Perhaps no one in American show business was more beloved than Betty White. Whether as the lively and bodacious Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the naive but wholesome Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls, or the blunt Elka Ostrovsky on Hot in Cleveland, she commanded the screen with her perfectly timed humor and winking charm. But there was much more to Betty White than the vibrant icon who graced us with her presence for almost a century. One year after her death at nearly 100 years old, this remarkable commemorative edition of LIFE recounts and celebrates an extraordinary life. Born in Illinois and raised in California, the daughter of a traveling salesman and a homemaker, White’s career spanned eight decades, and she never slowed down. She was a “girl singer” in the big-band era and got her first TV gig right out of high school. One of Hollywood’s young lovelies in the late 1930s and throughout the war years, White modeled as well as acted. Her smile was the front for that wry and often wicked sense of humor. This commemorative edition also introduces Betty White the wife, mother, animal lover, and all around lover of life.
