Veteran
American Actor who played Rose in the hit TV
comedy show The Golden Girls
Although she will be best remembered for playing the naive Rose Nylund in the hit comedy The Golden Girls (1985-92), Betty White, who has died aged 99, was for seven decades one of the best-loved performers on US television, a consummate professional who won eight Emmy awards, the first and last separated by more than 60 years. She was also a pioneer, in the 1950s one of the first
Women producing television, and, 30 years later, the first female game show host, dubbed a “femcee”.
All four lead actors on The Golden Girls won best
Actress Emmys, but White’s came first, in 1986. This may be because she played against type; Rose was the opposite of her role on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, as Sue Ann Nivens (1973-77), who hid her conniving nature beneath a sugary surface, while performing as the Happy Homemaker at the TV station where Mary worked.