On the set of Hot in Cleveland, someone walked up to Betty White with a complaint. “She said, ‘You know what I hate?’ And Betty said, ‘No, I really don’t care to know.’ Not in a mean way,” explains series alum Wendie Malick to Closer. “But in a way to let you know, ‘Don’t come and dump your dark[ness] on me.’”
Throughout her life and career, Betty always tried to walk on the sunny side of the street — and it was not an act. “She never had high or low days, she always had Betty White days,” says Dan Watt, a former personal assistant to her Golden Girls costar Bea Arthur. “She was always a sweetheart.”
The beloved showbiz veteran’s cheerful, outgoing disposition rarely wavered, even in the most difficult of times. And Betty, who died in 2021 at age 99, quietly survived quite a few heartbreaks. “Betty was private with her private life,” her close friend Patty Sullivan, author of Betty White’s Pearls of Wisdom, explains.
WILD TIMES
Born in Oak Park, Ill., in 1922 and raised in California, Betty was an only child who had a close relationship with her parents, Tess and Horace. The family took vacations together in the Sierra Nevada mountains every summer. “They camped for a month or two at a time. It wasn’t a first-class experience; they went on horses,” says Patty. But these early adventures in nature would make Betty a lifelong animal lover and a passionate conservationist.
This story is from the October 16, 2023 edition of Closer US.
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This story is from the October 16, 2023 edition of Closer US.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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