Betty White, TV’s Golden Girl, dies at 99

Beloved Hollywood icon Betty White has died at 99, just weeks before her 100th birthday.

White’s longtime agent and friend Jeff Witjas confirmed her death Friday. She had no diagnosed illness, and it was unclear if she died Thursday night or Friday, he said.

White would have turned 100 on January 17.

My 100th birthday… I cannot believe it is coming up, and People Magazine is celebrating with me! The new issue of @people is available on newsstands nationwide tomorrow. https://t.co/kTQnsbMDGK

— Betty White (@BettyMWhite) December 28, 2021

“Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever,” her agent Jeff Witjas told People Magazine Friday.

“I will miss her terribly and so will the animal world that she loved so much. I don’t think Betty ever feared passing because she always wanted to be with her most beloved husband Allen Ludden. She believed she would be with him again.”

TMZ reported that law enforcement sources said Betty passed away at her home just before 9:30 a.m. Friday.

Radio host Maurie Sherman interviewed White in 2013 for the Roz and Mocha Show. White explained the secret to her longevity.

“I’m just very lucky to be blessed with good health and I love what I do it’s that’s simple and I love the people I work with.”

When asked what she’d like to be remembered for, she replied: “”My love of animals, and my consideration and care for animals.”

Storied Career

White launched her TV career in daytime talk shows when the medium was still in its infancy and endured well into the age of cable and streaming. Her combination of sweetness and edginess gave life to a roster of quirky characters in shows from the sitcom “Life With Elizabeth” in the early 1950s to oddball Rose Nylund in “The Golden Girls” in the ’80s to “Boston Legal,” which ran from 2004 to 2008.

But it was in 2010 that White’s stardom erupted as never before.

In a Snickers commercial that premiered during that year’s Super Bowl telecast, she impersonated an energy-sapped dude getting tackled during a backlot football game.

“Mike, you’re playing like Betty White out there,” jeered one of his chums. White, flat on the ground and covered in mud, fired back, “That’s not what your girlfriend said!”

The instantly-viral video helped spark a Facebook campaign called “Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!,” whose half-million fans led to her co-hosting “Saturday Night Live” in a much-watched, watch-hailed edition that Mother’s Day weekend. The appearance won her a seventh Emmy award.

A month later, cable’s TV Land premiered “Hot In Cleveland,” the network’s first original scripted series, which starred Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick as three past-their-prime show-biz veterans who move to Cleveland to escape the youth obsession of Hollywood. They move into a home being looked after by an elderly Polish widow _ a character, played by White, who was meant to appear only in the pilot episode.

But White stole the show, and the salty Elka Ostrovsky became a key part of the series, an immediate hit. She was voted the Entertainer of the Year by members of The Associated Press.