On January 17 this year, Betty White would have turned 100-years old. For the occasion of her centurion birthday, the legendary actress had planned a 'big-screen birthday party,' via a film titled Betty White: 100 Years Young — A Birthday Celebration.
The actress went on to shoot a video message thanking fans on December 20, 2021, footage which went into the final cut of the film. As it would turn out, she passed on in her sleep on New Year's Eve, leaving the world to reflect on her biggest career achievements.
Betty's incredible career spanned the course of more than seven decades of outstanding work in both film and television. As she neared the century-mark of her life, there were lots of questions posed as to whether she would ever retire.
At the time of her death, the icon was still considered an active artist, although her final screen appearances had been all the way back in 2019. Thanks to her decades of hard and excellent work, Betty had managed to build up a lifetime's worth of riches to her name.
As of the fateful day when the world eventually lost her talent, Betty was estimated to be worth around $75 million.
Betty White Originally Wanted To Be A Forest Ranger
Betty White was born in Oak Park, Illinois in January 1922. She attended Horace Mann Elementary School and later joined Beverly Hills High school. Her family used to vacation in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, which triggered a keen interest in wildlife for her as a young girl.
This passion almost led Betty down a completely different career path, as she really wanted to become a forest ranger. Unfortunately for her at the time, women were not allowed to practice the profession, and so that particular dream was crushed rather early on.
Thankfully for the rest of the world, her momentary loss would turn out to be her fans' great gain. While at Horace Mann, Betty wrote and played the lead role in a graduation play. This was the first time she fell in love with the performing arts, and she consequently decided to pursue a career as an actress.
Betty's first ever screen role was in 1945, when she featured in a short film titled Time to Kill. She also started to build a foundation for her career by honing her skills in radio acting.
Movie Studios Thought That Young Betty White Was Not 'Photogenic'
As with any other professional in those days, her career suffered an enforced hiatus, as the global populace was plunged into the fallout of the Second World War. As the industry began to recover in the aftermath, Betty started to seek work as an actress in the various movie studios in Hollywood.
However, she was consistently turned away because she was not considered to be 'photogenic' enough. It was this turn of events that pushed the actress towards radio, where she featured on shows such as The Great Gildersleeve and This is Your FBI. In those days, Betty reportedly worked many gigs for no pay.
She would eventually find a pathway back to the screen, when she started hosting the talk shows Hollywood on Television and The Betty White Show in the early '50s. After making this transition from radio to television, Betty co-founded Bandy Productions with two other partners.
Under this banner, she would make history as the first woman to ever produce a sitcom for TV, Life with Elizabeth in which she also starred.
How Betty White Amassed Her $75 Million Net Worth
Once she finally got going, Betty never really stopped or slowed down. Her biggest acting roles on TV were in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a sitcom that aired on CBS in the '70s, as well as playing Rose Nylund in The Golden Girls on NBC.
Between 2010 and 2015, she popularly portrayed a senior Polish caretaker called Elka Ostrovsky in TV Land's Hot in Cleveland. TV Guide reported that the actress was receiving a salary of $75,000 per episode for the show.
According to IMDb, Betty featured in a total of 124 episodes of Hot in Cleveland, which would mean she was paid a gross of $9.3 million for her work on the series. Another big earner for the icon would have been reruns of The Golden Girls, which were said to be raking in about $3 million for her since 1992.
Betty had gained fresh acclaim in 2009 when she featured in The Proposal alongside Ryan Reynolds, with whom she would go on to establish a strong friendship. The film made a profit of about $280 million at the box office, meaning Betty would have also earned several million dollars from residuals alone.
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