People PEOPLE Betty White

CELEBRATING A CENTURY OF BETTY WHITE! THE WIT & WARMTH OF A TV ICON • HOW A GAME SHOW LED TO TRUE LOVE • HER DEVOTION TO ANIMALS PLUS INSIDE HER LATE-LIFE COMEBACK…

AS BETTY WHITE celebrates her 100th birthday, a bit of historical context: She debuted on this earth before The Great Gatsby, the Soviet Union or the Lincoln Memorial, unleashing her inaugural infant wail as the ’20s were just starting to roar. Vaudeville was still alive, Hollywood was still silent, and the first blocky RCA console radios were making their way into America’s living rooms. And ever since then—throughout this Betty White Century—the indomitable trouper has given us endless reasons to love her, from the mischievous smile of the deceptively biting Sue Ann Nivens to the sweetly naive, sublimely rambling narrative tangents of Rose Nylund. White has brought spice, spontaneity and a sharp wit to hundreds of game show and talk show appearances. Offscreen, meanwhile, she is known for maintaining long and…

“IT’S INCREDIBLE THAT YOU CAN STAY IN A CAREER THIS LONG AND STILL HAVE PEOPLE PUT UP WITH YOU. I WISH THEY DID THAT AT HOME”—BETTY WHITE AT THE 2018 EMMYS…

LIFE, IT SEEMS, WAS ALWAYS a laughing matter for Betty Marion White. From her first day on the planet, Jan. 17, 1922, her parents, Horace and Tess, made sure their little girl had something to smile about. “I was an only child with the best mother and father,” White explained in a 1997 interview. “Nobody played it straight in our family. We’d be in serious discussions, and something would trigger us, and somebody would have to make a play on words or something. You kind of grew up with it. And I liked laughing a lot more than crying.” Horace, an electrical engineer, and Tess, a homemaker, also set the stage for Betty’s future by moving the family from Oak Park, Ill., to Los Angeles when she was 2 years old.…

WHEN TESS White’s daughter was born, she made sure the girl would never be called Elizabeth, christening her Betty. “My mother,” White wrote in her 1995 memoir, “wanted to preclude nicknames.” But the more formal name followed her, and in fact helped make White famous. In 1951 the daytime series she was on, Hollywood on Television, had spun off a Saturday night TV talent show. There, White would sing and appear in sketches as a ditzy housewife named Elizabeth. Her friend George Tibbles, who had started out as her pianist, graduated to writing the skits, which also featured Hollywood on Television host Al Jarvis as White’s pretend husband, Alvin. That program’s success led to a new half-hour show, Life With Elizabeth, which, although it aired only in Los Angeles, earned White…

WITH HIS TRADEMARK HORN-RIMMED glasses, Allen Ludden looked like a guy who was more at home in a college seminar on quantum physics than in a television studio. Despite the bookish exterior, he had an infectious energy that made him one of TV’s most popular game show hosts from the 1950s through the ’70s. The secret to his personal charm? “It was his enthusiasm,” Betty White said of her husband of 18 years during a 2012 interview with Piers Morgan on CNN. “He was interested in everything.” Hailing from Mineral Point, Wis., Ludden studied English at Texas University. He served as an Army officer during World War II and eventually found work with the CBS radio network. Eager to develop educational ideas for students, Ludden began hosting the TV game show…