Betty White obituary: America's ageless sweetheart

Betty White was America’s naughty sweetheart.

With a wholesome smile and a dirty joke she charmed millions of viewers decade after decade, rising from $50-a-week to ageless superstar who advised her fans, “Don’t try to be young. Just open your mind.”

Even in her 90s, in defiance of time and expectations, she still enjoyed a cocktail before dinner, a weekly poker night and wide-eyed interest in the world around her. “There are so many things I won’t live long enough to find out about, but I’m still curious about them,” she declared.

It helped that she only needed four hours of sleep each night.

White, who died Friday at 99 just weeks before her birthday, launched her TV career when the medium was still in its infancy and never lost touch.

Her saucy, up-for-anything appeal certified her as a television mainstay. Her combination of sweetness and spice gave life to a roster of quirky characters in shows from the sitcom Life With Elizabeth in the early 1950s to man-crazy TV hostess Sue Ann on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s, from loopy housemate Rose Nylund in The Golden Girls in the ’80s to courtroom drama Boston Legal, which ran from 2004 to 2008.

But all that proved to be only a warmup for even greater stardom in the new millennium when White’s stardom erupted, by public demand, as it never had before.

Working her magic

In a Snickers commercial that premiered during the 2010 Super Bowl telecast, she impersonated an energy-sapped dude getting tackled during a backlot football game.

“Mike, you’re playing like Betty White out there,” sneered one of his chums. White, knocked flat on the ground and covered in mud, fired back, “That’s not what your girlfriend said!”

The instantly-viral video helped spark a Facebook campaign called “Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!,” whose half-million fans led to her co-hosting Saturday Night Live in a much-watched, much-hailed edition on Mother’s Day weekend. The appearance won her a seventh Emmy award.

A month later, the TV Land cable network premiered Hot In Cleveland, its first original scripted series, which starred Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick as three show-biz veterans who move to Cleveland to escape the youth obsession of Hollywood. They move into a home being looked after by an elderly Polish widow — a character, played by White, who was meant to appear only in the pilot episode.

But once again, White worked her magic. The salty Elka Ostrovsky became a key part of the series, which became an instant hit.

Then she was voted the Entertainer of the Year by members of The Associated Press. “It’s ridiculous,” scoffed White, self-deprecating, at the honour. “They haven’t caught on to me, and I hope they never do.”

National treasure

Such was her popularity that even White’s birthday became a national event: In 2012, NBC aired Betty White’s 90th Birthday Party as a star-studded prime-time special. She was still working well into her 90s, including serving as one of the voices for the toys, “Bitey White,” in Toy Story 4.

One thing that made White seem forever young was her skill at playing bawdy or naughty while still radiating niceness.

The horror spoof Lake Placid and the comedy The Proposal were marked by her characters’ surprisingly salty language. Her character Catherine Piper killed a man with a skillet on Boston Legal.

But she almost wasn’t cast as “Happy Homemaker” Sue Ann Nivens in The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1973. She and her husband, Allen Ludden, were close friends of Moore and Moore’s then-husband, producer Grant Tinker. It was feared that if White failed on the show, which already was a huge hit, it would be embarrassing for all four.

But CBS casting head Ethel Winant declared White the logical choice. Originally planned as a one-shot appearance, the role of Sue Ann lasted until Moore ended the series in 1977. White made comic hay as Sue Ann, for instance with a line explaining that she planned to spend Christmas with a sister in Florida: “She’s kind of a creep,” Sue Ann noted sweetly, “but she’s got a pool.”

The role brought her two Emmys as supporting actress in a comedy series.

White’s other TV series included Mama’s Family, as Vicki Lawrence’s irascible mother; Just Men, a game show in which women tried to predict answers to questions directed to male celebrities; and Ladies Man, as the catty mother of Alfred Molina.

Just Men brought her a daytime Emmy, while she won a fourth prime-time Emmy in 1996 for a guest shot on The John Larroquette Show.

She also appeared in numerous miniseries and TV movies and made her film debut as a U.S. senator in Otto Preminger’s 1962 Capitol Hill drama Advise and Consent.

Growing up with comedy

She was born Betty Marion White in 1922 in Oak Park, Illinois, and moved to Los Angeles when she was a toddler.

“I’m an only child, and I had a mother and dad who never drew a straight line: They just thought funny,” she said in 2015. “We’d sit around the breakfast table and then we’d start kicking it around. My dad was a salesman and he would come home with jokes. He’d say, `Sweetheart, you can take THAT one to school. But I wouldn’t take THIS one.′ We had such a wonderful time.”

White played Rose, a gentle, dim-bulb widow who managed to misinterpret most situations. She drove her housemates crazy with off-the-wall tales of her childhood in the fictional backwoods town of St. Olaf, Minnesota. For example, Rose’s explanation of the annual talent show, which was highlighted by a herring juggling act: “Somebody actually juggled herring?” her friends asked skeptically. “No!” Rose corrected them. “It was the herring that did the juggling: tiny little Ginseng knives.” That role won her another Emmy, and she reprised it in a short-lived spinoff, The Golden Palace.