Betty White has been a household name since the 1950s, but it was her work on The Golden Girls that cemented her status as an icon long before she died on Dec. 31 at 99.
“I thought she would live forever,” White’s agent Jeff Witjas told People in a statement. “I will miss her terribly and so will the animal world that she loved so much.
When the show premiered in 1985, White was a natural as the innocent, kind-hearted Rose Nylund—who considered herself a wild woman because she dared to eat raw cookie dough. White cleverly imbued Rose with a gullible naïveté, letting her serve as the foil for Dorothy’s barbs and Blanche‘s eye rolls. Whether telling yet another St. Olaf story or doing one of her many selfless deeds, Rose just “wasn’t one to blow [her] own vertubenflugen.” And it was precisely that mix of humility, sweetness and loyalty that endeared her to viewers for decades.
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Besides, as Rose admitted, it wasn’t her fault her cousins have been marrying each other for generations.
A Beverly Hills High School graduate, White was as savvy in real life as Rose was seemingly dim-witted, and she enjoyed a decades-long career in Hollywood that continued to flourish when so many of her peers found the opportunities disappear when they reached a certain age.
White started her television career while just a teenager—dancing “the Merry Widow Waltz” on an experimental TV show in 1939, when the medium was still in its infancy—and never really stopped. In fact, she entered the Guinness World Record book in 2014 as the holder for “longest TV career for an entertainer (female).”
As a young actress filled with ambition and tenacity, she landed a spot in a Parkay margarine commercial after reportedly hanging around the office of producer Fran Van Hartesveldt until he caved and offered her a job. She later spent six days a week on the Al Jarvis variety…
Source : time
