Betty White’s Career in Television and Radio

Betty White was born in Oak Park, IL on January 17, 1922, daughter of Horace L. White, a traveling salesman and Tess Cachikis. She attended Beverly Hills High School from which she graduated in 1939. Her career started in the early 1940s with a modeling job. She also worked on a few radio shows including Blondie, The Great Gildersleeve, and This Is Your FBI and later, her own radio program name, The Betty White Show. In 1949 she debuted on television when she appeared with Al Jarvis on Hollywood on Television, she later hosted it on her own when Jarvis left.

From 1952 to about 1977 she appeared on several television shows including Life With Elizabeth, Date With the Angels, Password, What’s My Line? , To Tell the Truth, I’ve Got A Secret, Match Game, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Pyramid. In 1977 she was given her own sitcom on CBS called The Betty White Show. (Not to be confused with her radio show with the same name. ) In 1987 she scored her second signature role of the St. Olaf, MN - native Rose Nylund, on The Golden Girls. The show was centered on four divorced or widowed women in their ‘Golden years’ that share a home in Miami.

Although Betty has no children, she has been married three times. The first in 1945 to Dick Barker, a US Army Air Corps Pilot. This marriage was short-lived, only one year. The second to Lane Allen, a Hollywood agent, which only lasted two years also ending in divorce. On June 14, 1963 she married television host and personality, Allen Ludden. He proposed to Betty at least twice be fore she accepted. Allen died of stomach cancer on June 9, 1981. She hasn’t remarried since his death.

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Betty has won six Emmy Awards, three American Comedy Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990. ), and two Viewer’s For Quality Television Awards. She was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On January 23, 2010 at the Screen Actor’s Gild Awards, she was awarded, by Sandra Bullock, the Life Achievement Award. She is also a pet enthusiast and animal health advocate who works with a number of animal organization such as the Los Angeles Zoo Commission, the Morris Animal Foundation, and Actors & Others for Animals.

Betty is the president of the Morris Animal Foundation where she has served as a trustee of the organization since 1971. And she donated $100,000 to the Los Angeles Zoo in April 2008 alone. She was also just on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, and it was hilarious! I was laughing so hard.. So, having said all that. I’d say she is the coolest eighty-eight year old you could probabaly ever get a chance to meet. I hope she lives forever!

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