Though she spent the last couple of years before she passed away, in the last hours of 2021 just weeks shy of her 100th birthday, at her charming, yellow-shuttered traditional residence in L.A.’s tony Brentwood neighborhood, it was her rustic-modern home of 50 years, in the affluent and relaxed seaside community of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., where beloved Tinseltown icon Betty White preferred to hang her hat. Or maybe it’s where the 1995 TV Hall of Fame inductee kept the eight Emmys and trio of Screen Actor’s Guild Awards she earned over the course of her eight decades in show business.
In 1978, at the end of her scene-stealing turn as ferociously cheerful Sue Ann Nivens on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” White and her third husband, game show host Allen Ludden — they met in 1961 when she appeared as a celebrity guest on “Password,” paid $170,000 for a slightly more than quarter-acre parcel on a high bluff directly above Carmel Bay. They commissioned a three-story wood and glass home of more than 3,600 square feet, which was completed in 1981. Alas, Ludden died just a few days before their 18th wedding anniversary, after spending just a few nights in the newly finished home.
It wasn’t for several years after Ludden’s death that White landed what is arguably her most enduring role as lovably dimwitted Florida retiree Rose Nylund on the iconic, cult-favorite 1980s and ‘90s sitcom “Golden Girls.” White held on to and spent as much time as she could at the Carmel house, through dozens of film and television roles that garnered her a total of 21 Emmy nominations, four Golden Globe nominations, and a 2012 Grammy for the audio version of her memoir, “If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won’t).” A tireless professional, White worked well into her nineties, lending her voice in 2019 as Bitey White in “Toy Story 4.”
Now, White’s beloved Carmel home has been set out for sale by her estate with Truszkowski Freedman & Associates of…