Betty Marion White: January 17, 1922 – December 31, 2021
The Obituary: Betty White, a Television Golden Girl From the Start, Is Dead at 99
Betty White, who created two of the most memorable characters in sitcom history, the nymphomaniacal Sue Ann Nivens on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and the sweet but dim Rose Nylund on “The Golden Girls” — and who capped her long career with a comeback that included a triumphant appearance as the host of “Saturday Night Live” at the age of 88 — died on Friday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 99.
Her death, less than three weeks before her 100th birthday, was confirmed by Jeff Witjas, her longtime friend and agent.
Ms. White won five Primetime Emmys and one competitive Daytime Emmy — as well as a lifetime achievement Daytime Emmy in 2015 and a Los Angeles regional Emmy in 1952 — in a television career that spanned seven decades and that the 2014 edition of “Guinness World Records” certified as the longest ever for a female entertainer.
But her breakthrough came relatively late in life, with her work on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” from 1973 to 1977, for which she won two of her Emmys.
As Sue Ann, the host of a household-hints show on the television station where Ms. Moore’s character worked, the bedimpled Ms. White was annoyingly positive and upbeat, but also manipulative and bawdy — the sexpot next door, who would have you believe she slept with entire Army brigades during World War II.
Once, when someone asked her how she was feeling, Sue Ann replied cheerfully: “I didn’t sleep a wink all night. I feel wonderful.”
She won another Emmy in 1986 for an entirely different kind of character: the naïve, scatterbrained Rose on “The Golden Girls,” which revolved around the lives of four older women sharing a house in Miami. Whereas Sue Ann knew everything there was to know about getting a man into bed, Rose got to the same place innocently, and by being just a wee bit off center.
Ms. White was the last surviving member of the show’s four stars. Estelle Getty died in 2008, Bea Arthur in 2009 and Rue McClanahan in 2010.
Ms. White won her final Emmy in 2010 as outstanding guest actress in a comedy series for hosting the Mother’s Day episode of “S.N.L.” She followed that appearance with a regular role on yet another sitcom, “Hot in Cleveland,” and then with a book contract and her own reality show. She was bigger than she had been in decades. But she didn’t see her resurgence as a comeback.
“I’ve been working steady for 63 years,” she said in an interview for the ABC News program “Nightline” in 2010. “But everybody says, ‘Oh, it’s such a renaissance.’ Maybe I went away and didn’t know it.”
Ms. White was over 50 and already a television veteran when she first appeared on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” but her work there elevated her career to a new level.
A comedy about a young, single television news producer in Minneapolis, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” was one of the most popular sitcoms of its day or any other, thanks to smart writing, Ms. Moore’s charismatic presence and a high-caliber supporting cast. Even in the company of scene-stealing actors like Ms. Moore, Ed Asner and Valerie Harper, Ms. White’s Sue Ann stood out.
The character, introduced in the show’s fourth season, was conceived as cloying, calculating and predatory, her deviousness always accompanied by a charming smile. The producers wanted a “Betty White type” to play the role, but they did not immediately ask Ms. White because she and Ms. Moore were close friends and the producers were afraid that there would be damage to the friendship if she didn’t get the role, or didn’t want it.
“They went through about 12 people and couldn’t find anybody sickening enough,” Ms. White told Modern Maturity magazine in 1998, “so they called me.”
Betty Marion White was born on Jan. 17, 1922, in Oak Park, Ill., the only child of Horace and Tess (Cachikis) White. Her father was an electrical engineer, her mother a homemaker. When Betty was a toddler, the family moved to Los Angeles, where she grew up.
At Beverly Hills High School, from which she graduated in 1939, she appeared in several student productions and even wrote her class’s graduation play, in which she had the lead role. During World War II she served in the American Women’s Voluntary Services and drove a “PX truck” delivering soap, toothpaste and candy to soldiers manning the gun emplacements the government had established in the hills of Santa Monica and Hollywood.
She also met and married a P-38 pilot, Dick Barker. That marriage lasted less than a year; when Ms. White wrote an autobiography, “Here We Go Again,” in 1995, she mentioned the marriage but did not mention his name.
Toward the end of the war she became involved in the Bliss-Hayden Little Theater, which was run by two Hollywood character actors, Lela Bliss and Harry Hayden, and designed to give young people a chance to perform in front of an audience. Her first performance there was in “Dear Ruth,” a comedy about a girl who pretends to be her older sister. It was seen by Lane Allen, an actor turned agent, who encouraged Ms. White to pursue an acting career. She and Mr. Allen were later married, but that union also ended in divorce.
Ms. White began her radio career by saying one word on the popular comedy “The Great Gildersleeve.” The word was “Parkay,” the name of the margarine sponsoring the show. That led to bit parts in 1940s radio staples like “Blondie” and “This Is Your F.B.I.”
She broke into television in 1949 on a local talk show called “Al Jarvis’s Hollywood on Television.” When Mr. Jarvis left the show, she succeeded him as host.
She had a few television shows of her own in the 1950s, including two sitcoms and a variety show (which she produced herself, and on which she drew both praise and criticism for featuring a Black tap dancer, Arthur Duncan, as a regular, a highly unusual move for the time). But none of those shows stayed on the air for long, and by the early 1960s she was best known as a very busy freelance guest. Game shows were her specialty: She appeared on “To Tell the Truth,” “I’ve Got a Secret,” “The Match Game,” “What’s My Line?” and, most notably, “Password,” whose host, Allen Ludden, she married in 1963.
Ms. White and Mr. Ludden remained married until his death in 1981. They had no children together, but she helped him raise his three children by a previous marriage, David, Martha and Sarah. (Information on her survivors was not immediately available.)
After “The Golden Girls” ended its seven-year run in 1992, Ms. White remained a familiar and welcome presence on television. She reprised the role of Rose Nylund on a short-lived spinoff, “The Golden Palace,” and made guest appearances on “Ally McBeal,” “That ’70s Show,” “Boston Legal,” “Community” and many other series. From 2006 to 2009 she had a recurring role on the daytime soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful.” Ms. White, who was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1995, continued acting on television well into her 90s.
She occasionally showed up on the big screen as well, most recently in “The Proposal” (2009) and “You Again” (2010). She was given a lifetime achievement award by the Screen Actors Guild in 2010.
In 2018 she was the subject of a PBS documentary, “Betty White: First Lady of Television.” The title, she joked, might have meant that she was the first woman ever on television.
But the most surprising, and high-profile, role she played in her later years was host of “Saturday Night Live” in May 2010, a booking that came about largely because of a spirited social-media campaign. Ms. White’s appearance — in which she gleefully participated in sketches suffused with the show’s trademark irreverent, often off-color humor — gave “S.N.L.” its highest ratings in a year and a half.
That same year she also returned to prime-time series television as one of the stars of the TV Land sitcom “Hot in Cleveland.” Her performance on that show as a feisty caretaker earned her yet another Emmy nomination. (She lost to Julie Bowen of “Modern Family.”) “Hot in Cleveland” ran for five seasons.
In 2012 “Betty White’s Off Their Rockers,” a hidden-camera show in which older people play pranks on younger people, made its debut on NBC. In addition to being the host, Ms. White was an executive producer.
In 2011, she published two books. The first, “If You Ask Me (and of Course You Won’t),” was a collection of essays and anecdotes about her life and career. The second, “Betty & Friends: My Life at the Zoo,” was about her love of animals and her long association with the Los Angeles Zoo.
Ms. White had a longstanding interest in animal welfare. In the early 1970s she produced and starred in a syndicated talk show, “The Pet Set,” in which celebrities talked about their pets. She also devoted time and money to organizations like the American Humane Association and the Fund for Animals. In 2006 she was honored by the Los Angeles Zoo, which named her “ambassador to the animals” and unveiled a plaque in her honor.
“Being remembered for Rose and Sue Ann and the others would be wonderful,” Ms. White told The Chicago Sun-Times in 1990. “But I also want to be remembered as a lady who helped the animals.”
As late as 2019, Ms. White was still doing voice-over work, most notably as a toy tiger named Bitey White in the animated film “Toy Story 4.” She had been planning to celebrate her 100th birthday with a one-night-only film to be shown in select movie theaters. And she had just given an interview to People magazine in which she talked about her life as she turned 100.
One of her last in-person appearances was on the 2018 Emmy Awards telecast.
“It’s incredible that you can stay in a career this long and still have people put up with you,” she told the assembled TV luminaries, who gave her a prolonged standing ovation. “I wish they did that at home.”
The Thoughts:
Betty White would have been 100 years old on January 17th 2022, but sadly 2021 felt the need to give us one last kick in the chestnuts and kept her. It’s an interesting thing, the death of a celebrity, and also the death of someone who makes it to such a ripe old age as it gives rise to many various cliche conversations that I am willing to bet most of you have heard, or participated in. Comments such as, “well that’s what happens when someone is that old,” or “don’t be silly you didn’t even know them why are you sad?”
And to this I say nay! NAY! Ok I guess I should elaborate so let’s start with comments on how people who died should be expected nonsense. I remember one family that I served at Undertaking LA whose mother died at 99 and I’m pretty dang sure that of the homicides, and unexpected youthful deaths, this family took their loss the hardest! And you know why? Cuz when people make it to 99 you kinda think they’ll just live forever. And also, because they gosh dang loved this person and their feelings are valid you monsters! Ok you’re not monsters I’m sorry I got over excited there, but sheesh have some sympathy death is really sad. It’s sad!
And on the death of a celebrity thing-well- Betty is actually a prime example of why it hits us so hard. What was the thing you spent most of your time circled around as a child? As a family? With your friends? Was it… a television? Look you are coo-coo for coco puffs if you don’t see how the television raised and influenced all of us and this bad bitch has been on T.V. and thus, in all of our homes since the gosh dang fifties. We didn’t lose a celebrity. We lost a member of our family. And for some of us, she was the most reliable member in the household. She was there for us, every week, making us laugh, cry, whatever it was, Betty was there.
And that’s why Betty White is not just my first real post of 2022 but the start of a new chapter for Mortician in the Kitchen. Because you know what I realized? The Golden Girls wasn’t just a topic for me to post about, it was the first time in this blog that I finally connected with you all. And the truth is, we connected because we shared a love for a woman who worked so hard to create so many opportunities for others that she she’ll never know she created one for me too. When I was lost and didn’t know where to go with this site, Betty, and the rest of the girls were there for me. They were my friends, and they helped me connect with other women (and men) that I wanted to be friends with too.
And so I made this recipe as an homage to one of Betty’s best scenes-although there are so many it’s hard to choose-in the Golden Girls. It’s often referred to as “Rose’s Last Cake in St. Olaf” and it’s from Season Two Episode 25, aptly titled “Piece of Cake”.
In it, Rose Nylund, played by Betty White, tells one of her glorious stories about St. Olaf, but this time it actually goes somewhere! In it she details her last birthday in St. Olaf, which also happens to be her first birthday without her husband Charlie. She sets the table for the two of them and places her birthday cake out in full display acknowledging how silly it is, but of course, Rose is the essence of silly and she’s in on the joke here. She discusses-with Charlie-how it could have been any holiday really, thereby illustrating how everything after your loved one has died is the first of something and that she would have still included him anyhow, had it been Christmas or his birthday, she just wanted to feel him near. She then goes on to break the news to Charlie that it’s time for her to move on, which is a heartbreaking part of our lives after someone dies, because after all, how can we simply move on? Rose discusses why she feels she needs to leave and says she excited to make new friends and start a new life in Florida where its warm. She assures Charlie that even though she’s moving she will be bringing him with her and through a slight tremor in her voice tells Charlie-who I suspect she’s channeling her deceased husband Allen here-she will always love him, and ends her conversation with their birthday tradition in which she “always gets the rose” on the cake.
So please enjoy my homage to our first birthday without Betty, and to Rose’s last birthday in St. Olaf. I chose to do a rainbow surprise cake because Betty was a huge advocate for the LGBTQ community. You can, of course, make this cake any color you wish if you don’t have food coloring on you, I certainly don’t want you to miss out on the joys of baking over food coloring, but I wills say it’s a delightful childish joy to mix colors and make a colored cake.
And to Betty, we miss you and love you, and I hope wherever you are, you still get that first rose!
The Recipe: Betty White’s Last Birthday Cake
Ingredients
Makes (4) 6-inch cakes
1 1/2 tbsp (20g) apple cider vinegar
2 1/4 cups (540g) plant milk
3 cups + 2 tbsp (420) all purpose flour*
1 1/2 cups + 2 tbsp (340g) granulated sugar
1 tbsp (12g) baking powder
1 tsp (5g) baking soda
1 1/2 tsp (10g) salt
3/4 cup (164g) oil
3 tbsp (32g) vanilla extract
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350 ºF. Prepare the baking pans by spraying with oil then placing a parchment paper circle to cover the bottom of the pan.
In a mixing bowl add the plant milk and vinegar and set aside to clabber for 5-10 minutes.
In a second mixing bowl whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Add the oil and vanilla extract into the clabbered milk and mix to combine. Add to the dry ingredients and whisk until the batter is smooth.
Set out four bowls to divide batter up equally. I like to weigh my batter so that I can accurately split the batter.
Add a few drops of color to each bowl and whisk until fully incorporated and you reach the desired color you would like.
Bake for 31-38 minutes, yeah I know that’s a wide range and usually it takes longer if you’re a derp like me and put one of the cake tins too far to the side, yeah that little offset can really change the bake. The cakes are done when the edges are golden and have pulled away from the sides of the pan and a test comes out clean or with one or two crumbs.
Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes. Then working gently, turn over the pan with a wire cooling rack to catch the cake. Remove the pan, then peel off the parchment paper. Turn the cake back right side up and leave to cool fully on a cooling rack.
Place the cooled cakes on a cake board and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Place in the fridge or in freezer-safe ziplock bags in the freezer until ready to decorate.
Meringue Buttercream
Ingredients
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup VÖR meringue powder
3 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 3/4 cup vegan butter
1/4 cup shortening
1 tsp vanilla
Instructions
Whisk together the water and sugar in a small saucepan. Turn the heat on low and cover until the sugar is dissolved.
Add the meringue powder and beat until the mixture thickens (approximately 10 minutes)
Mix in powdered sugar at a low speed
Mix in softened butter and cream
Mix in shortening and continue to cream until light and fluffy
Divide into bowls and add food coloring
Frost cake as desired. I added a few hefty spoon fulls for each layer and then used a simple cake frosting tool to frost the exterior of the cake
You can add sprinkles if you have them but this cake is great on its own
I have been purposefully vague on colors because this is part of the experimenting and fun. I chose to follow rainbow colors by using the cake and the frosting to make all the colors of the rainbow but do whatever your heart desires you really can’t go wrong here!
To serve the cake
Cut the cake when chilled for cleanest cuts, but serve at or close to room temperature for the best textures.