Post by DiamondThief on Dec 31, 2021 17:15:02 GMT -8
Actress, comedian and animal rights advocate Betty White has passed away this New Year's Eve at the age of 99. She was just 17 days away from celebrating her 100th birthday. According to reports, she passed of natural causes. Ms. White enjoyed an unprecedented 80-year career and starred on such shows as Life With Elizabeth, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Golden Girls and Hot In Cleveland. She also appeared in several movies (The Proposal, Lake Placid), talk shows and as a regular contestant on several game shows in the 1960s. Some of those were hosted by her husband, Allen Ludden, who passed in 1981.
Growing up, my family didn't watch a lot of regular or prime-time television live. We tended toward watching shows on TV Land or the likes of MeTV and so forth. Ms. White was hilarious to me as Rose Nyland in Golden Girls. My mom and I watched the episode she hosted of Saturday Night Live and laughed our butts off! Her hosting gig was a result of a campaign on Facebook to make her host. After 500,000 people signed on, executive producer Lorne Michaels tabbed her for the Mother's Day episode of 1991 (she had reportedly been offered a hosting spot at some point, but had turned it down). I grew to adore Ms. White after that. My mom and I (and others in our family) were frequent viewers of Hot In Cleveland. She and I also watched some videos on YouTube of the old game shows on which she appeared.
Ms. White has legions of fans, from her contemporaries to this 25-year-old who "discovered" her talent around a decade ago, as well as a somewhat younger version of myself (and my mom) who watched with us for nearly as long. I saw a message earlier on social media about her fans being from across the age spectrum. That is astounding to me. I saw another message which stated, to effect: "We may not disagree on everything, but we all can agree that we love Betty White." All of us should be a fraction of lucky as that.
I thought I would put these sports-related tweets recognizing Ms. White on her passing, along with her iconic Snickers commercial and her monologue from that episode she hosted of SNL. Please add any thoughts, memes, tweets or videos in the comments section.
