TV’s Golden Girl Betty White dies, her last years marred by a house she didn’t want to live in
TV’s Golden Girl Betty White, who has died at the age of 99, spent her latter years in a house she was not happy with, according to reports.
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Betty White spent her final years in a home she didn’t really want to live in, according to a report.
White, who passed away on Friday morning, lived in a five-bedroom, six-bathroom Brentwood home, located in West Los Angeles.
But if the trailblazing actress had it her way, she would have remained at her longtime marital home in Carmel, California which she first built with her late husband, Allen Ludden, when they bought the land in 1978.
“She never wanted to leave her home in Carmel, but was forced to for at-home care,” a source told The New York Post. “Los Angeles was more accessible.”
“If she had it her way, Betty would’ve lived and died in that home [in Carmel]. It’s the home she shared with her husband, it’s where she felt more comfortable.”
Carmel is over a five hour drive from Los Angeles.
Ludden, her third and final husband, passed away from stomach cancer in 1981.
White gave the cameras a TV tour of her West Hollywood cottage, however.
Mike Lopez of the Los Angeles Police Department told The Post, “Foul play was not suspected,” but that officers responded to a radio call Friday at about 9:30am concerning “a natural death investigation” at the Los Angeles home of the 99-year-old titan of sitcoms.
Hollywood icon Betty White has passed away at age 99. Thank you for being a friend, Betty. â™¥ï¸ pic.twitter.com/AI48ImiCjO
— IMDb (@IMDb) December 31, 2021
It comes as White died Friday at age 99 just weeks away from celebrating her 100th birthday on January 17.
She was the loveable star who had the longest career of any entertainer in television history.
White was the old-school Hollywood legend who was still turning down work when she was aged in her 90s.
Active in television since 1939, White put her long-running success down to old-fashioned perseverance.
Her first signature role came in the 1970s, when she appeared as a series regular on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
She then gained greater fame with her role as the wide-eyed Rose Nylund in the Golden Girls.
White had been planning to mark her milestone 100th birthday with a star studded bash, fans were being encouraged to buy tickets for. Hollywoods stars who were due to attend included Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Ryan Reynolds, Tina Fey, Robert Redford, Lin Manuel- Miranda, Jay Leno, Carol Burnett, Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel, Valerie Bertinelli, James Corden, Wendie Malick, and Jennifer Love Hewitt.
White’s final tweet was regarding a piece in People magazine where she revealed her secret to a long, healthy life.
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
She said being “born a cockeyed optimist” was key.
“I got it from my mum and that never changed,” she said. “I always find the positive.”
Regarding her diet, White remarked: “I try to avoid anything green. I think it’s working.”
Reynolds was among many fans and friends who paid tribute to the entertainment legend.
The world looks different now. She was great at defying expectation. She managed to grow very old and somehow, not old enough. We’ll miss you, Betty. Now you know the secret. pic.twitter.com/uevwerjobS
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) December 31, 2021
In a statement to People, White’s agent and friend, Jeff Witjas said even though the actress “was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever”.
“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 wanted to be with her most beloved husband Allen Ludden. She believed she would be with him again.”
US comedian and actor Andy Richty wrote: RIP. “One of my artistic heroes. It would be plenty for any character actor to create a role as indelible as Sue Ann Nivens or Rose Nylund, but she was responsible for both. And I got to know her a little, which is a gift I’ll cherish forever.”
American TV journalist Dan Rather wrote: “A spirit of goodness and hope. Betty White was much beloved because of who she was, and how she embraced a life well lived. Her smile. Her sense of humour. Her basic decency. Our world would be better if more followed her example. It is diminished with her passing.”
White originally had doubts about her ability to play Rose, until the show’s creator took her aside and told her not to play Rose as stupid but as someone “terminally naive, a person who always believed the first explanation of something.”
White joked that she was the “luckiest old broad on two feet” and described the iconic ’80s sitcom as her “big breakthrough”.
She was the last of the four Golden Girls to pass away, the other three cast members dying in 2008 (Estelle Getty), 2009 (Bea Arthur) and 2010 (Rue McClanahan).
“A situation comedy about old women? What is that? I think it changed a lot of the thinking and opened the way for a lot of older women,” White told CNN in 2017.
In the same interview, she reminisced about her early days in Hollywood, when comedy was often left to her male colleagues.
“It was a little out of character, a little unfeminine, to be … you shouldn’t be funny,” recalled White, noting that women were expected to simply “come in and be pretty”.
White countered: “No, it’s so much more fun to get that laugh.”
On top of her stellar TV work, White's exposure widened further with the 2009 movie The Proposal, in which she played an eccentric grandmother.
She also thrilled viewers with a Snickers commercial unveiled during the 2010 Super Bowl, in which she played a male football player chastised by his coach for “playing like Betty White out there”. The genius of the ad was revealed when the character ate a Snickers, returning him to his normal state.
In a 2011 New York Times profile, the bubbly star was described as “less an active senior than a hyperactive one”.
White had just released her memoir If You Ask Me (And Of Course You Won’t), and was busy with book tours while filming the sitcom Hot in Cleveland.
Wendie Malick, one of her co-stars on Hot in Cleveland, told the New York Times: “White got up as early as 3.30am on some mornings in order to sign a few hundred books before showing up on set.
“She’s truly a Midwesterner that way,” Malick said, referring to the place of White’s birth and childhood. “She’s still the girl from Oak Park, Illinois, who was taught to take care of herself, show up on time and do it with the best attitude.”
White had two short-lived marriages in the 1940s — to Dick Barker, a US Army Air Corps pilot, and Hollywood agent Lane Allen.
She married her third husband, Allen Ludden, in 1963. She described the TV host, who died from stomach cancer in 1981, as the love of her life.
In an interview with Larry King, when asked whether she would remarry, she replied by saying “Once you’ve had the best, who needs the rest?”
The stepmother to Ludden’s three children, White never had her own children, saying she wasn’t sure she could give them enough time.
A passionate animal activist, she devoted her time and energy to her pets.
“I’m a workaholic,” she told the NYT, “and I’ve long since given up trying to get over that.”
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