Remembering Betty White's extensive career

Actress. Writer. Golden Girl. Who was Betty White? Betty Marion White was born January 17, 1922, in Oak Park, Illinois. When White was a toddler, her family relocated to Los Angeles, California, home to a burgeoning entertainment industry and, later, a center for the rising medium of television. Radio was the medium that first introduced Betty White to the world. Bit parts on audio dramas led to a hosting position on Hollywood on Television: a six-day-a-week live show that burned through two male cohosts before Betty powered through alone. Later, that endurance would become legendary. White was a television regular from 1949 up until the 2010s, whether she was hosting, guest-starring, or appearing as a series regular on programs that included The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Golden Girls, and Hot in Cleveland. She was also a groundbreaking producer. In 1954 her TV variety series The Betty White Show was cut short due to White’s refusal to cut Black dancer Arthur Duncan from the cast after complaints from TV stations in the Jim Crow-era South. By the end of her life, there wasn’t a medium Betty White hadn’t tried her hand at. She wrote several books, appeared in movies, campaigned as an animal rights activist, and—before it was all over—received 21 Emmy Award nominations. Betty White died on December 31, 2021, just a few weeks shy of her one hundredth birthday.