Ultimate Guide to Streaming Betty White

 When Betty White passed away on New Year's Eve she left behind a body of work that dates back to the beginning of television in this county and goes all the way through to a recent blockbuster movie. Thanks to steaming services, we can sample a large portion of her filmography. Here's a sampling of some of the incredible legacy of Betty White that you can easily find and enjoy...

 

The crowning jewels of Betty White's filmography are the two most popular sitcoms she was involved with: The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls. Luckily, the entire run of both of these classic shows can be found on Hulu. Betty White joins the cast of Mary Tyler Moore in Season 4, appearing sporadically and then becoming a permanent fixture on the show for Seasons 5-7. The best introduction to her character Sue Ann Nevins the "Happy Homemaker" is S4E1 "The Lars Affair." Betty is also present for S6E7 "Chuckles Bites the Dust" which is often considered one of the single funniest episodes of a sitcom ever. 

The Golden Girls features Betty White's most memorable performance as Rose Nylund. The show ran on NBC from 1985 to 1992 and was a big hit for the network. Reruns of The Golden Girls have become a staple of late night television over 30 years after it's debut, running on several cable outlets all night - every night. Watching the show on Hulu not only gives you the opportunity to watch every episode in order but my experience has been that the commercials are dropped in the right places. When the show is on television now, it is a re-edited syndicated package where the episodes are slightly trimmed and the pacing is off due to shifting the commercial breaks around. Sitcoms are written and edited with the commercial breaks in mind and having these shows in their pure original form is the best way to experience the brilliance of The Golden Girls, or any sitcom for that matter. 

Hulu has also recently blessed us with The Golden Palace, a 1992-1993 spin-off/continuation of The Golden Girls. When Bea Arthur left the show, the producers switched up the setting and had the remining girls buy a hotel and run it. It aired for one season on CBS before getting canceled and since then has only showed up briefly on Lifetime in the mid 2000's. I loved this continuation when it was originally on and I'm currently making my way through all 24 episodes on Hulu. Many people dismiss this show simply because Dorothy is missing and the first few episodes are a bit unusual and clunky as the show finds it's footing. But by the seventh episode, the show is running fully as an 8th season of The Golden Girls. It's a great show and another 24 funny episodes that most people haven't seen.

While we're on Hulu, let's talk about To Tell The Truth. Betty was known as the Queen of Game Shows, not only did she love playing games but she's appeared on dozens of game shows since TV's earliest days. One of her first game shows to guest on was To Tell the Truth, which was recently rebooted in 2016 with host Anthony Anderson. Betty White is a panelist on the first 5 episodes and those along the rest of the series can be found on Hulu.

Mrs. White also did guest spots on dozens of episodes of shows including the Damon Wayans family sitcom My Wife and Kids. I've never really seen this show before but I just watched S4E26 "The Maid" (guess who Betty plays) and I found it not only very funny but it's also kind of a tribute to the magical nature of Betty White. It's definitely worth checking out. Now is also a good time to mention Hulu is the streaming home of Family Guy and Betty can be heard in S4E24 "Peterotica."

We mentioned Betty White's love of game shows and a cool find to stream is a week's worth of the classic game show Password Plus. Amazon Prime and it's spinoff service IMDb TV has all five episodes from the week of 2/5/1979 available listed as Season One episodes 20-24. Here you'll see her play her favorite game along side her favorite game show host, husband Allen Ludden. I love finding old game shows, especially when they feature celebrities, and these episodes are very fun to watch and play along with, plus you get to see Betty unscripted. 

Another unique find in the Betty White catalog is her 1999-2001 CBS sitcom The Ladies Man, which popped up on free streamers CRACKLE and PLEX late last year. The short lived show stared Alfred Molina as a husband and dad living in a house full of women. The sitcom all-star cast included Sharon Lawrence, Stephen Root, Dixie Carter, Park Overall and even Kaley Cuoco. Watching pros like White and Carter bounce off each other with precision comedic timing is an absolute joy to behold. This show is pretty good although the storylines always revolving around sexual politics gets a little tiresome.

A much more polished and successful sitcom is Hot in Cleveland, the first original sitcom from cable channel TV Land. The series ran from 2010-2015 and stared Valerie Bertinelli (One Day At A Time), Jane Leeves (Frasier) and Wendie Malick (Just Shoot Me) as three middle aged women who make the move from Los Angeles to Cleveland, OH. Betty White originally singed on for a guest appearance in episode one and had so much fun she ended up as a regular for all 6 seasons. Every episode can be found on Paramount+, and what I really love about this show is that Betty White's character, Elka, is usually not at the center of the storyline which allows every single line she delivers to be absolutely hysterical. Pamamount+ also carries The Roast of William Shatner. This off-color 2006 Comedy Central special is credited as the key element in jump starting the resurgence of Betty White's career in the later part of her life.

It's that pop culture breakthough that led her to host a legendary episode of  Saturday Night Live on May 8, 2000. This is a fantastic episode from start-to-finish with Betty appearing in every single sketch including Weekend Update. Although you'll only find an edited version to stream, S35E21 can be found on both Hulu and Peacock.

Life With Elizabeth is a 1953 sitcom staring Betty White. Each episode consists of three vignettes of very gentle humor. It's currently available on Prime Video, The Roku Channel, Tubi, PlutoTV and Plex. There's another 50's sitcom she stared in, Date With the Angels, which I find to be very entertaining. It's on Roku Channel and Tubi.

There's a pretty solid biography called Betty White: First Lady of Television, currently on Peacock. You can learn about Betty's love of animals in the documentary Betty White: Champion for Animals found on Tubi and Hoopla. Betty hosted a talk show about animals in 1971 called The Pet Set, where celebrities would visit with their pets. The series has been unavailable until it was released on DVD and digital earlier last year. You can stream the show for free on Tubi, Crackle and Plex. There's also a 2013 television special Betty White Goes Wild, which deals with Betty's love for lions, tigers and other big cats. The National Geographic special was recently added to Disney+.

Disney+ is also home to a vast library of Betty's voice over work. She played Mrs. Claus in the charming animated short Prep & Landing: Operation Secret Santa. She also lent her voice to the elephant movie Whispers: An Elephant's Tale and animated series Hercules S1E52 "Hercules and the Fiff on Olympus" and Teacher's Pet S2E19 "The Turkey That Came To Dinner". Two episodes of The Simpsons feature Betty, S11E15 & S18E16. Betty plays the old toy Bitey White in both Toy Story 4 and her final credited performance in an episode of Forky Asks A Question S1E5 "What is Love?"

There's another animated oddity you can find over at Peacock, the adult series Father of the Pride about Sigfried and Roy's White Lions. Betty White guested on S1E4 "Donkey" which also features Eddie Murphy reprising his Shrek role.  

Betty White made numerous appearances on The Carol Burnett Show. Tubi carries the syndicated edited episodes, I was able to find Betty hanging out in S10E12 and S11E21. She was also the guest of honor on an episode of Dean Martin's Celebrity Roast S1E4 available on Prime Video.

My last crazy, cool find from the amazing life of Betty White is, what appears to be the only surviving episode of, her brief talk show The Betty White Show. I found the November 29, 1954 episode streaming on a Roku channel/app called ZP TV Direct. Do with that information what you may!

And here's some of Betty White's movie credits that I found streaming...

*Hard Rain (1998) Cinemax

*Dennis The Menace Strikes Again (1998) Hoopla

*Holy Man (1998) Hulu

*Lake Placid (1999) AMC+

*The Retrievers (2001) Peacock, Tubi, Prime

*Bringing Down the House (2003) Prime

*Annie's Point (2005) Up Faith & Family

*Ponyo (2008) HBOMax

*Love N' Dancing (2009) Roku Channel, Tubi, Plex

*You Again (2010) Disney+

*The Lost Valentine (2011) Hallmark Movies Now

*The Lorax (2012) Peacock

*Dog Gone Trouble (2019) Netflix

A new special Celebrating Betty White: America's Golden Girl airs on Monday, Jan. 31 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC and will be available to stream on Peacock the following day.

As we all know, things come and go from the streaming services on a monthly basis. These listing are correct as of 1/19/2022

Disney Play - A Disney Streaming Service Wish List

It's been no secret that the Disney Company is planning on launching their own television streaming service and recent details have emerged that the service will probably be called Disney Play and will be available sometime in 2019. The new venture is being hailed as a "Netflix-killer" in that it's going to be the first streaming network to really go after taking a chunk of Netflix's market share.

Of course the biggest hit Netflix will immediately take is that most of the Disney programming on Netflix will be gone at the end of this year and assuredly pop up again on Disney Play once it's off the ground. Disney Play also has announced their plans to provide top-notch, buzz-worthy original programs and films to their service. There has already been a live-action Star Wars series announced, as well as a new Marvel show and a series based on Monsters Inc. The slate of original films they have announced includes a live-action remake of Lady and the Tramp.

While I'm sure the majority of Disney Play's marketing will push the big name movies and original programming, there's also the matter of Disney's vast library of film and television that will hopefully have a home on the service as well. As a huge Disney buff, I'm really hoping that the luxury of not having to worry about ratings and the low cost of using stuff from their own library, will lead Disney to provide some obscure, vintage and off-beat materials from their vault. Sure, I'm excited about seeing the latest hit movies in my living room, but I also want to watch a 1959 television special with Walt Disney promoting the Matterhorn at Disneyland. I realize I'm not the exact market they are going for, but it would be great if Disney Buff's had some extra stuff to look forward to.

This is just a personal wish list; but here's 10 things I'd like to be able to have access to once Disney Play is streaming across the internet!

GOLDEN PALACE - With the surprising cult-like success The Golden Girls has found now 30 years after it's debut, it's no wonder we haven't seen more of the show's spin-off continuation. The Golden Palace aired on CBS the fall directly after The Golden Girls closed up shop on NBC. Dorthy had married and moved away, so of course the remaining three ladies went in together and bought a hotel and worked there. They also hired Don Cheadle and Cheech too!  Obviously the show wasn't quite as good as the original series, but I always thought it was pretty darn good too. It was certainly better than saying goodbye all-together to Blanche, Rose and Sophia. It was just as funny as any other show in it's eighth season, alas CBS gave it the boot after one just one year.  Golden Palace has never been released on home video in any format and reruns on television have been scarce. It seems like the classic series in on TV all day long and that people would want to see 22 new-ish episodes. I think this would be a great addition to Disney Play and something they could actually use in promoting the service.

COMPLETE SEASONS OF WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISNEY - The Wonderful World of Disney was the Disney company's signature show which ran for several decades in one form or another under numerous titles. The show was an anthology series made up of original episodes and often theatrical films shown in multiple parts.  While a few vintage episodes of the series have been made available in recent years, the series as a whole has never been offered because honestly, why would anyone want to watch a movie cut up into episodes and shown in black and white!? Well, I don't know how much it costs to make shows available to stream/download but it seems like the format of having a huge back catalog of programming would make an opportune time to finally release a few seasons in their entirety. Now some of this would be only to the appeal of a die-hard Disney fan but for completest sake it would be really cool to be able to watch an entire season of Wonderful World of Disney with all of Walt's intros and the promo's for the next week's episode. Also casual viewers could just drop in on any episode they choose - if they were looking for some classic Mickey Mouse cartoons or a nature documentary, for example.  According to IMDb there are over 30 seasons of the classic Disney anthology series. Obviously we don't need all 30, but a few early seasons would be nice for starters.

THE LITTLE MERMAID SERIES - From 1992 to 1994, CBS ran three seasons of the first animated series to be based off a smash hit Disney animated film. While The Little Mermaid series did not have the same beautiful animation as the feature film, it did sport the entire original voice cast as well as some pretty good storytelling.  The show has been rebroadcast over several of Disney's various cable channels and was fairly recently available on the now defunct Disney Junior app. My daughter and I started watching it but didn't get too far in before it disappeared. We'd love to finish it up sometime soon.

THEME PARK SPECIALS - OLD & NEW - It used to be fairly customary to broadcast a television special each time Disneyland or Walt Disney World hit another five year anniversary. There were also specials when new attractions opened and some park celebrations for various holidays. I'm not the only one who would love for a chance to see some of this vintage theme park footage as well as some new specials to commemorate new developments and anniversaries at the Disney vacation properties. I'm sure there would be quite an audience for a special all about the new Star Wars Galaxy's Edge opening on both coasts!

THE MOUSE FACTORY - Classic Disney animated shorts staring Mickey Mouse and the gang have to have a place on a Disney streaming service! May I suggest the 1971-1973 syndicated package known as The Mouse Factory? This is a far-out request as the show is very dated, but that's what makes it so good! Each episode consists of a few vintage shorts with a common theme served up by a host, filmed in live-action segments. Don Knotts, Dom DeLuise and even Kurt Russell were just some of the hosts that dropped by The Mouse Factory. This is just good pure fun that we don't see anymore!

MICKEY MOUSE CLUB (ALL 3 VERSIONS) - I don't need all of it (because there is a lot of it!) But I would love to have access to a number of episodes from all three incarnations of the Mickey Mouse Club. There's the classic black and white episodes from the 50's with Cubby and Annette. I want to see the 1977-1979 disco episodes I saw as a child. And I'm a fan of the 90's version, which eventually stared Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake (even though they came after I stopped watching.)

FELICITY - First of all, I love Keri Russell. I first saw her on the Mickey Mouse Club and had a celebrity crush on her ever since. I watched the first season of Felicity when it came on but then bailed in season two, not because she cut her hair but because of whichever guy she chose in the season opener. I don't remember who it was. Anyway, I've always wanted to go back and rewatch season one and then continue through with the other three seasons. Let's make this happen, Disney!!!

EMPTY NEST and NURSES - Empty Nest was a Golden Girls spin-off about the doctor that lived across the street from the girls. Nurses was an Empty Nest spin-off about nurses on another floor of the Empty Nest doctor's hospital. I was never really a big fan of either, but I'm surprised with all the Golden Girls success now that Empty Nest hasn't shown up anywhere in reruns. I'd give them both another look if I had access to them.

THE TORKELSONS/ALMOST HOME - The Torkelsons was a Disney branded sitcom on NBC about a single mother raising a bunch of kids in the south. It was later retooled as Almost Home which added a young Britney Murphy to the cast. Almost Home was ok, but I loved The Torkelsons! If I ever found a way to watch this series again I would jump right in!

Getting this show back would be the most exciting thing to happen to my adult life

THE MUPPETS - The word is that The Muppets will indeed have a home on the new Disney streaming service and that is very exciting. There is some talk of them continuing the very short lived 2015 ABC series which would be amazing or if they do something else similar that would be amazing too. Either way, I would certainly love to have all 18 episodes of the ABC series available to watch again commercial free (they are on the ABC app with advertising). I would also love to see a back catalogue of other Muppets material including specials and the last two seasons of the classic Muppet Show which have still never been released on DVD.

I guess we'll have to wait a year or so to see if any of my wish list has been fulfilled!

Classic Commercial Sunday - #66

Antique Autos Part 2: Mrs. White's Parakeet

Last week we showed you some Herbie cars from the film Herbie Rides Again, on display at the Antique Auto Club of America Museum in Hershey, PA. Today we want to take a look another special car which is part of the museum's collection. What you're looking at here is a 1977 Cadillac Seville once owned by television superstar Mrs. Betty White. This car was a gift from her husband Allen Ludden, and was custom painted in her favorite color Sea-Mist Green. Betty had lovingly nicknamed the car "Parakeet" before donating it to the Human Society in 2002 for a charity auction. From the auction, it lived with a private owner until it found it's way to the AACA Museum in 2009. Along with the car, the museum also has on display several items commemorating Betty White's awesome career in showbiz.

The car was also used in a two-part episode of Mama's Family. Impressed?

Betty White's Cadillac is a permanent exhibit at the Antique Auto Museum.

NFL Best Fans Ever Super Bowl Commercial

Highlight of last night's telecast including brief clips from two of my favorite shows:

Harold Gould Was Awesome

From Entertainment Weekly's webiste:

Harold Gould, the actor who played Rhoda’s father Martin Morgenstern on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda, has passed away, the New York Times reports. The actor — who died of prostate cancer — was 86 years old.

Gould was well-known for his work in other sitcoms, like The Golden Girls, in which he played a widower who romanced Betty White’s Rose. The actor was also active on film, appearing in such movies as 1973′s The Sting, 1975′s Love and Death, and 1976′s Silent Movie. Among some of his other television credits: The Donna Reed Show, St. Elsewhere, Dallas, Perry Mason, The King of Queens, L.A. Law, Hawaii Five-0, Soap, The Love Boat, Mister Ed, That Girl, and Hogan’s Heroes.

Harold Gould was another one of those familiar faces of Hollywood who I've always enjoyed whenever he would pop up in something. To me, he's best known as Miles, Rose's boyfriend on The Golden Girls. But another role I associate him with instantly is of Grandfather Disguisey in the Dana Carvey vehicle The Master of Disguise (2002) which is pictured above. He's also in a bunch of favorites of mine: he plays the judge in the great Neil Simon ensemble comedy Seems Like Old Times and he's in one of Woody Allen's most underrated films Love and Death (1975). I also adore the movie Gus (1973) about a football playing mule which he was in as well as another great Disney comedy The Strongest Man in the World (1975). He wasn't the strongest man, Kurt Russell was. Gould is even in my favorite Mel Brooks' flick Silent Movie (1976). You'll also find Mr. Gould in a few of the earlier Kenny Rogers as The Gambler TV films.

Golden Girls on the Silver Screen

First off, we neglected to mention the passing of Rue McClanahan a few weeks ago. The loss of a Golden Girl deserves recognition, and WWoB certainly dropped the ball on that one. And for that, we say "Sorry!" But we did have this post in the works for a while now so we shall salute Rue and all the Golden Girls with a brief look at their careers on the silver screen.


The Golden Girls debuted on NBC way back in 1985 and ran for seven seasons, almost always finishing in the top 20 shows of the year. Even though I was all of 12 years old when the show debuted I have always been a huge fan of the program. Even though it certainly wasn't aimed at my demographic, I always found the show to be hysterical and it's always made me laugh out loud. I had already been a fan of Betty White and Rue McClanahan from their work on Mama's Family (the original short lived NBC version, not the syndicated run that played on TBS for far too long) and I quickly became a fan of Estelle Getty and Bea Arthur for their perfect comic timing.


All four actresses mostly concentrated their careers on either television or the stage, but they have all made film appearances that I thought would be a unique subject to cover.

The only one of the four girls that tried to turn the success of The Golden Girls into a movie career was Estelle Getty, who in reality was not the eldest of the four on the show...but she played the oldest - Dorthy's mother Sophia Petrillo. During the run of The Golden Girls Getty had two high profile film roles. She played Andrew McCarthy's boss in Mannequin (1987) which also started future sitcom players Meshach Taylor and Kim Cattrall. Estelle Getty received second billing after Sylvester Stallone in the 1992 flop Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Most people couldn't get over the title of the film, but I found it to be a pretty funny movie with Getty playing Stallone's mom who just wants to fight the bad guys along side her son. After The Golden Girls ended, Estelle Getty made an appearance in the talking mouse epic Stuart Little (1999) while taking bit parts on TV here and there. You can also see some pre-Sophia roles in the films: Tootsie (1982), Deadly Force (1983) and Mask (1985). It was her work in the Tony winning broadway play "Torch Song Trilogy" that first brought Getty fame and recognition, but when it came time to cast the film version she was passed over and her role was given to Anne Bancroft. Estelle Getty passed away at age 85 in July 2008.


Bea Arthur played Dorthy Zbornak, she was apparently the most familiar face of the cast to 1985 audiences. She has appeared in a very popular 70's sitcom called Maude. I had never heard of the show for years, and therefor I had no idea who Bea Arthur was when The Golden Girls came on - but I knew she was darn funny!
Bea Arthur's big break came with a role in the Broadway production "Mame" which stared Angela Lansbury as the title character and Arthur as her sidekick. When Mame got the big screen Hollywood treatment in 1974 it was Arthur who kept her role in the movie version and Lansbury was replaced with Lucille Ball. Bea Arthur was always more interested in theatre and television than film. Her only other big screen credit of note is a hilarious cameo in Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I (1981). One of her few post-Golden credits is in a 1995 film called For Better of For Worse, which ran in this country on TNT and it was pretty enjoyable from what I saw. Her very last role was of Larry David's mother on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Bea Arthur died from lung cancer in April of last year.


Man-hungry Blanche Devereaux was played to perfection by Rue McClanahan. Long before this TV gig, Rue started making appearances in forgotten small films starting in the early 60's. She co-stared with Bea Arthur in her series Maude, which brought McClanahan more into the public eye. One of her earliest post-Maude roles is in a film mentioned at WWoB before; a 1980 TV-movie called The Great American Traffic Jam. In the telefilm, Rue sits in a car for two hours with her husband, played by Ed McMahon. (Fun film, I wish it were out on DVD!) During the Golden Girls years, Rue McClanahan was a popular fixture in made-for-TV movies, including a popular trilogy Children of the Bride (1990), Baby of the Bride (1991) and Mother of the Bride (1993). You can turn in Lifetime, Hallmark, Oxygen or any of those other woman channels just about any day and find one of those movies on. Big Screen roles started coming Rue's way in 1995 in the very funny Dear God, which was the first staring role for Greg Kinnear but also featured a great appearance from Tim Conway! Another great movie featuring Blanche is Out To Sea (1997), this is a sit-com of a movie staring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, good stuff! She also shows up in the 1997 big budget epic Starship Troopers. Rue McClanahan was still working up until her death just a few weeks ago. The last chapter of her career was filled with roles in many different TV shows as well as a number of made-for-TV movies. She was 76 when she passed away.

And then we come to Betty White! Dear sweet Betty White, who has literally been working in television since before there was Network television and is currently one of the hottest properties in all of Hollywood. Betty White has always considered herself a television personality and has only been making appearances on the silver screen in the last 15 years. I was excited years ago when she popped up in the Morgan Freeman/Christian Slater action flick Hard Rain (1998). She also did the horror movie Lake Placid in 1999. Betty turns up in a funny scene in the Bruce Willis/Michelle Pfeiffer comedy The Story of Us (1999). In the 2003 Steve Martin comedy Bringing Down the House, White played against her Golden Girls persona of ditzy Rose Nylund, and played Martin's obnoxious, rude and slightly racist neighbor across the street. Every scene Betty's in is hilarious! Her role in last year's The Proposal is getting alot of attention now that Betty White is a huge star, and they'll also be banking on her superfame to anchor the new chick flick You Again, slated for release later this year! Currently, Betty White is 88 years old and working as a series regular on the hit TV Land sit-com Hot In Cleavland.

Thank you for reading...and Thank you for being a friend.

Betty White + SNL = Awesome!

We've Lost a Golden Girl

Estelle Getty of 'Golden Girls' dies at 84
By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer


Estelle Getty, the diminutive actress who spent 40 years struggling for success before landing a role of a lifetime in 1985 as the sarcastic octogenarian Sophia on TV's "The Golden Girls," has died. She was 84.

Getty, who suffered from advanced dementia, died at about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday at her Hollywood Boulevard home, said her son, Carl Gettleman of Santa Monica.

"Estelle always wanted to be an actress, and she achieved that goal beyond her dreams," former "Golden Girls" co-star Rue McClanahan told The Associated Press. "Don't feel sad about her passing. She will always be with us in her crowning achievement, Sophia."

"The Golden Girls," featuring four female retirees sharing a house in Miami, grew out of NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff's belief that television was ignoring its older viewers.

Three of its stars had already appeared in previous series: Bea Arthur in "Maude," Betty White in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and McClanahan in "Mama's Family." The last character to be cast was Sophia Petrillo, the feisty 80-something mother of Arthur's character.

"Our mother-daughter relationship was one of the greatest comic duos ever, and I will miss her," Arthur said in a statement.

When she auditioned, Getty was appearing on stage in Hollywood as the carping Jewish mother in Harvey Fierstein's play "Torch Song Trilogy." In her early 60s, she flunked her "Golden Girls" test twice because it was believed she didn't look old enough to play 80.

"I could understand that," she told an interviewer a year after the show debuted. "I walk fast, I move fast, I talk fast."

She came prepared for the third audition, however, wearing dowdy clothes and telling an NBC makeup artist, "To you this is just a job. To me it's my entire career down the toilet unless you make me look 80." The artist did, Getty got the job and won two Emmys.

"The only comfort at this moment is that although Estelle has moved on, Sophia will always be with us," White said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

"The Golden Girls" culminated a long struggle for success during which Getty worked low-paying office jobs to help support her family while she tried to make it as a stage actress.

"I knew I could be seduced by success in another field, so I'd say, 'Don't promote me, please,'" she recalled.

She also appeared in small parts in a handful of films and TV movies during that time, including "Tootsie," "Deadly Force" and "Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story."

After her success in "The Golden Girls," other roles came her way. She played Cher's mother in "Mask," Sylvester Stallone's in "Stop or My Mom Will Shoot" and Barry Manilow's in the TV film "Copacabana." Other credits included "Mannequin" and "Stuart Little" (as the voice of Grandma Estelle).

"The Golden Girls," which ran from 1985 to 1992, was an immediate hit, and Sophia, who began as a minor character, soon evolved into a major one.

Audiences particularly loved the verbal zingers Getty would hurl at the other three. When McClanahan's libidinous character Blanche once complained that her life was an open book, Sophia shot back, "Your life's an open blouse."

"I always told her she should be a standup comic. She was so funny in person," McClanahan recalled. "She would always say, 'Why couldn't we make these characters Jewish? Why am I Sicilian?'"

Getty had gained a knack for one-liners in her late teens when she did standup comedy at a Catskills hotel. Female comedians were rare in those days, however, and she bombed.

Undeterred, she continued to pursue a career in entertainment, and while her parents were encouraging, her father also insisted that she learn office skills so she would have something to fall back on.

Born Estelle Scher to Polish immigrants in New York, Getty fell in love with theater when she saw a vaudeville show at age 4.

She married New York businessman Arthur Gettleman (the source of her stage name) in 1947, and they had two sons, Carl and Barry. The marriage prevailed despite her long absences on the road and in "The Golden Girls."

Getty was evasive about her height, acknowledging only that she was "under 5 feet and under 100 pounds."

McClanahan said her nickname for Getty was "Slats."

"Because she was so short, itty-bitty," she said.

In addition to her son Carl, Getty is survived by son Barry Gettleman, of Miami; a brother, David Scher of London; and a sister, Rosilyn Howard of Las Vegas.

___

Associated Press Writers Robert Jablon and Solvej Schou contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.