57 Fun Facts About Betty White

Betty White was born in 1922 in Oak Park, a suburb of which US city?

Chicago's suburb of Oak Park was home only briefly: her parents moved to California when she was a toddler, so she grew up in Los Angeles, the city where she broke into television and where she died.

Which character did White play on The Golden Girls?

Rose Nylund nearly went to someone else: White was first lined up as man-hungry Blanche, until the pilot's director had her swap parts with Rue McClanahan so neither repeated a type she had played before.

Betty White's Golden Girls character came from the fictional farming town of St. Olaf in which state?

Minnesota: St. Olaf's odd customs fuelled the long, rambling stories her character told, and White insisted the woman telling them was 'not dumb, just terminally naive'.

On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, White's character Sue Ann Nivens hosted which fictional TV program?

The Happy Homemaker was Sue Ann's saccharine WJM cooking-and-homemaking show; the running joke was that her on-air perkiness masked a man-hungry, acid-tongued personality off camera.

Sue Ann Nivens's cooking show aired on the fictional station WJM-TV in which city?

Minneapolis was home to WJM-TV, where Mary Richards worked in the newsroom and Sue Ann's show aired; a bronze statue of Mary tossing her hat now stands downtown where the opening credits were filmed.

Betty White's sitcom Hot in Cleveland was the first original scripted series on which channel?

TV Land had lived on reruns of older sitcoms until then; the premiere drew about 4.8 million viewers, the biggest audience the channel had yet seen, and pushed it into making shows of its own.

White joined Hot in Cleveland expecting her role as Elka to end after what?

Just the pilot was the plan for White's Elka, the house's sharp-tongued caretaker; her performance went over so well that the producers kept her for the entire run, from 2010 to 2015.

Which actress played Victoria Chase, the vain soap star, opposite White in Hot in Cleveland?

Wendie Malick played Victoria Chase, a five-times-divorced diva whose soap has just been axed after 27 years; real-life soap queen Susan Lucci keeps turning up as herself, Victoria's sworn rival.

White played Annie, the mischievous grandmother of an Alaskan family, in which 2009 romantic comedy?

The Proposal, with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, was a hit that kicked off her late-career resurgence, leading to a Super Bowl ad and a turn hosting Saturday Night Live the next year.

NBC dropped White in the mid-1970s, after 19 years, as its commentator for which annual event?

The Rose Parade: NBC felt her Mary Tyler Moore Show fame tied her to rival CBS, and she spent that New Year's Day at home, wretched at 'watching someone else do my parade'.

White played pickup football in which candy bar's 2010 Super Bowl ad, voted the game's best commercial?

Snickers opened its 'You're not you when you're hungry' campaign with the spot, and its popularity fed the fan drive that soon put White in the host's chair at Saturday Night Live.

Which veteran actor appeared alongside White in her famous 2010 Super Bowl candy commercial?

Abe Vigoda, The Godfather's Tessio, had been wrongly reported dead so often since a 1982 magazine slip that a website existed solely to say whether he was still alive.

Which game show host did White marry in 1963?

Allen Ludden proposed at least twice before she said yes; they stayed married until his death in 1981, and asked why she never remarried she said, 'Once you've had the best, who needs the rest?'

White met her third husband in 1961 while appearing as a celebrity guest on which game show?

Password was brand new when she guested in 1961; romance with its host bloomed only the following summer, when the two co-starred in a summer-stock play on Cape Cod.

White became the first woman to win the Daytime Emmy for game show host with which short-lived 1983 NBC series?

Just Men! had already been cancelled, after three months on air, when she won that June, and no other woman took the award for another 22 years.

Besides starring in the 1950s sitcom Life with Elizabeth, White did what that few women in television then did?

Produce it: with writer George Tibbles she formed Bandy Productions to make the show, giving her control behind the camera as well as in front of it, which was rare for a woman in 1950s television.

On That '70s Show, White played Bea Sigurdson, the mother of which character?

Kitty Forman's mother Bea seems a friendly old lady but is cold and critical, needling her daughter with rude remarks delivered in a sugary, faux-friendly voice.

When Southern stations demanded White drop Black tap dancer Arthur Duncan from her 1954 show, how did she respond?

Gave him more airtime: 'Live with it,' she told the stations, and Duncan stayed on as a regular; decades later he surprised her on television to thank her.

In Otto Preminger's 1962 film Advise & Consent, White played what?

A US senator: her Bessie Adams of Kansas shared the film's chamber with a real former one, since Henry Ashurst, one of Arizona's first two senators, took a cameo as an elderly colleague.

White turned down a job on NBC's Today in the 1960s; who took it instead?

Barbara Walters: White would not swap Los Angeles for New York, where Today is made, so the slot went to Walters, who climbed from it to co-host the show.

White voiced Grammy Norma, grandmother of the young hero Ted, in which 2012 animated film?

The Lorax: in a walled city where every plant is artificial, Norma is the one who tells Ted about the Once-ler, the recluse who knows what became of the trees.

White said which Golden Girls colleague found her 'a pain in the neck sometimes'?

Bea Arthur was 'not that fond of me', White said in 2011: 'It was my positive attitude, and that made Bea mad sometimes. Sometimes if I was happy, she'd be furious.'

White, McClanahan and Getty carried their characters into which one-season spin-off set at a Miami hotel?

The Golden Palace put the three into the hotel trade, only for them to find it stripped of every employee but a manager and a chef, so they ran it themselves until CBS cancelled the show after one season.

White won a 1996 Emmy sending herself up as a diva in a sitcom spoof of which film?

Sunset Boulevard: The John Larroquette Show paired the spoof with a Golden Girls reunion, as Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty also played themselves and its bus station staged 'Golden Girls: The Musical'.

In 2006 White joined which soap opera as Ann Douglas, estranged mother of fashion-house matriarch Stephanie Forrester?

The Bold and the Beautiful handed the sitcom veteran a dark storyline: Ann had looked away while her husband abused their daughter, and decades later is made to face it.

White's blackmailing gossip Catherine Piper moved from The Practice to which spin-off?

Boston Legal made Catherine a law-firm assistant who befriends a client who killed his mother, then kills him herself, sure he will strike again, and is acquitted with the firm's help.

White voiced Bitey White, a toy tiger named after her, in which Pixar sequel?

Toy Story 4 put her in a closet of old baby toys voiced by fellow comedy veterans, among them Mel Brooks as Melephant Brooks and Carl Reiner as Carl Reineroceros.

Guinness World Records recognized White in both 2014 and 2018 for what?

Longest TV career by a female entertainer: Guinness counted from a 1939 test broadcast, and White, told of the record at 91, said she was astounded: 'Who? Me!?!'

Which job, then closed to women, did White want as a girl?

Forest ranger: girls could not be one then, so when the US Forest Service made her an honorary ranger at 88, Smokey Bear at her side, she said her parents 'would be more proud of this than of any other award'.

White won her first Grammy, at 90, for reading the audiobook of which of her books?

If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won't), a 2011 collection of short essays, beat Tina Fey's Bossypants among the nominees for the 2012 spoken-word award.

Which president taped a message for White's 90th birthday special, teasing that he doubted she was really 90?

Barack Obama, then in the White House, wrote that he simply did not believe her age and asked to see her birth certificate, turning the conspiracy theories about his own birth into a compliment.

Which magazine's cover hailed White turning 100, days before she died?

People had her on its cover saying 'I'm so lucky to be in such good health' at the prospect of 100; she died on New Year's Eve 2021, less than three weeks before the birthday.

Which fellow sitcom pioneer became White's close friend in the 1950s and stayed one for three decades?

Lucille Ball kept promising to teach her backgammon, White recalled, but ended up moving both players' pieces herself; the two were together at a game-show taping on the day Desi Arnaz died.

White was president emerita of which veterinary research charity, having been a trustee since 1971?

Morris Animal Foundation pays for studies of animal diseases; White joined its board in 1971, just as she was making The Pet Set, a talk show on which celebrities showed off their pets.

A bronze plaque naming White 'Ambassador to the Animals' was unveiled in 2006 at which zoo?

LA Zoo put the plaque beside its gorilla exhibit; White had served on the zoo association's board since 1974 and later wrote a whole book about her life among its animals.

In which 2011 Hallmark Hall of Fame film did White star with Jennifer Love Hewitt?

The Lost Valentine cast her as a woman who goes back each year to the station where she last saw her husband, missing since the war; 14.5 million watched, the series' biggest audience in four years.

In 2017 White, aged 95, was finally invited to join the academy that hands out which awards?

The Oscars: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made the television veteran, never nominated for one of its awards, the oldest of that year's more than 700 invitees.

Elka, White's Hot in Cleveland character, says she escaped the Nazis; what is her nationality?

Polish: her late husband turns out to have fenced stolen goods for the mob, and the herbal polish she rubbed into his loot explains the marijuana smell that hangs about her.

White's first husband took her to a chicken farm in which state, later the setting of one of her sitcoms?

Ohio: 'Oh, it was a nightmare,' White said of Dick Barker's chicken farm, and within four months she was back in Los Angeles; 65 years later Hot in Cleveland made the state her television home.

Which Nobel-winning novelist gave Betty White's husband a draft of his acceptance speech as a birthday present?

John Steinbeck knew the couple through his wife Elaine, an old college friend of White's husband; White kept the handwritten draft framed on a wall at home.

What was The Leading Lady, the book White co-wrote with singer Tom Sullivan, about?

His first guide dog, Dinah, is the subject of The Leading Lady: Dinah's Story (1991); the dog retired to live with White, and the pair later co-wrote the novel Together.

White's character Ellen Harper-Jackson originated in sketches on which 1970s variety show?

The Carol Burnett Show's 'Family' sketches introduced snooty Ellen; White took her to the spin-off Mama's Family beside Rue McClanahan, and its cancellation by NBC freed both women for The Golden Girls.

What happened on Betty White's Off Their Rockers, the show she hosted and produced?

Seniors pranked younger people with hidden cameras rolling; NBC cancelled the show after two seasons, and Lifetime then revived it for a third.

Which Mary Tyler Moore Show co-star joined White's 1977 sitcom The Betty White Show?

Georgia Engel, the earlier show's Georgette, played her best friend in a sitcom sunk within a season by Monday Night Football; decades later she rejoined White as Elka's pal on Hot in Cleveland.

White turned down the part of Helen Hunt's mother in which film because a dog is dropped down a trash chute?

As Good as It Gets went ahead without her and won the year's two top acting prizes for Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson, whose character is the one who sends the neighbour's dog down the chute.

Who, in 2021, joined White as the only actresses to win Emmys in all three comedy acting categories?

Jean Smart completed the set with her lead win for Hacks, a quarter-century after White finished hers by sending herself up as a diva in a guest spot on The John Larroquette Show.

White's radio career began with one word in a commercial on The Great Gildersleeve: the name of which margarine brand?

Parkay: after film studios turned her away, that single word on the sponsor's behalf got her into radio, and bit parts on Blondie and This Is Your FBI followed.

In a 2011 Reuters/Ipsos poll, White, then 89, beat Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks to be named America's what?

Most trusted celebrity: pollsters asked whose endorsement would do most for a company, and White came out ahead of Denzel Washington, Sandra Bullock, Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks.

Which 1957–58 ABC sitcom did White call the only show she ever wanted to get out of?

Date with the Angels lost the daydream sequences she loved when its sponsor objected; 'our show flattened out', White said, and ABC had her serve out the contract with a live variety show instead.

White appeared in which comedy-horror film about a giant crocodile loose in the Maine backwoods?

Lake Placid cast her as Delores Bickerman, a sweet-looking widow who turns out to have been feeding the crocodile her dairy cows for years, ever since it ate her husband.

What did White's father build and barter during the Great Depression, sometimes trading them for dogs?

Crystal radios: her father, an electrical engineer, built them for extra money and, with cash scarce, swapped them for whatever buyers had, dogs included; the family, White said, 'wound up with 26 dogs once'.

During World War II, White volunteered with the American Women's Voluntary Services doing what?

Driving a supply truck: she ferried soap, toothpaste and candy to gun crews in the hills above Hollywood, and while volunteering she met the pilot who became her first husband.

White's maternal grandfather, Nicholas Cachikis, sold ice cream from a wagon after emigrating from which country?

Greece: Cachikis sold ice cream off a wagon for decades, and with a Danish grandfather on the other side and two Canadian-born grandmothers, all four of White's grandparents were immigrants.

Where did White graduate from in 1939?

Beverly Hills High School: soon after graduating she and the class president sang from The Merry Widow in an experimental broadcast whose signal travelled from the sixth floor of a Los Angeles building to the first.

In 2009 White and her three Golden Girls co-stars were all named 'Legends' by which entertainment company?

Disney: The Golden Girls was made by its Touchstone Television arm, so all four stars were named Disney Legends in 2009, two of them after their deaths.

What did the Screen Actors Guild present to White in January 2010?

Life Achievement Award, handed over by Sandra Bullock, proved premature as a career summary: White won the Guild's comedy-actress prize for Hot in Cleveland in each of the next two years.

Nearly half a million fans joined a 2010 campaign on which website to get White to host Saturday Night Live?

Facebook: White, 88, became the show's oldest host that May, thanked the site in her monologue and added that, now she knew what it was, 'it sounds like a huge waste of time'.