Betty White, a TV Fixture for Seven Decades, Is Dead at 99

Betty White was best known as the manipulative and bawdy Sue Ann on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and as the naïve, scatterbrained Rose on “The Golden Girls.” Credit…Amy Dickerson for The New York Times

Betty White, who created two of the most memorable characters in sitcom history, the nymphomaniacal Sue Ann Nivens on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and the sweet but dim Rose Nylund on “The Golden Girls” — and who capped her long career with a comeback that included a triumphant appearance as the host of “Saturday Night Live” at the age of 88 — died on Friday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 99.

Her death, less than three weeks before her 100th birthday, was confirmed by Jeff Witjas, her longtime friend and agent.

Ms. White won five Primetime Emmys and one competitive Daytime Emmy — as well as a lifetime achievement Daytime Emmy in 2015 and a Los Angeles regional Emmy in 1952 — in a television career that spanned seven decades and that the 2014 edition of “Guinness World Records” certified as the longest ever for a female entertainer.

But her breakthrough came relatively late in life, with her work on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” from 1973 to 1977, for which she won two of her Emmys.