The Unsinkable Betty White

Betty Marion White Ludden had the longest television career in history. She made her TV debut in 1939 and in the late 1940s she co-hosted a local Los Angeles series that ran five hours each day. When the Emmy Awards added the "Best Actress" category in 1951, she was one of the nominees, and exactly sixty years later, in 2011, she was a nominee once again. In between she's won eight Emmy awards, three American Comedy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild awards, a Grammy Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She's the oldest person ever to host "Saturday Night Live" and passed just short of her hundredth birthday, marking her tenth decade in show business. She is, in short, unsinkable.

Sources:

Here We Go Again: My Life in Television, 1949-1995, by Betty White