A sad, shocking end to a sad, shocking year. The iconic comedienne, actress and animal rights advocate Betty White has passed away just shy of her 100th birthday:
Betty White, the quick-witted comedienne whose ribald humor as showcased on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Golden Girls and Hot in Cleveland made her America’s ageless darling, has died. She was 99.
The beloved five-time Emmy Award winner and animal advocate, whose career reached another level after she became an octogenarian, died overnight Thursday into Friday at her Brentwood home, her agent and close friend Jeff Witjas told The Washington Post.
“Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever,” Witjas said in a statement to People magazine. “I will miss her terribly and so will the animal world that she loved so much. I don’t think Betty ever feared passing because she always wanted to be with her most beloved husband Allen Ludden. She believed she would be with him again.”
White joined the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show for the CBS sitcom’s fourth season in 1973 as Sue Ann Nivens, the blunt, man-lusting star of the WJM-TV show The Happy Homemaker, and she won two straight Emmys for outstanding continuing performance by a supporting actress in a comedy series.
On NBC’s The Golden Girls, which aired for seven seasons, White played the simple-minded Minnesotan Rose Nylund opposite Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty. She was nominated for lead comedy series actress in every year from 1986 through 1992, winning the trophy in her first try.
And on TV Land’s Hot in Cleveland, which completed its six-season run in 2015, White was cast in her late 80s as the sharp-tongued Elka Ostrovsky, who takes care of the Victorian home inhabited by L.A. transplants played by Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick. That earned her a supporting actress Emmy nom in 2011.
“Betty White is one of the few people who walks into the room and you know her,” Carl Reiner said on the 2018 PBS special Betty White: First Lady of Television. “You’ve known her all your life. She’s one of those people that are always welcome on any show she’s on.”
Here's the cover of People magazine that, sadly, celebrates a birthday she didn't live to see:
Before starting her career in show business, she wanted to be a forest ranger because of her love of animals and the outdoors, but the Forest Service didn't allow female forest rangers at the time. But in 2010, she was made an honorary forest ranger, fulfilling a lifelong dream.
What a career. What a life. What a person.
Rest in peace.
BONUS: Lots of tributes coming in on Twitter.
