Betty White at the premiere of You Again, 2010.

Her loquaciousness and bright, sometimes devilish sense of humor made Betty White a favorite of the talk show format that was beginning to catch on in the ’50s. She became a regular on Jack Paar’s Tonight Show, appearing more than 70 times, and then on Johnny Carson’s version as well.

But what really kept her in the public eye was the rise of the game shows which were as ubiquitous in that era as reality TV is in our own. Betty was especially pleased to appear on them for the simple reason that she really, really liked them.

As a child, she had delighted in making up games with her parents, “We’d sit around the breakfast table or driving on vacation and we’d play games,” she said. “It was like gamblers who bet on anything. We could make a game out of anything.” 

“It was October 1949. In the months since my first foray into TV on the Dick Haymes Show, the new medium had begun to open some exciting doors. Even in such a rapidly expanding universe, the concept of a live five-hour daily show was unique. This new adventure, Hollywood on Television  H.O.T. to its friends, was to emanate from what had become my alma mater, KLAC-TV.

The format of the show was primitively simple. Al Jarvis sat behind a small desk with me on one side of him and his turntable on the other. Al opened the show each day by addressing a few remarks into the camera, to our viewing audience; he’d introduce me, then spin his first record. Between records we would chat briefly, then on with the music. By week’s end, the mail and the phone calls began to come in, giving us a reading on the audience reaction. It was almost unanimous. The consensus was that they were interested in hearing us talk, but it drove them crazy to see us speaking to one another during the records and not know what we were saying!

The result? The following Monday, the start of our second week on air, Al eliminated all record playing, got rid of the turntable, and now we had five full hours of live airtime to fill. Dear God!” -Betty White

“NBC gave us some great promotion, so that when we went on the air in September, The Golden Girls nudged Cosby aside, and for our debut that first week we were number one. Cos stepped right back in, of course, but we managed to hang on to a spot in the top ten every week for the first five years of the show. With audience approval like that, we had cleared the last hurdle. We were a genuine hit.” -Betty White

Mary Tyler Moore, Ed Asner, and Betty White meet at an event, 1976.

“I rarely hear the alarm clock. Even when I have to get up early, I’m usually awake before it goes off. I need about four hours’ deep sleep and I’m good to go. I chalk it up to my passions and enthusiasm. I can’t imagine living any other way.” -Betty White

Betty White on Date with the Angels, 1958.

“Allen had given me an anniversary present— a white mink jacket. And I was just feeling so sprintzy; he was going to take me out on town. So we got out front, signed some autographs, and finally hailed a cab. And he had one foot in the cab door when this woman grabbed me— you know that death grip they get on you sometimes, when there’s nothing you can do. She said, ‘Oh you’ve got to sign my book, I’m from out of town, you’ve just got to sign it.’ I said, ‘Alright,’

By now traffic is beginning to kind of back up a little bit so Allen said ‘Come on, honey, hurry,’ So the woman pulls out her pen and she opens it up like this, and I felt something on my face and I go, ‘Oh, I can’t…’

I look, and there’s ink all over my face, all over the jacket, all over my dress. I didn’t care about the face, the face I could wash, but it wasn’t a drip-dry mink jacket. So I said, ‘Oh…Oh what will I do?!’ and she said ‘Sign my book is what you’re gonna do!’” -Betty White

Longtime friends Betty White and James Stewart attend a book signing, 1991.

Betty White and her mother Tess, c. 1982.