Betty White

 

BETTY WHITE

Betty White, who created two of the most memorable characters in sitcom history, the nymphomaniacal Sue Ann Nivens on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and the sweet but dim Rose Nylund on “The Golden Girls” — and who capped her long career with a comeback that included a triumphant appearance as the host of “Saturday Night Live” at the age of 88 — died on Friday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 99.

Her death, less than three weeks before her 100th birthday, was confirmed by Jeff Witjas, her longtime friend and agent.

Ms. White won five Primetime Emmys and one competitive Daytime Emmy — as well as a lifetime achievement Daytime Emmy in 2015 and a Los Angeles regional Emmy in 1952 — in a television career that spanned seven decades and that the 2014 edition of “Guinness World Records” certified as the longest ever for a female entertainer.

But her breakthrough came relatively late in life, with her work on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” from 1973 to 1977, for which she won two of her Emmys.

As Sue Ann, the host of a household-hints show on the television station where Ms. Moore’s character worked, the bedimpled Ms. White was annoyingly positive and upbeat, but also manipulative and bawdy — the sexpot next door, who would have you believe she slept with entire Army brigades during World War II.

Once, when someone asked her how she was feeling, Sue Ann replied cheerfully: “I didn’t sleep a wink all night. I feel wonderful.”

She won another Emmy in 1986 for an entirely different kind of character: the naïve, scatterbrained Rose on “The Golden Girls,” which revolved around the lives of four older women sharing a house in Miami. Whereas Sue Ann knew everything there was to know about getting a man into bed, Rose got to the same place innocently, and by being just a wee bit off center.

Ms. White was the last surviving member of the show’s four stars. Estelle Getty died in 2008, Bea Arthur in 2009 and Rue McClanahan in 2010.

Ms. White won her final Emmy in 2010 as outstanding guest actress in a comedy series for hosting the Mother’s Day episode of “S.N.L.” She followed that appearance with a regular role on yet another sitcom, “Hot in Cleveland,” and then with a book contract and her own reality show. She was bigger than she had been in decades. But she didn’t see her resurgence as a comeback.

“I’ve been working steady for 63 years,” she said in an interview for the ABC News program “Nightline” in 2010. “But everybody says, ‘Oh, it’s such a renaissance.’ Maybe I went away and didn’t know it.”

Ms. White was over 50 and already a television veteran when she first appeared on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” but her work there elevated her career to a new level.

A comedy about a young, single television news producer in Minneapolis, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” was one of the most popular sitcoms of its day or any other, thanks to smart writing, Ms. Moore’s charismatic presence and a high-caliber supporting cast. Even in the company of scene-stealing actors like Ms. Moore, Ed Asner and Valerie Harper, Ms. White’s Sue Ann stood out.

The character, introduced in the show’s fourth season, was conceived as cloying, calculating and predatory, her deviousness always accompanied by a charming smile. The producers wanted a “Betty White type” to play the role, but they did not immediately ask Ms. White because she and Ms. Moore were close friends and the producers were afraid that there would be damage to the friendship if she didn’t get the role, or didn’t want it.

“They went through about 12 people and couldn’t find anybody sickening enough,” Ms. White told Modern Maturity magazine in 1998, “so they called me.”

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