1951–1969: Early career and breakthrough
After the war, White made the rounds to movie studios looking for work, but was turned down because she was "not photogenic". She started to look for radio jobs, where being photogenic did not matter. Her first radio jobs included reading commercials and playing bit parts, and sometimes even doing crowd noises. She made about five dollars a show. She would do just about anything, like singing on a show for no pay. She appeared on shows such as Blondie, The Great Gildersleeve, and This Is Your FBI. She was then offered her own radio show, called The Betty White Show.
In 1949, she began appearing as co-host with Al Jarvis on his daily live television variety show Hollywood on Television, originally called Make Believe Ballroom, on KFWB and then on KLAC-TV (now 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 live ad lib 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. In 1951, she was nominated for her first Emmy Award as "Best Actress" on television, competing with Judith Anderson, Helen Hayes, and Imogene Coca; the award went to Gertrude Berg. At this point, the award was for body of work, with no shows named in nominations.
From 1952 to 1954, White hosted and produced her own daily talk/variety show, The Betty White Show, first on KLAC-TV and then on NBC (her first television, but second show to feature that title). Like her sitcom, she had creative control over the series, and was able to hire a female director. In a first for American network variety television, her show featured an African-American performer, but the show faced criticism for the inclusion of tap dancer Arthur Duncan as a regular cast member. The criticism followed when NBC expanded the show nationally. Local Southern stations in the Jim Crow era threatened to boycott unless Duncan was removed from the series. In response, White said "I'm sorry. Live with it", and gave Duncan more airtime. Initially a ratings success, the show repeatedly changed time slots and suffered lower viewership. By the end of the year, NBC quietly cancelled the series.
In 1952, the same year that she began hosting Hollywood on Television, White co-founded Bandy Productions with writer George Tibbles and Don Fedderson, a producer. The trio worked to create new shows using existing characters from sketches shown on Hollywood on Television. White, Fedderson, and Tibbles created the television comedy Life with Elizabeth, with White portraying the title character. The show was originally a live production on KLAC-TV in 1951, and won White a Los Angeles Emmy Award in 1952. Life with Elizabeth was nationally syndicated from 1953 to 1955, allowing White to become one of the few women in television with full creative control in front of and behind the camera. The show was unusual for a sitcom in the 1950s because it was co-produced and owned by a twenty-eight-year-old woman who still lived with her parents. White said they did not worry about relevance in those days, and that usually the incidents were based on real-life situations that happened to her, Del Moore (who played Alvin), and the writer. White also performed in television advertisements seen on live television in Los Angeles, including a rendition of the "Dr. Ross Dog Food" advertisement at KTLA during the 1950s. She guest-starred on The Millionaire in the 1956 episode "The Virginia Lennart Story", as the owner of a small-town diner who receives an anonymous gift of $1 million.
Following the end of Life with Elizabeth, she appeared as Vicki Angel on the ABC sitcom Date with the Angels from 1957 to 1958. As originally intended, the show, loosely based on the Elmer Rice play Dream Girl, would focus on Vicki's daydreaming tendencies. However, the sponsor was not pleased with the fantasy elements and was pressured to have them eliminated. "I can honestly say that was the only time I have ever wanted to get out of a show", White later said. The sitcom was a critical and rating disaster, but ABC would not allow White to break her contractual agreement and required her to fill the remaining thirteen weeks in their deal. Instead of a retooled version of the sitcom, White rebooted her old talk/variety show, The Betty White Show, which aired until her contract was fulfilled.
The sitcom did give White some positive experiences: she first met Lucille Ball while working on it, as both Date With the Angels and I Love Lucy were filmed on the same Culver Studios lot. The two quickly struck up a friendship over their accomplishments in taking on the male-dominated television business of the 1950s. They relied on one another through divorce, illness, personal loss, and even competed against one another on various game shows. In July 1959, White made her professional stage debut in a week-long production of the play, Third Best Sport, at the Ephrata Legion Star Playhouse in Ephrata, Pennsylvania.
By the 1960s, White was a staple of network game shows and talk shows: including both Jack Paar's and later Johnny Carson's tenure on The Tonight Show. She made many appearances on the hit Password show as a celebrity guest from 1961 through 1975. She married the show's host, Allen Ludden, in 1963. She subsequently appeared on the show's three updated versions, Password Plus, Super Password, and Million Dollar Password. White made frequent game show appearances on What's My Line? (starting in 1955), To Tell the Truth (in 1961, 1990, and 2015), I've Got a Secret (in 1972–73), Match Game (1973–1982), and Pyramid (starting in 1982). She made her feature film debut as fictional Kansas Senator Elizabeth Ames Adams in the 1962 drama Advise & Consent; in 2004, on talk show Q&A, host Brian Lamb remarked on White's longevity as an actress besides the fact she was playing a strong female senator in 1962. He and Donald A. Ritchie noted that viewers would have seen the Senator Adams character to reflect Margaret Chase Smith. In 1963, White starred in a production of The King and I at the St. Louis Municipal Opera Theatre, with Charles Korvin co-starring as the king.
NBC offered her an anchor job on their flagship breakfast television show Today. She turned the offer down because she did not want to move permanently to New York City (where Today is produced). The job eventually went to Barbara Walters. Through the 1950s and 1960s, White began a nineteen-year run as hostess and commentator on the annual Rose Parade broadcast on NBC (co-hosting with Roy Neal and later Lorne Greene), and appeared on a number of late-night talk shows, including Jack Paar's The Tonight Show, and various other daytime game shows.
