Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Betty moved with her parents, Horace White, an engineer, and Tess (nee Cachikis), to Los Angeles during the Depression, and graduated in 1939 from Beverly Hills high school; her colleagues in school theatre included the future film star Rhonda Fleming. She performed on an experimental Los Angeles television channel that year, but made her formal acting debut at the Bliss Hayden Little Theatre.

During the second world war she served in the Women’s Voluntary Services, making her movie debut in Time to Kill (1945), a short produced to inform servicemen about military educational programmes; the cast included Jackie Cooper, George Reeves (later TV’s first Superman), DeForest Kelley (later Bones on Star Trek) and Barry Nelson. She also was married, briefly, to Dick Barker, an Air Corps pilot.

After parts in radio shows such as Archie and the Great Gildersleeve, she got her own local programme, the first of four Betty White shows in which she would star. In 1947 she married the agent Lane Allen; they divorced in 1949. That year another local radio star, Al Jarvis, was presenting a variety show called Hollywood On Television, and hired White as his “girl Friday”, playing records and doing commercials and interviews. When Jarvis left the show in 1952, White took over as the host.

Sample obituary taken from The Guardian 

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/jan/02/betty-white-obituary