Everyone’s favorite, Betty White, is celebrating her 99th birthday today.
Everyone’s favorite, Betty White, is celebrating her 99th birthday today. And we honor the legendary comedian, actress, and Guinness Book of World Records holder for the Longest TV Career for a Female Entertainer with a trip down memory lane. Known, of course, for her Emmy-winning roles as man-hungry Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and ditsy optimist Rose Nyland on The Golden Girls, Betty White, at age 88, added another hit sitcom to her resume as Elka Ostrovsky on the more recent Hot in Cleveland on TV Land. “At first, no… I would never commit to something like this at my age,” she told me in an interview for the former trade magazine Mediaweek in 2010. “I took on the role of Elka only as a guest shot in the pilot. But after feeling the chemistry between the four of us — Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Mallick — and seeing the caliber of the writing, I wanted in.” Hot in Cleveland ran for six seasons, through 2015. But it was Betty’s first sitcom, Life With Elizabeth from 1953 to 1955, that initially put Betty in the record books as the first woman to produce a sitcom. She also received her first Emmy Award for her work on that series. “Life With Elizabeth was a wonderful learning experience,” she told me.
