Betty White (1922-2021)

She's forever TV'S golden girl. Betty White's life story mirrors the history of the medium she loved best, and which loved her right back-along with legions of fans who still delight in watching her side-splitting work on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls.

- By Matt Roush, Photography by Paramount; Touchstone Television/Courtesy Everett Collection; TV Land/Courtesy Everett Collection; TV Guide Magazine Archive

SHE'S FOREVER TV'S golden girl. Betty White's life story mirrors the history of the medium she loved best, and which loved her right back-along with legions of fans who still delight in watching her side-splitting work on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls. White, who passed away New Year's Eve, a couple weeks shy of her 100th birthday, did it all in a career certified by Guinness World Records as the longest for a female entertainer: as producer, personality, lifelong animal advocate, sitcom star. She was there at TV's infancy, starting in 1949 filling five-and-a-half hours of daily local chitchat on live show Hollywood on Television.

This gig led in the 1950s to a nationally syndicated sitcom (Life With Elizabeth), which she coproduced, and a daily talk-variety show that pushed social boundaries when she risked boycotts by hiring Black tap dancer Arthur Duncan as a regular cast member.

With Carol Burnett on