guest appearance on The John Larroquette Show. In 2010, Betty was interviewed in a recreational football game for a humorous Super Bowl commercial which elevated her popularity at the time. Subsequently fans started Facebook campaigns to advocate for the 88-year-old Betty White to host the Saturday Night Live. In May 2010, she became the comedy show’s oldest host and also received an Emmy for her record-breaking performance.
In another sitcom, “Hot in Cleveland” which aired in June and debuted on the cable channel T.V Land, White portrayed Elka, a sagacious and witty care-taker of a house rented by three women. This show ran till 2015. She even hosted as the executive producer for Betty White’s Off Their Rockers (2012–14), a hilarious show in which senior citizens played pranks on unsuspecting young people. Betty White also anchored at the two episode show, Betty White’s Smartest Animals in America in 2015.
She played an integral role in the television sector but later she also expanded her course to movies. In 1962 her feature-film debut in Advise & Consent, and her later movies included the thriller Lake Placid (1999) and the romantic comedies The Proposal (2009) and You Again (2010). In 2019 she voiced the character Bitey White, a teething ring, in the animated feature Toy Story 4. Apart from acting, White was considered as a human rights activist too and went onto pen the memoirs Here We Go Again: My Life in Television (1995) and If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won’t) (2011). Her audio-book recording of the latter won a Grammy Award for the best-spoken word album. She was then inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1995.
Betty White’s Net worth
Her net worth includes what she made from shows like The Golden Girls and Hot in Cleveland before her death at age 99 on December 21, 2021 – just 3 weeks before her 100th birthday. In The Golden Girls Betty starred as Rose Nylund for seven seasons and 180 half hour episodes from September 14, 1985 to May 9, 1992.
The other actresses were Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty. This NBC show revolved around these four women (3 widows and 1 divorcee) sharing a house in Miami. The house is owned by a widow named Blanche Devereaux (McClanahan), who is joined bOutstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series category in 2011y fellow widow Rose Nylund (White) and divorcée Dorothy Zbornak (Arthur) after they responded to an ad on the bulletin board of a local grocery store.
The three women are joined by Sophia Petrillo (Getty), Dorothy’s 80-year-old widowed mother after the retirement home where she was staying is burned. She was even nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in the Comedy Series for all seven seasons of The Golden Girls and won once. She also was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy for The Golden Girls from 1986 to 1989. Although White’s salary from working on The Golden Girls is not known, it was reported that she made $3 million per year from reruns since the show ended in 1992. This estimates to White earning a total of $87 from Golden Girls reruns between the show’s finale in 1992 and her death in 2021.
Betty White starred as Elka Ostrovsky in TV Land’s Hot in Cleveland for six seasons and 128 episodes from June 16, 2010 to June 3, 2015. She plays the role of a caretaker of the house where three other characters – Melanie Hope Moretti, Rejoyla “Joy” Scroggs and Victoria Chase – live in Cleveland, Ohio. Betty was nominated for an Emmy for her performance in Hot in Cleveland for Outstanding Supporting in a Comedy Series category in 2011. White made $75,000 per episode of Hot in Cleveland, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Hot in Cleveland filmed 128 episodes, which means that White would’ve made around $9.6 million for all six seasons of the show.
White is worth $75 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Apart from the millions of dollars she made from The Golden Girls and Hot in Cleveland, Betty White’s net worth also includes the money she made from shows like The Betty White Show, The Bold and the Beautiful, Boston Legal, The Carol Burnett Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, where she ended up playing the incredible role of Sue Ann Nivens. Other contributions to her net income include the movies in which she starred for instance The Proposal and other guest shows like The Saturday Night Live for which she was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2010.
Is Betty White Still Alive?
The awe-inspiring actress died from a stroke on Friday December 31, 2021 at the age of 99. Although her fans feared the legendary actress’s death for quite a while, she herself had no paranoia whatsoever. Instead she reminisced about her mother’s teachings and the comfort she would receive once she was able to unravel “the secret ” of dying and perhaps, the afterlife.
The topic of death seemed to tie up with Betty and after her own demise, many new gernational fans defended her name from Internet hoaxes that went viral on platforms like Twitter regarding her alleged passing. Betty told Katie Couric on CBS “Sunday Morning” in 2011 about her mother’s wonderful outlook on death. How nobody ever knows what happens during the moment of death. Noone can perceive it prehand or foresee the events that will unfold post death. Therefore, growing up whenever they lost someone, Betty’s mother would confidently conjecture that now this person was enlightened with the secret of death.
Among her individual fears at that time was the topic of death that her parents handled very gracefully. In her autobiography, “Betty White in Person,” she wrote that how her parents reacted to the death of her pet made her grandmother’s death “a little easier to comprehend.” She stated, “Fear of death is not one of my problems…only of the dying.”
That is the how and not the when of it which incites her curiosity. But she decided to not worry about it much for she believed some decisions should be made spontaneously without any rehearsal. In her correspondence with New York Times columnist Larry King in 2014 when she had grown even more curious about what awaited her after death, King questioned, “ What if it’s nothing?” To this Betty very ingeniously replied, “I won’t know that. It’s a win-win situation.” She very literally and figuratively stated about her inquisitiveness regarding the after-life, “I will be dying to find out.”
Betty White’s life happenings 2020-21
Her death was confirmed by a friend and agent Jeff Witjas. She died in her home in California, just 3 weeks before her 100th birthday. Many people paid tribute to White on the Internet and these included the actress Carol Burnett, actor Ryan Reynolds, and President Biden who called her “a cultural icon.” In the middle of the New Year’s celebration, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Bravo’s Andy Cohen even drank shots of tequila in Times Square to honor Betty.
Following her death some fans were so devastated that their first instinct was to question whether Betty had actually died or not. This was because the Golden Girls actress was involved in many Internet hoaxes and false news on social media that many fans wanted to safeguard her privacy and name and a fan also tweeted about her death, “Please let this be a hoax.” This was a side-effect of the fact that even before her actual death social media was often flooded with rumors of her death, sending her fans into a state of frenzy. For Instance, in a 2012 interview with the “Guardian,” Betty was inquired about the rumors that had surfaced a couple of years earlier about her demise. She brushed these off in her usual comedic ways and reassured her fans not to believe anything they saw online.
Her optimism and patience was indeed praiseworthy for she found herself entangled in another Internet prank in 2014. satirical website Empire News ran a fake story with the headline, “Actress Betty White, 92, Dyes Peacefully In Her Los Angeles Home.” The pun was actually Betty coloring her hair which caught her fans off guard into thinking she had died. Thereby, hoaxes and propaganda involving Betty have kept Snopes.com, serving as Internet’s myth busters, busy in recent years.
The Reason for Betty White’s death
The cause of White’s death has been listed as a cerebrovascular accident on her death certificate. This is a medical condition in which loss of blood to a part of the brain causes brain tissue damage. It is also said that she suffered a stroke six days before her death. Following her death there was also a hearsay that she had died just 3 days after receiving the booster for the Covid-19 vaccine on December 28, 2021. However, her friend Witjas defended her name and made it clear that she died at her home peacefully and the natural reasons were in play to cause her death.
It had nothing to do with the booster. Her death should not be politicized and everyone should bid her farewell in the most respectful terms. He even testified that during her last days she was comfortably at home under a doctor’[s care not to fight any illness but in general to be looked after during the pandemic. She rarely went out but lived her life to the fullest. She received many letters from her fans to let her know that even if she had chosen to stay indoors away from the public exposure, that she was loved and appreciated.
Preparations for Betty White’s 100th Birthday
In order to thank her fans beforehand for her 100th birthday celebration on Monday, Betty shot a video on 20th December. Steven Boettcher, producer of the upcoming film that was originally titled: “Betty White: 100 Years Younger,” said that this video was Betty’s idea. She had dolled up to pay gratitude to her fans for all their unconditional love and support throughout the years. However, no one knew that this short and wholesome message shot directly from her home in Brentwood, California would be her last words to her fans worldwide. It was five days later that she suffered a Christmas Day stroke which ultimately led to her death.
The video message has been updated to a movie tribute as a one-night which will be projected in theaters on Monday. This documentary is called “Betty White: A Celebration,” and has expanded to 1500 theaters nationwide by the help of Fathom Events. This documentary film highlights some key interviews such as those of Ryan Reynolds and Carol Burnett from some prominent projects that Betty undertook in her acting career. These include “The Golden Girls,” “Saturday Night Live,” “Hot in Cleveland” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and some movies in which she performed for instance the proposal in which White and Reynolds had a very light-hearted humorous conversation.
When Betty died on New Year’s Eve, it was proposed that the theatrical event should be postponed or even canceled in order to lament the loss of this admirable celebrity. However, Betty’s team urged that they should proceed with the event for Betty would have desired the same. Therefore, Bioettcher produced the film along with Mike Trinklein. There was a slight title change, Betty’s added video message and Bioettcher even incorporated some worthy moments from key interviews such as from “Hot in Cleveland” Valerie Bertinelli and Jennifer Love-Hewitt, the latter who became close with White while working on the 2011 Hallmark movie “The Lost Valentine.”
