Shes owned the mediumin multiple waysfor its entire history.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
White is thought to be the first woman to host a talk show solo.
She started one of the first significant woman-owned production companies, maintaining creative control over its product.
No matter what happened, Betty White found a place for herself.
She was television when television as we knew it was lights and vacuum tubes in a box.
She was television when the box turned into a flat panel and became high-def.
She was television when television became one of a zillion things we could watch on little combination pocket computer-phones.
Betty White was analog and digital, black-and-white and 8K OLED, Truman and Biden.
Her sheer indestructibility became the joke after a while, and she played it masterfully.
Then she paused, looked out at the studio audience, and said, Im 45.
The first crude test of television technology occurred in Paris in 1909.
Twelve years later, in August 1921, Edouard Belin sent still images through the air using radio waves.
The following January, Betty White was born in Oak Park, Illinois.
A year after that, her family relocated to Alhambra, California.
White and television would be entwined after that.
She refused and increased his airtime.
The show was canceled within the year.
She also started building a second, adjacent career as a guest on talk and celebrity-panelist game shows.
Among the latter wasPassword, hosted by Alan Ludden.
White and Luddens onscreen chemistry was not an act.
They began dating and married in 1963.
(She had been married twice before, but later dismissed those as rehearsals.)
Moore seized the day in 1973, inviting White to make a guest appearance on her hit CBS sitcom.
Moore herself had become a powerhouse female producer-star by that point, rivaling Ball in cultural influence.
Or, as White told theLos Angeles Times, Shes not only a bitch, but a nympho.
The part was a perfect fit.
Maybe too perfect: Whites husband Ludden had died five years earlier, and White was still grieving.
Its always gonna have a happy ending … Shes never sarcastic.
She always takes every word as having the exact meaning of that word.
She doesnt have any imagination.
If you say, I could eat a horse, she calls the ASPCA.
White was quick to correct people who dismissedThe Golden Girlsas frivolous.
She saw it as a cheerfully defiant statement against ageism.
You dont fall off the planet once you reach a given age, she toldToday.
She continued to be a go-to talk show guest until her mid-nineties.
She hostedSaturday Night Livemainly because of a fan-led campaign to hire her for the gig.
It won her yet another Emmy.
The world looks different now, Reynoldstweetedon the day that Whites death was announced.
She was great at defying expectation.
She managed to grow very old and somehow, not old enough.
Well miss you, Betty.
Now you know the secret.
Betty White was comfortable in this world, too.
If shed stuck around any longer, one suspects that shed find a way to star in it.
