Betty White

This is such beautiful book about our true national treasure, Betty White. This gives a lot of insight into her early life and career, as well as throughout her later years. Carefully crafted and well written, the author takes time to help the reader to really know Betty. Betty worked hard to get where she is today, and after you read that, you will be much more appreciative of her. She was (and still is) a pioneer before her time, with everything including the work she did on her shows where she took a stand for racial inequality to animal rights. She’s beautiful, hardworking, and graceful. The photographs within the book are absolutely stunning.

I would love to thank Ray Richmond, Quarto Publishing Group, and Netgalley for this ARC for me to read and review in exchange for my honest feedback.

I've always loved Betty White. She really feels like part of my family. My first exposure to her that I can remember is when I was a child, watching her on her tv show "Life With Elizabeth". I've enjoyed her in so many other shows since. I'm even enjoying Golden Girls again in reruns.

This is a remarkable book - a wonderful walk down memory lane that explores not only Betty's life but the history of television.

I loved seeing all the wonderful photos and being reminded of all this remarkable woman has done - - and continues to do!!

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this book

an insightful book into the life of betty white an icon for women of all ages...lovely photos and what a life she has led...

Who doesn’t love Betty White? I adore her. People of all generations and ages do! She is pure delight and I was thrilled to learn more about her!

If you are a fan of Betty White and who isn't, you will enjoy this book. The pre publication copy that i read could have used a little closer editing; a few statements are repeated more than once. I found this to be a very enjoyable and thorough book on Betty and her career. The book also contains a lot of really nice pictures. The author, Ray Richmond gets a thumbs up for his latest endeavor.

A perfectly fitting tribute to an absolute national treasure! This is an incredibly detailed decade-by-decade look at Betty White's life and career from birth until the present, where we're just a few months shy of her hundredth birthday.

The tone of this is of a gushing fan, and it's absolutely perfect. Information is drawn from television archives, Betty's own writings and interviews, and accounts from several cast-mates and show personnel over the years. The story is impeccably detailed and covers not only Betty's professional history, but also the relationships and passions that make her such a remarkable woman. Beyond a mere recounting, there's substantial discussion of her impact as well--how she's shaped and influenced the Hollywood, comedy, and acting we know today.

There are ample photos and many of them are just stunning! She was such a dish--I can't believe she was routinely told she wasn't photogenic! This book will be a real treat for any fan of Betty's (so, like, everyone).

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review!

A delightful look back over Betty Whites career. It only confirms what a true lady that she is and work colleagues only have praise. Her work ethic, preparedness, kindness and devotion to her friends and family.
It's like talking about a long standing friend.

What's not to love about Betty White? I won't detail all the moments of her life and career given here, there are too many, but thoroughly enjoyed this book put together by Ray Richmond. To be honest, I thought I knew about all there was to know about Betty White but quickly found out how wrong I was. Fans of White and television history will love this book. You'll probably learn a few things, too, as I did. Enjoy!

A really quick, fun biography of Betty White. The book chronicles the highlights of the 10 decades in Betty’s life, lots of pictures and interviews with famous co-stars. Having watched Password as a child, and Mary Tyler Moore in my teens, I was thrilled to read the inside stories and re-live some of Sue Ann’s great lines. The book certainly illustrates Betty White is not only a brilliant actress, but a brilliant human being as well. Many thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance copy.

This is a delightful tribute to one of the longest acting, versatile, celebrities out there, Betty White. It’s a nice inclusion of her career highlights, which keep occurring. She has been in show biz for over 75 years and very few can match her. I grew up with her shows from the 1970s but really paid attention to her in the Golden Girls. The chemistry between the 4 was magical and I still watch the reruns. White as naive Rose with her insufferable stories, but then spot on one liners keeps generations returning. Betty White is one classy dame, no matter what decade she belongs to.

I absolutely adore Betty White. This is a great history of her life. I love the photos that were used.
A quick and entertaining read on America’s Treasure, Betty White.

What is not to love about this book? Betty White is an icon and I loved learning more about her extraordinary life. Beautiful stories, filled with pictures and love. I can't wait for the release date!

I was somehow expecting less of a tribute and more of a biography, but this book is definitely a tribute and was not the least bit objective. And I loved it. I’m a big fan of Betty White and I loved her in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, “The Golden Girls” and “Hot in Cleveland”. I also frequently watch old game shows and enjoy her presence there. The book does Betty White justice, personally and career-wise. The photos are great and there is some cute wording, with the author’s sense of humor on display. The only fault I found with the book is that there is some repetition. I strongly recommend this book to fans of Betty White. Thank you to Netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group – becker & mayer! for the advance reader copy.

This book was a page turner from beginning to end. Betty White is a badass and this book was awesome. First I had no idea how many movies and shoes she had been in and it sent me down a rabbit hole of watching movies over again. such a legend - you get a look into the backstory, what brought her to where she is now, and what keeps her where she is. I loved it. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

What an amazing book about everyone's favorite person Betty White! This amazing book starts from day one of Betty White life with her wonderful parents and the adventures she had with them while growing up. It is also at this time that she falls in love with animals. The book continues to include each decade Betty White has work in the television industry and all the wonderful work she has done to make us all laugh, cry and just be delighted in everything she does, What ever that is.
There are so many highlights to this book that you have to read it to find out what they are. I've been watching Betty White since Password and have enjoy every moment of this amazing and talented woman.

I want to thank Quarto Publishing Group – becker & mayer!, and NetGalley for this advance copy of this wonderful woman's accomplishments

Thanks to Net Galley and Quarto Publishing Group – Becker & Mayer For an advance copy of this book. Like so many, I'm a long-time fan of the national treasure Betty White so I was delighted to get an opportunity to receive this short read chronicle of her life. This book isn't a memoir but instead a tribute that is full of great insights and photographs from Betty's career through the decades and illustrates the wonderful person she is. A great gift for Betty White fans everywhere.

It is a joy to learn more about this fabulous woman and all the different careers she has had in the entertainment industry. She is a very loveable and likable person, it will awesome to see if she is about to celebrate 100 years old.

Thank you Quarto Publishing Group – becker & mayer!, and NetGalley for this advance read

Who doesn't love Betty White? As a huge fan I was thrilled to read this book follows Betty through the decades. So many of her tv appearances and honoring moments I remember watching when they first aired. If there is a downside to the book I would say that I didn't learn much new about Betty White. Most of the information covered comes from her own book, published articles and televised salutes to her. But the author does a good job organizing the information and complimenting them with photographs. A perfect gift for Betty White fans regardless of their age. Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing group for the temporary ARC in exchange for an honest review. (4.5 stars)

Great book about an incredible woman. Some lovely photos of Betty as she became the treasure that we know today.

The formatting of the ebook wasn't great as it was copied versions of the double page which made it awkward to read, but this is no reflection on the book itself.

Betty White: 100 Remarkable Moments in an Extraordinary Life is a book for everyone who is a Betty White fan. I loved everything about this book.
This is an extraordinary biography telling fans so much about her life. There are so many pictures and interviews about her. The life she is living is too be admired and this book just adds so much more to everything we all know about her. It tells a story about her as a celebrity but also as a wonderful person. Her love she has for what she does and how she values her friends , family, and coworkers through her life. Thank you for this tribute to one of the greatest women on television.
Thank you NetGalley, Ray Richmond and Quarto Publishing Group for the ARC Betty White: 100 Remarkable Moments in an Extraordinary Life. This is my personal review.

Betty White is a national treasurer! Who doesn't love Betty White, honestly?! This book brilliantly captures her spunk, her energy, her talent, her wit, and her fabulous personality that everyone is so drawn to. The love she had for the business she has been in for over 80 years is found here in each chapter along with the love she had of the people she worked with throughout her career. The book is full of beautiful photographs of Betty, her family, her costars and scenes from the many radio, tv shows and movies she has been in throughout her career. I have always been a fan of Betty White, but I found when reading this book, what i knew about her career barely scratched the surface. I never knew how many game shows she had been on before this book. 80 different game shows! I knew of a few as a young kid i would watch them on TV with my grandmother and see Betty but would never have imagined how many she had been on. This book is full of wonderful anecdotes and memories shared from Betty herself and her costars throughout the years. Very enjoyable book! Thank you to Net Galley and Quarto Publishing Group - Becker & Mayer for the advance copy of this book.

I enjoyed reading this book. It is a good bio book about Betty White. It was a well written book. Betty has accomplished a lot in her life, for sure.

Celebrating nearly a century for a Hollywood Golden Girl… Betty White’s biography tells how this sassy lady has always entertained us in a career from her 20s to her 90s (so far).

In the days before the internet told us everything and anything, one thing I couldn’t get my head around as a kid was that actors and actresses get older like we mere mortals do. So it may sound silly, but it was kind of a shock when I researched for one of my first blog articles to discover that some of those much-loved entertainers were now aged in their 80s. These included those I loved as a kid including Lee Grant, Angie Dickinson, Gene Hackman and Jack Nicholson. I had always imagined them as young as the last time I saw them in film or on telly.

My biggest surprise was learning that another actress was then in her 90s and that she is approaching the big 100 early next year. This was an actress that I remember watching on telly as a wee girl in the golden days of the 1980s.

Every Friday at 10pm my family regularly tuned in to watch four old ladies – as I thought back then – who shared a house in an American comedy series. Back then, I little realised that in the first episode that the three younger ladies were supposed to be between 47 and 55 and the oldest, a character’s mother was 79 as revealed in the internet.

This series was The Golden Girls (1985-1992), and the “old” ladies were Dorothy, the practical and divorced one, her wee sarcastic widowed mother Sophia, the man-eater widowed one, Blanche and the dippy widowed one, Rose. It told of their lives and loves and clashes as housemates.

And it’s Betty White who played Rose who is celebrating 100 years, early next year. Or until the day of publishing this article, 7th December 2021… Betty has been on this Earth for 36,485 days and 99 years, 10 months, 21 days exactly.

I signed up to review her biography, Betty White: 100 Remarkable Moments in an Extraordinary Life by Ray Richmond after reading Extraordinary Life. As to be honest I’d only seen her in The Golden Girls and a feature film Lake Placid (1999). I then knew nothing about her hugely impressive career.

Lake Placid was a killer crocodile comedy with a fantastic cast and where Betty played a wee old lady who may or may not have fed her husband to the crocodiles. Roger Ebert added about her role in this creature feature film;

“Betty White uses language that would turn the Golden Girls green”

But that post for another day, now onto the book review.

This thorough and well-researched biography gives a snapshot of a “representative selection” of Betty White’s life and career. Richmond says her full story would easily fill enough for twelve encyclopedias. It begins with a foreword from the late actor, Gavin McLeod. Richmond then gallantly takes over with his always affectionate answer on where to start and elaborate on when writing about an actress who is in her 99th year – telling a bit about her life in every decade since her birth – and what to include from her over 70 years in show business.

Gavin McLeod wrote a sterling and touching foreword on his two-time co-star, as a person, an actress and an animal lover in his words and anecdotes. He tells how she;

“blends great talent and great humanity in so perfect a fashion”

If like me, you are a newbie to Ms White’s career and a kid of the 1970s, on reading this actor’s name, you will possibly remember his Aaron Spelling series where he played Captain Stubing in The Love Boat (1977-86). Then you may believe this was foreword was written as she appeared as one of his all-star list of passengers (and yes she did appear in this show with her husband, Alan Ludden).

But it also seems McLeod and Betty starred together in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77) just before this series. McLeod recalled Ms White’s role was initially as a guest role after Valerie Harper – who played Rhoda – left the show. Betty was then made a permanent fixture to fill that void. He says she filled this “vacancy” perfectly as Sue Ann Nivens, where Betty White was “the antithesis of Rhoda”. Richmond when he discusses this show adds for this role “Betty satirised her own image”.

Now, this show is the tip of the iceberg of many of her films and TV that I discovered as I read this book and then mentally added to my to-watch list. He also describes her as a “natural performer” and “TV Royalty” and writes of her long term love for both animals and hotdogs.

In his short introduction, Richmond tells that Betty White was born on 17th January 1922 in Oak Park Illinois and is the only child of Tess and Horace White. Betty’s parents shared a love for animals, and they passed this trait on to their daughter. After moving to Los Angeles as a toddler, Betty at first was keen to be a forest ranger but she was thwarted in this career as then it was only a job for a man. Since then she has been given the role of a forest ranger in an honorary status.

After she had stage fright reading a poem in third grade, she then directed, produced and wrote a school play and then took a lead role in a school production of Pride and Prejudice. She took part in one of the first successful live television transmissions as she sang and danced with a classmate. After World War II – where she was part of the American Women’s Voluntary Services she worked on the radio and in the theatre.

Then after joining an acting union, she got her first television break. This career is then outlined from her early pioneering days in colour, throughout her appearances in over 80 different games shows and her prolific performances in film and TV. In her career, for my generation, she is primarily known as a comedy actress but her first successful role was on the live show, Hollywood on Television (1949-50) where she impressed with a

“blend of interviews, entertainers, sketches, viewer mail, general repartee and commercials”.

She has also starred in drama productions – to much acclaim and worked as a long term television presenter for the Rose Parade and Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade celebrations. Her early on-screen roles included the movie The Daring Miss Jones (1951). In her early career, she was one of the first Emmy winners, and she has won and been nominated for many awards since. She has always been liberal about race and gender, and in the 1950s controversially included a black performer in The Betty White Show, despite then protests from Southern station managers.

Betty married twice which she delightfully sees as “rehearsals”, then she met the love of her life Alan Ludden. He was a games show host who she met as she guested on his Password games show. Ludden although a new widower – with three kids – fell immediately for her, wooed her, but she rebuffed his proposals.. Then she accepted after he sent her a stuffed bunny adorned with diamonds. She states;

“It was the goddamned bunny. I still have it.”

They married in Vegas in 1963 and remained married until her husband passed away in 1981. She hasn’t married since saying;

“if you’ve had the best, who needs the rest?”.

Her only regret in her 99 years is she didn’t marry him sooner.

After Richmond’s short introduction about this actress, Richmond divides Ms White’s life and career into chapters for each decade and these form the chapter title along with a natty subtitle description informing the chapter’s content. Richmond then discusses briefly a number of Betty White-themed events during this time period. He then looks at these events in much greater detail, in a separate subchapter and these are added in linear order.

The content in these chapters includes the then pertinent Hollywood history and more about Betty’s life. Richmond also examines and vividly analyses a great number of her television and film appearances and roles in these subchapters such as individual episodes of The Odd Couple (1972), Mary Tyler Moore Show (1973-77), The Golden Girls and as a regular panellist in the games show Password (1961-2008). These chapters and subchapters are backed up with quotes and anecdotes from Betty’s biographies and other valid sources.

Richmond completes this book as he lists her extensive filmography with both films and TV and her extensive appearances in game shows. Richmond outlines the written resources used in writing this book including magazine articles, Ms White’s biographies and many relevant web pages. Then he credits the photographs included.

A large selection of black and white and colour photographs adorn this life story. These photographs are often in full pages and represent both her personal life and on-screen appearances. There are stills from her career including a short-lived comedy series with Marie Osmond, Maybe This Time (1995-96) where Betty reportedly “stole the show”. Her on-screen photographs show her extensive show business career and her many co-stars in captivating shots with enticing captions.

This book includes a photograph of Betty with her parents and a series of pictures that chronicle her relationship with the love of her life, her third husband Allen Ludden. Her love for her husband radiates from each photograph and in every written description of her on-screen appearances with her husband. These photos are from their first meeting, and this is a lovely heartwarming touch to their love story.

The book also includes exclusive interviews from those who have worked with her including actress Carol Burnett and the director of The Golden Girls, Lex Passaris. The book is embellished and the writing is supported with past to present loving quotes, critics thoughts and affectionate anecdotes from Betty White’s biographies and past interviews and other entertainment professionals she’s known throughout her career.

Richmond writes of her love of animals as an “Auntie Dolittle” and illustrates this love seen as this actress has always owned a dog. Betty has had a strong role as a fundraiser and support at the Los Angeles Zoo for much of her life. She made good friends with Gita, an elephant, after reading that these animals like their tongue being slapped and doing that. After she communicated with a gorilla, Koko who used and understood sign language Betty gained a strong rapport with this animal.

This talented lady also performed for the late Queen Mother in The Royal Variety Performance in the 1980s and since then her career has gone from strength to strength. Betty calls her career before this moment a “warm-up act”. And finally, let’s go back to this biography’s foreword, where Gavin McLeod warmly adds then advocates for many of us saying that;

“As far as I’m concerned, she belongs on Mount Rushmore right next to the Presidents”.

This sentiment is echoed throughout the world by every one of us, who may have listened or watched Betty White’s career, from her pioneering days to the present day. She has carved a name for herself as a “multigenerational” talent and as Richmond succinctly puts it Betty has been and is…

“the nation’s mother, then grandmother, then great grandmother, then naughty senior pal”.

This book is so well done and I absolutely loved reading all of the factoids and interesting moments in such an iconic legend’s life!

This is such a gorgeous book about a gorgeous woman.

Is there anyone in any corner of the globe, of any age, who doesn’t like Betty White? She is a fantastic actress a d appears to be a wonderful woman - I don’t know her personally, as much as I’d love to. She broke barriers as a young woman and still does now well into her tenth decade. Golden Girls has always been one of my favourite shows and can always brighten my day.

This book follows her journey from birth to beginner actress to national treasure and everything in between. The photos that have been chosen for this book are also perfect and you can see just how beautiful she was, and still is.

If you’re after a lovely book to grace your coffee table, one that everyone will read and enjoy, this is the book for you.