Betty White, America’s sweetheart, was an ageless television icon.

Betty White was the wicked sweetheart of America. She enchanted millions of viewers decade after decade with an innocent grin and a naughty joke, ascending from $50-a-week to ageless superstar who admonished her admirers, “Don’t attempt to remain young. “All you have to do is open your mind.”

Even in her 90s, she enjoyed a martini before dinner, a monthly poker session, and a wide-eyed curiosity in the world around her, defying time and expectations. “There are so many things I’ll never know about because I won’t live long enough to find out about,” she claimed.

The fact that she only required four hours of sleep per night helped.

White, who died two weeks before her 99th birthday, began her career in television while it was still in its infancy and never lost touch.

Her sassy, can-do attitude established her as a television staple. Her mix of sweetness and spice gave life to a slew of oddball characters in shows ranging from the sitcom “Life With Elizabeth” in the early 1950s to man-crazy TV hostess Sue Ann on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in the 1970s, from loopy housemate Rose Nylund in “The Golden Girls” in the 1980s to the courtroom drama “Boston Legal” from 2004 to 2008.

But all of it was just a warm-up for even greater stardom in the new millennium, when White’s stardom blossomed in a way it had never erupted before, thanks to public desire.

She played an energy-sapping male getting tackled during a backlot football game in a Snickers commercial that aired during the 2010 Super Bowl telecast.

“Mike, you’re acting like Betty White out there,” one of his pals mocked. “That’s not what your girlfriend said!” retorted White, who had been knocked down on the ground and was coated in dirt.

The viral video sparked a Facebook campaign called “Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!” that resulted in her co-hosting “Saturday Night Live” in a much-watched, much-applauded episode on Mother’s Day weekend, with a half-million followers. Her appearance earned her a seventh Emmy nomination.

A month later, TV Land debuted “Hot In Cleveland,” its first original scripted series, starring Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves, and Wendie Malick as three showbiz veterans who go to Cleveland to escape Hollywood’s youth obsession. They move into a house that is being cared for by an elderly Polish widow, played by White, who was only supposed to appear in the pilot episode.

White, on the other hand, performed her magic once more. Elka Ostrovsky, a salty character, became a crucial feature of the series, which was an instant hit.

After that, members of The Associated Press elected her Entertainer of the Year. “It’s ludicrous,” White laughed at the honor, mockingly.

“I’m hoping they haven’t noticed me yet.”

White’s fame grew to the point where her 90th birthday became a national event, with NBC airing “Betty White’s 90th Birthday Party” as a star-studded prime-time special in 2012. She worked well into her 90s, notably as one of the voices for the toys in “Toy Story 4,” including “Bitey White.”

White’s ability to be raunchy or mischievous but still exuding niceness was one of the things that made her look eternally young.

Her characters’ unusually salty vocabulary was noticeable in the horror spoof “Lake Placid” and the comedy “The Proposal.” On “Boston Legal,” her character Catherine Piper killed a man with a skillet.

In 1973, she came close to not being cast as “Happy Homemaker” Sue Ann Nivens in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Moore and Moore’s then-husband, producer Grant Tinker, were good friends of her and her husband, Allen Ludden. It was afraid that if White did not succeed on the show, which was already a tremendous success, it would be embarrassing for all four of them.

However, CBS casting director Ethel Winant believed White to be the obvious option. Sue Ann’s character was originally intended to be a one-shot appearance, but it remained until Moore cancelled the series in 1977.

Sue Ann made comedy hay with lines like this one about spending Christmas with a sister in Florida: “She’s sort of a weirdo,” Sue Ann commented softly, “but she’s got it.”

She won two Emmys for her performance as a supporting actress in a comedy series for the part.

“The Golden Girls,” starring Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty, premiered on NBC in 1985. In a youth-obsessed industry, its ensemble of mature actors playing single ladies in Miami retirement was a risk, but it paid off with a strong hit that lasted until 1992.

Rose was played by White, who was a sweet, dim-bulb widow who managed to misjudge the majority of situations. Her off-the-wall tales of her childhood in the mythical rural village of St. Olaf, Minnesota, drove her housemates insane.

Rose, for example, explained the yearly talent show, which featured a herring juggling act:

Her friends were suspicious. “Someone actually juggled herring?”

“No!” Rose reprimanded them. “The juggling was done by the herring: tiny little Ginseng knives.”

She received another Emmy for the role, which she returned in a short-lived sequel called “The Golden Palace.”

“Mama’s Family,” in which she played Vicki Lawrence’s irascible mother; “Just Men,” a game show in which women attempted to guess answers to questions directed at male celebrities; and “Ladies Man,” in which she played Alfred Molina’s catty mother.

She received a daytime Emmy for “Just Men,” and a fourth prime-time Emmy in 1996 for a guest appearance on “The John Larroquette Show.”

She also starred in a number of miniseries and television films, including Otto Preminger’s 1962 Capitol Hill drama “Advice and Consent,” in which she played a U.S. senator.

Betty Marion White was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1922, and relocated to Los Angeles as a youngster.

She told The Associated Press in 2015, “I’m an only kid, and I had a mother and father who never drew a straight line: They just thought funny.” “We’d sit at the breakfast table for a while and then start kicking stuff around.”

My father worked as a salesman and was always full of jokes when he got home. ‘Sweetheart, you may take THAT one to school,’ he’d remark. ′However, I would not accept THIS one.′ “We had a fantastic experience.”

Her childhood dream was to be a writer, and she created her elementary school graduation play, in which she played the major part.

Her desire shifted to acting at Beverly Hills High School, and she appeared in several school productions. Her parents had hoped she would attend college, but instead she worked in a small theater group and appeared in radio dramas in minor roles.

Then, in 1949, she was cast in a local midday TV show featuring Al Jarvis, Los Angeles’ most famous radio jockey.

She was given the advice to start lying about her age at that point.

In a 2011 interview with The Associated Press, she observed, “We are so age-conscious in this society.” “It’s ridiculous, but that’s how we are.” ‘Knock four years off right now,’ I was informed. ‘Down the road, you’ll be thanking yourself.’ I was born in the year 1922.

‘I must constantly remember that I was born in 1926,’ I reasoned. But then I’d have to figure out the math. Finally, I decided to abandon the project.”

White was an obvious choice for the new media. With a dimpled, eye-crinkling smile, she was bright, attractive, and charming. “Betty White Hailed as TV’s Busiest Gal,” read a headline in the Los Angeles Times in 1951.

“I did that show for 412 years, 512 hours a day, six days a week,” she said in 1975. Jarvis was replaced by actor Eddie Albert, and she took over the show when he departed to Europe for the film “Roman Holiday.”

“Life With Elizabeth,” a syndicated series based on a sketch she did with Jarvis, won White her first Emmy. She used to do daytime interviews on “The Betty White Show,” nighttime filming, and frequent appearances on late-night talk shows. She has also performed in advertisements and narrated the Pasadena Rose Parade in the New Year.

She was a welcome guest on “I’ve Got a Secret,” “To Tell the Truth,” “What’s My Line,” and other game shows, all the way up to the 2008 “Million Dollar Password,” which revived the game once hosted by Ludden, whom she had met as a contestant on the original “Password,” with her glib tongue and quick responses cultivated during the Jarvis years.

That was in 1961, and the following year, while traveling in summer theater during television’s off-season, she co-starred in the comedy “Critic’s Choice” with Ludden, who was by then a widower with three children.

White’s determination faded after a marriage in the late 1940s, when she claimed to be “militantly unmarried.”

In 1963, she told a reporter, “I had always said on ‘The Tonight Show’ and everywhere else that I would never be married again.” “However, Allen outnumbers me. He got started, and even the kids joined in. And I happily submitted.”

His marriage lasted from 1963 to 1981, when he died of cancer.

White worked tirelessly behind the scenes to generate funds for animal charities such as the Morris Animal Foundation and the Los Angeles Zoo. She conceived, produced, and hosted “The Pet Set,” a syndicated TV show on which celebrities brought their dogs and cats from 1970 to 1971. Betty White’s Pet Love, published in 1983, was her first book.

Her love for animals was so strong that she turned down a leading role in the successful 1997 film “As Good As It Gets.” She railed against a scenario in which Jack Nicholson throws a little dog down a laundry chute.

White detailed the beginnings of her affection for dogs in her 2011 book “If You Ask Me (And Of Course You Won’t).” Her father produced radios to sell during the Great Depression to supplement his income. But, because no one could afford the radios, he gladly exchanged them for dogs, which, housed in cages in the backyard, numbered as many as 15 at times and added to White’s joyful childhood.

Are there any animals that she dislikes?

Then what about snakes?

“Ohhh, I LOVE snakes!”

And when asked how she had managed to be universally beloved by humans throughout her life, not just by animals, she summed up with a dimpled smile, “I just make it my business to get along with people so I can have fun. It’s that simple.”