Remembering Betty White, Whose Timeless Humor Made Her One of the Greatest Comedians in TV History

Betty White, who died Dec. 31 at age 99, was perhaps the greatest comic tactician in the history of television. That’s distinct from comic acting, although White was, of course, a very fine actor. What set White apart was her unerring ability to find not just the joke, but the thing behind the joke: It was as if a special internal radar guided her toward the deflation of vanity. On “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” for instance, her sunny domestic goddess Sue Ann Nivens was purposefully oblivious, and White wrung delicious humor out of Sue Ann’s unwillingness or inability to… Read Full Article