Betty White

Nothing in the world of American show business or celebrity today is more fashionable than to love Betty White. Be it her latest turn on "Saturday Night Live" or her latest hysterical ad or her latest appearance on Craig Ferguson's "Late Late Show" or last week's episode of "Hot in Cleveland," any and everything Betty does has us gathering at the watercooler on Monday morning: "Did you see?" But there's so much more to Betty White than the vibrant, funny, white-haired 90-year-old today's audience knows, and in the second commemorative book in LIFE's new ICONS series (after the volume on Clint Eastwood), our editors recount-and celebrate-the whole Betty White. Born in Illinois and raised in California, the daughter of a traveling salesman and a homemaker, she has been on the job not for a few years but for seven decades. She was a "girl singer" in the big band era and got her first TV gig right after graduating from high school: singing songs from the Lehar operetta The Merry Widow. One of Hollywood's young lovelies in the late 1930s and throughout the war years, she modeled as well as acted. But as happened with Lucille Ball, over time it became evident that Betty White had an instinctual gift for comedy. Her constant smile was the front for a wry and often wicked sense of humor. She has, by now, won seven Emmy Awards and her longtime fans know her best for her roles in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Golden Girls" and, yes, "Hot in Cleveland." Our LIFE ICONS book will go there, of course, and will go deeper, introducing Betty White the activist (her lifelong cause: the humane treatment of animals), Betty White the wife and mother, Betty White the person-not just Betty White of the watercooler.