Birthday Lurve goes out to the amazing Betty White, who celebrates her 88th birthday today!! As we sadly learned earlier this week, Betty‘s Golden Girls co-star (and the only other surviving GG star) Rue McClanahan suffered a stroke and is currently undergoing physical therapy but, happily, Betty is doing well on her 88th. In fact, Betty is due to be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 16th Annual Screen Actor’s Guild Awards next weekend — here an excerpt from the text of the SAG press release concerning Betty‘s upcoming award:

Screen Actors Guild (SAG) announced [that] beloved comedienne, pioneering television producer, host, author and animal advocate Betty White, will receive the Guild’s most prestigious accolade—the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award for career achievement and humanitarian accomplishment. White will be presented the Award, given annually to an actor who fosters the “finest ideals of the acting profession,” at the “16th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards®”, which premieres live on TNT and TBS Saturday, January 23, 2010, at 8 p.m. ET/PT, 7 p.m. CT and 6 p.m. MT. In making [this] announcement, Screen Actors Guild National President Alan Rosenberg said, “Whether creating some of television’s most indelible characters, plunging into film roles with joyous gusto or perfecting the art of the quip as a television panelist and host, Betty White has entertained audiences with her impeccable comic timing and remarkable wit for more than sixty years. Her lifelong devotion to the welfare of animals, manifest in her work as an author, producer and philanthropist, is further evidence of her tremendous humanity and meaningful contributions in so many important areas. Screen Actors Guild is honored to celebrate Betty White’s extraordinary achievements over the course of an exemplary life.” On the morning she was asked to accept Screen Actors Guild’s highest honor, White was headed to the set of the Disney feature “You Again,” starring Kristen Bell (as her granddaughter), Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver and Kristin Chenowith. Earlier this summer, White played Ryan Reynold’s scene-stealing Grandma Annie in the chart-topping Sandra Bullock romantic comedy “The Proposal.” She is currently heard in theatres voicing the elderly Yoshie in Oscar-winner Hayao Miyazaki’s animated adventure “Ponyo.” Betty Marion White was born January 17, 1922, in Oak Park, Ill., the only child of Horace, an electrical engineer, and Tess, a housewife. The family moved to California when White was 2. After graduating Beverly Hills High School, White made her professional debut at the Bliss Hayden Little Theatre and landed parts in such popular radio shows as “Blondie,” “The Great Gildersleeve” and “This Is Your FBI.” Her first radio program, “The Betty White Show,” followed. Her big break came in 1949, when she joined Al Jarvis’ five-and-a-half-hour, six-days-a-week live KLAC-TV variety show, “Hollywood on Television.” Starting out as Jarvis’ “Girl Friday,” White inherited the show’s hosting duties for two more years when Jarvis left in 1952. The same year she formed Bandy Productions with producer Don Fedderson and writer George Tibbles. Spinning off characters from a “Hollywood on Television” sketch, they created the domestic comedy “Life with Elizabeth,” for which White received her first of six Emmys. Syndication brought the program to national audiences through the mid-’50s. The series made White one of only a few women with creative control before and behind the camera in television’s early years. White went on to produce and host a daily NBC talk/variety skein “The Betty White Show,” garnering a Daytime Emmy nomination. Her second situation comedy, “A Date with the Angels,” premiered in 1957, then evolved into another eponymous comedy/variety showcase. White’s sly ribald humor made her an audience favorite on the late-night circuit, not only matching wits with Jack Paar (more than 70 appearances) Merv Griffin and Johnny Carson (including many “Mighty Carson Art Players” performances) but also subbing for all three as guest host. Her clever spontaneity also earned her spots on numerous game and talk shows, such as “The Match Game,” “To Tell the Truth,” “I’ve Got A Secret” “Liar’s Club” and especially “Password,” whose host Allen Ludden she married in 1963 after a persistent two-year courtship. When White and Ludden’s pals, actor Mary Tyler Moore and her producer/husband Grant Tinker, were casting about for a cloyingly sweet “Betty White-type” to guest star on their hit “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” they ultimately decided to go with the real deal. White’s 1973 guest shot as the saccharinely catty, man-hungry “Happy Homemaker” Sue Ann Nivens was White’s entrée into one of television’s most iconic ensembles. The role relaunched White’s acting career and earned her back-to-back supporting actress Emmy and then a fourth Emmy nomination. After the series’ historic final episode in 1977, MTM created “The Betty White Show,” with White playing the second-rate star of a TV police drama. After its brief run, White guest-starred in the miniseries “The Place to Be” (1979) and such telefilms as “With this Ring,” (1978) “Before and After” (1979) and “The Gossip Columnist,” (1980), before breaking ground as TV’s first female game show host on NBC’s “Just Men.” Drawing on the lascivious persona perfected as Sue Ann Nivens, White earned the first and only Daytime Emmy for Best Game Show Host awarded to a female emcee. A second Daytime Emmy nomination followed in 1984. 1983 also saw White begin a three-year recurring stint on Vicki Lawrence’s “Mama’s Family,” reprising the role of social climber Ellen Harper Jackson she’d created in sketches on “The Carol Burnett Show” in the early ‘70s. In 1985, at 63, White began what became the most lauded role of her career, the sweetly naïve Minnesotan Rose Nylund on NBC’s Saturday night hit “The Golden Girls.” White, along with co-stars Beatrice Arthur, Estelle Getty and Rue McClanahan, proved that great comedy transcended age, as did the series’ stellar ratings and countless honors including, for White, a first-year lead actress Emmy, six subsequent nominations and two Golden Globe nominations. She was to reprise the role of Rose on three other series: “Empty Nest” (1989, 1992), “Nurses” (1991) and “The Golden Palace” (1992–93).

Betty White TRULY is a US national treasure and she should be honored as such. I am so pleased to know that she is doing well, is happily active and is celebrating her 88th birthday in good health and happy spirits. While we send our healing prayers to Rue today for a speedy and full recovery, let’s send all of our happy Birthday Lurve to Betty today. Happiest of Birthdays, Betty!! Here’s to many, many more!!

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