US Post Celebrates Iconic Greek-American Comedienne Betty White With New Stamp

The US Postal Service commemorates iconic, Greek-American comedienne Betty White with a new stamp that celebrates the entertainer’s mischievous wit, saucy persona and tireless advocacy for animals.

“Betty White was an American treasure,” said Amber McReynolds, chairwoman of the USPS Board of Governors. “With this stamp we honor and remember the beloved ‘First Lady of Television’ and the enduring mark she left on our American culture.”

The stamp was unveiled at a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens on Thursday, and it is based on a White’s photograph taken Kwaku Aston in 2010. Sold in a pane of 20, the stamp was designed by art director Greg Breeding, with original art by Dale Stephanos. The beloved star is portrayed in a background with bubbly spots that “befit her sparkling personality,” the US Postal Service says while wearing an earring shaped like a paw print, which symbolizes her love for animals.

Stephanos, who was present at the event, described how the tiniest detail in his design came to him at breakfast.

“I was absent mindedly drawing instead of eating my eggs and looking back down at the mess I had been making in my scetchbook, I saw that at some point, I had drawn a paw print,” said Stephanos. “I had a bit of a eureka moment and thought, what if I just give Betty an earring that’s in the shape of a paw print?”

Betty White: The life and legacy of the iconic Greek-American comedienne

Betty White, the irrepressible, iconic Greek-American comedienne, died on December 31, 2021 at the age of 99 and went to enduring stardom on TV over the span of decades.

Her life was amazing on many different levels. Growing up in Oak Park, Illinois, she blazed a trail for female television executives from the beginning.

Her sweet, gentle personality had a bit of a naughty twist, and in the 1970s she created a completely unique persona in the form of Sue Ann Nivens, a sickly-sweet television cook whose sarcastic, withering comments “off-air” were a jolt to the senses at that time for television viewers.

She occupied a unique place in the American entertainment industry, having worked in it since the 1930’s, starting out singing on the radio in California.

Betty Marion White was born in Oak Park, Illinois, on January 17, 1922. She was the only child of Christine Cachikis, whose father was a Greek man named Nicholas Cachikis. White’s father was Horace Logan White, a lighting company executive. Her paternal grandfather was Danish and her maternal grandfather was Greek, with her other roots being English and Welsh. Both of her grandmothers were Canadians.

White was only eight years old when she made her radio debut in 1930; several years later, she began working as a radio personality in Los Angeles with Al Jarvis.

White wrote and played the lead in her graduation play at Horace Mann School, and discovered her interest in performing while taking part in that production. White began her television career in 1939, just three months after her high school graduation, when she and a classmate sang songs from The Merry Widow on an experimental television show. Al Jarvis’ Make-Believe Ballroom on KFWB and on KCOP-TV in Los Angeles.

White began hosting the show by herself in 1952 after Jarvis’s departure, spanning five and a half hours of grueling live television six days per week, over a continuous four-year span. In all of her various variety series over the years, White would sing at least a couple of songs during each broadcast.

Her television sitcom “Life with Elizabeth” was nationally syndicated from 1952 to 1955, making her one of the few women in television with full creative control in front of and behind the camera. The show was unusual for the 1950s because it was co-produced and owned by a twenty-eight-year-old woman who still lived with her parents.

She later made her feature film debut as Kansas Senator Elizabeth Ames Adams in the 1962 drama, “Advise & Consent.” Although her performance was well received, it would be her only big-screen appearance for decades.

After making the transition to television, White became an almost-permanent panelist on a host of American game shows, including Password, Match Game, Tattletales, To Tell the Truth, The Hollywood Squares and The $25,000 Pyramid; she was once dubbed “the first lady of game shows.”

Through the 1950s and 1960s, White began a nineteen-year run as hostess and commentator on the annual Rose Parade broadcast on NBC and appeared on a number of late-night talk shows, including Jack Paar’s The Tonight Show.

In 1973, White made several appearances in the fourth season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, as the “man-hungry” Sue Ann Nivens, whose acerbic wit was even more marked since it came from a character in the “television show within a show” who was outwardly so sweet.

In 1985, White scored her second signature role and the biggest hit of her career as Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls. The series chronicled the lives of four widowed or divorced women in their “golden years” who shared a home in Miami. The Golden Girls, which also starred Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, and Rue McClanahan, was immensely successful and ran from 1985 through 1992.

In 2009, White starred in another feature movie, the romantic comedy “The Proposal,” alongside Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. The film was a box-office and critically acclaimed success. From 2012 to 2014, White hosted and executive produced “Betty White’s Off Their Rockers,” in which senior citizens play practical jokes on the younger generation. She received three Emmy nominations for that show.

White’s success continued in 2012 with her first Grammy Award for a spoken word recording for her bestseller “If You Ask Me (But You Won’t).” She also won UCLA’s Jack Benny Award for Comedy, recognizing her significant contribution to comedy in television, and was roasted at the New York Friars Club.

With a television career spanning over nine decades, White worked longer in that medium than anyone else in the entire television industry, earning her a Guinness World Record in 2018.

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