The one and only actor who called Betty White a c*nt: “Just get over it, for crying out loud”
It speaks volumes to how beloved film and TV icon Betty White was that the one thing she did that pissed everybody off was failing to make it to 100 years old, after she passed away three weeks shy of her centenary in December 2021, to pump the brakes on what would have been an outpouring of joyous celebration.
She’d been around for so long that several generations didn’t know a film or television landscape without her being part of it, which saw her become a record-breaker when she was awarded for enjoying the single longest career of any female entertainer in history, spending almost 80 years in the industry.
White made her earliest appearances on the radio in the late 1930s, and to put her remarkable longevity into context, she played a supporting role in a billion-dollar movie in 2019 when she voiced Bitey White in Pixar’s blockbuster sequel, Toy Story 4, and after breaking through as a TV star in the 1950s, she never dropped out of the spotlight for too long.
The seven-time Primetime Emmy winner was the first woman in the award show’s history to win in every comedic category, and her first and last nominations were separated by 63 years. The older she got, the more everyone seemed to love her, and towards the tail-end of her career, White became a regular scene-stealer in a number of film and television productions.
You’d have to travel far, wide, and through decades of adulation to find anyone with a bad word to say about her, and you’d have to significantly narrow that focus to find a single person who’d dare to call her a cunt. There’s always one, though, and it was at least somewhat fitting that it was the closest thing she had to an arch-nemesis; her Golden Girls co-star, Bea Arthur.
The seven-season sitcom was a ratings smash during its initial run between 1985 and 1992, and it remains every bit as popular today. However, things behind the scenes weren’t anywhere near as rosy as they were in front of the cameras, with White and Arthur often at each other’s throats, and the bad blood between them continued to foster throughout the show’s run.
It was an open secret among the production team that the pair absolutely despised each other with a passion, but since they were actors by trade, they managed to keep things as civil as possible when the cameras were rolling. When they weren’t, the antagonistic duo preferred to keep their distance.
“When that red light was on, there were no more professional people than those women,” co-producer Marsha Posner Williams informed The Hollywood Reporter. “But when the red light was off, those two couldn’t warm up to each other if they were cremated together.”
Arthur hated White so much that she felt compelled to inform Williams when she encountered her enemy in public, after she revealed that the former “used to call me at home and say, ‘I just ran into that cunt at the grocery store. I’m gonna write her a letter.” The producer took a more diplomatic approach, saying, “Bea, just get over it, for crying out loud,” but the fences between them were never mended.
