Tag Archives: National Breaking News

Kirstie Alley dies at 71

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TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Kirstie Alley, who won an Emmy for her role on “Cheers” and starred in films including “Look Who’s Talking,” died Monday.

Alley died of cancer that was only recently discovered, her children True and Lillie Parker said in a post on Twitter. Alley’s manager Donovan Daughtry confirmed the death in an email to The Associated Press.

Alley was 71.

“As iconic as she was on screen, she was an even more amazing mother and grandmother,” her children’s statement said.

She starred as Rebecca Howe on the NBC sitcom “Cheers” from 1987 to 1993, after the departure of original star Shelley Long.

She had her own sitcom on the network, “Veronica’s Closet,” from 1997 to 2000.

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Reality TV’s Chrisleys sentenced for bank fraud, tax evasion

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ATLANTA (AP) — Reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley were sentenced Monday to lengthy prison terms after being convicted earlier this year on charges including bank fraud and tax evasion.

U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross in Atlanta gave Todd Chrisley 12 years in prison plus 16 months of probation, while Julie Chrisley got seven years behind bars and 16 months of probation, news outlets reported.

The Chrisleys gained fame with their show “Chrisley Knows Best,” which follows their tight-knit, boisterous family. Federal prosecutors said the couple engaged in an extensive bank fraud scheme and then hid their wealth from tax authorities while flaunting their lavish lifestyle.

“The Chrisleys have built an empire based on the lie that their wealth came from dedication and hard work,” prosecutors wrote. “The jury’s unanimous verdict sets the record straight: Todd and Julie Chrisley are career swindlers who have made a living by jumping from one fraud scheme to another, lying to banks, stiffing vendors, and evading taxes at every corner.”

Todd Chrisley’s attorneys had argued in a court filing that he should not face more than nine years in prison. Julie Chrisley’s lawyers said a reasonable sentence for her would be probation with special conditions and no prison time.

The Chrisleys were convicted in June on charges of bank fraud, tax evasion and conspiring to defraud the IRS. Julie Chrisley was also convicted of wire fraud and obstruction of justice.

Prosecutors have said the couple submitted fake documents to banks and managed to secure more than $30 million in fraudulent loans. Once that scheme fell apart, they walked away from their responsibility to repay the loans when Todd Chrisley declared bankruptcy. While in bankruptcy, they started their reality show and “flaunted their wealth and lifestyle to the American public,” prosecutors wrote, and then hid the millions they made from the show from the IRS.

The Chrisleys also submitted a false document to a grand jury that was investigating their crimes and then convinced friends and family members to lie under oath during their trial, prosecutors argued. Neither has shown any remorse and they have, instead, blamed others for their criminal conduct, prosecutors wrote.

“The Chrisleys are unique given the varied and wide-ranging scope of their fraudulent conduct and the extent to which they engaged in fraud and obstructive behavior for a prolonged period of time,” prosecutors said.

Todd Chrisley’s lawyers said in a filing that the government never produced any evidence that he meant to defraud the banks, and that the loss amount calculated was incorrect. They also noted that the offenses were committed a long time ago and said he has no serious criminal history and has medical conditions that “would make imprisonment disproportionately harsh.”

His lawyers had also submitted letters from friends and business associates that show “a history of good deeds and striving to help others.” People who rely on Chrisley — including his mother and the many people employed by his television shows — will be harmed while he’s in prison, they argued.

They urged the judge to give him a prison sentence below the guideline range followed by supervised release and restitution.

Julie Chrisley’s lawyers contended that she played a minimal role in the conspiracy and was not involved when the loans discussed in sentencing documents were obtained. She has no prior convictions, is an asset to her community and has “extraordinary family obligations,” her lawyers wrote, as they asked for a sentence of probation, restitution and community service.

The Chrisleys have three children together, including one who is 16, and also full custody of the 10-year-old daughter of Todd Chrisley’s son from a prior marriage. Julie Chrisley is the primary caregiver to her ailing mother-in-law, according to the filing.

Her lawyers also submitted letters from character witnesses describing her as “hard-working, unfailingly selfless, devoted to her family and friend, highly respected by all who know her, and strong of character.”

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Jerry Lee Lewis, outrageous rock ‘n’ roll star, dies at 87

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Jerry Lee Lewis, the untamable rock ‘n’ roll pioneer whose outrageous talent, energy and ego collided on such definitive records as “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and sustained a career otherwise upended by personal scandal, died Friday morning at 87.

The last survivor of a generation of groundbreaking performers that included Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Lewis died at home in Memphis, Tennessee, representative Zach Farnum said in a release.

Of all the rock rebels to emerge in the 1950s, few captured the new genre’s attraction and danger as unforgettably as the Louisiana-born piano player who called himself “The Killer.”

Tender ballads were best left to the old folks. Lewis was all about lust and gratification, with his leering tenor and demanding asides, violent tempos and brash glissandi, cocky sneer and crazy blond hair. He was a one-man stampede who made the fans scream and the keyboards swear, his live act so combustible that during a 1957 performance of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” on “The Steve Allen Show,” chairs were thrown at him like buckets of water on an inferno.

“There was rockabilly. There was Elvis. But there was no pure rock ’n ’roll before Jerry Lee Lewis kicked in the door,” a Lewis admirer once observed. That admirer was Jerry Lee Lewis.

But in his private life, he raged in ways that might have ended his career today — and nearly did back then.

For a brief time, in 1958, he was a contender to replace Presley as rock’s prime hit maker after Elvis was drafted into the Army. But while Lewis toured in England, the press learned three damaging things: He was married to 13-year-old (possibly even 12-year-old) Myra Gale Brown, she was his cousin, and he was still married to his previous wife. His tour was canceled, he was blacklisted from the radio and his earnings dropped overnight to virtually nothing.

“I probably would have rearranged my life a little bit different, but I never did hide anything from people,” Lewis told the Wall Street Journal in 2014 when asked about the marriage. “I just went on with my life as usual.”

Over the following decades, Lewis struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, legal disputes and physical illness. Two of his many marriages ended in his wife’s early death. Brown herself divorced him in the early 1970s and would later allege physical and mental cruelty that nearly drove her to suicide.

“If I was still married to Jerry, I’d probably be dead by now,” she told People magazine in 1989.

Lewis reinvented himself as a country performer in the 1960s, and the music industry eventually forgave him, long after he stopped having hits. He won three Grammys, and recorded with some of the industry’s greatest stars. In 2006, Lewis came out with “Last Man Standing,” featuring Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, B.B. King and George Jones. In 2010, Lewis brought in Jagger, Keith Richards, Sheryl Crow, Tim McGraw and others for the album “Mean Old Man.”

In “The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll,” first published in 1975, he recalled how he convinced disc jockeys to give him a second chance.

“This time I said, ‘Look, man, let’s get together and draw a line on this stuff — a peace treaty you know,’” he explained. Lewis would still play the old hits on stage, but on the radio he would sing country.

Lewis had a run of top 10 country hits between 1967-70, and hardly mellowed at all. He performed drinking songs such as “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)”, the roving eye confessions of “She Still Comes Around” and a dry-eyed cover of a classic ballad of abandonment, “She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye.” He had remained popular in Europe and a 1964 album, “Live at the Star Club, Hamburg,” is widely regarded as one of the greatest concert records.

A 1973 performance proved more troublesome: Lewis sang for the Grand Ole Opry and broke two longstanding rules — no swearing and no non-country songs.

“I am a rock and rollin’, country-and-western, rhythm and blues-singin’ motherf—–,” he told the audience.

Lewis married seven times, and was rarely far from trouble or death. His fourth wife, Jaren Elizabeth Gunn Pate, drowned in a swimming pool in 1982 while suing for divorce. His fifth wife, Shawn Stephens, 23 years his junior, died of an apparent drug overdose in 1983. Within a year, Lewis had married Kerrie McCarver, then 21. She filed for divorce in 1986, accusing him of physical abuse and infidelity. He countersued, but both petitions eventually were dropped. They finally divorced in 2005 after several years of separation. The couple had one child, Jerry Lee III.

Another son by a previous marriage, Steve Allen Lewis, 3, drowned in a swimming pool in 1962, and son Jerry Lee Jr. died in a traffic accident at 19 in 1973. Lewis also had two daughters, Phoebe and Lori Leigh, and his survived by his wife Judith.

His finances were also chaotic. Lewis made millions, but he liked his money in cash and ended up owing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Internal Revenue Service. When he began welcoming tourists in 1994 to his longtime residence near Nesbit, Mississippi — complete with a piano-shaped swimming pool — he set up a 900 phone number fans could call for a recorded message at $2.75 a minute.

The son of one-time bootlegger Elmo Lewis and the cousin of TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart and country star Mickey Gilley, Lewis was born in Ferriday, Louisiana. As a boy, he first learned to play guitar, but found the instrument too confining and longed for an instrument that the only the rich people in his town could afford — a piano. His life changed when his father pulled up in his truck one day and presented him a dark-wood, upright set of keyboards.

“My eyes almost fell out of my head,” Lewis recalled in “Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story,” written by Rick Bragg and published in 2014.

He took to the piano immediately, and began sneaking off to Black juke joints and absorbing everything from gospel to boogie-woogie. Conflicted early on between secular and scared music, he quit school at 16, with plans of becoming a piano-playing preacher. Lewis briefly attended Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie, Texas, a fundamentalist Bible college, but was expelled, reportedly, for playing the “wrong” kind of music.

“Great Balls of Fire,” a sexualized take on Biblical imagery that Lewis initially refused to record, and “Whole Lotta Shakin’” were his most enduring songs and performance pieces. Lewis had only a handful of other pop hits, including “High School Confidential” and “Breathless,” but they were enough to ensure his place as a rock ‘n’ roll architect.

“No group, be it (the) Beatles, Dylan or Stones, have ever improved on ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’’ for my money,” John Lennon would tell Rolling Stone in 1970.

A roadhouse veteran by his early 20s, Lewis took off for Memphis in 1956 and showed up at the studios of Sun Records, the musical home of Elvis, Perkins and Cash. Told by company founder Sam Phillips to go learn some rock ‘n roll, Lewis returned and soon hurried off “Whole Lotta Shakin’” in a single take.

“I knew it was a hit when I cut it,” he later said. “Sam Phillips thought it was gonna be too risque, it couldn’t make it. If that’s risque, well, I’m sorry.”

In 1986, along with Elvis, Chuck Berry and others, he made the inaugural class of inductees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The Killer not only outlasted his contemporaries but saw his life and music periodically reintroduced to younger fans, including the the 1989 biopic “Great Balls of Fire,” starring Dennis Quaid, and Ethan Coen’s 2022 documentary “Trouble in Mind.” A 2010 Broadway music, “Million Dollar Quartet,” was inspired by a recording session that featured Lewis, Elvis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash.

He won a Grammy in 1987 as part of an interview album that was cited for best spoken word recording, and he received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2005. The following year, “Whole Lotta Shakin’” was selected for the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, whose board praised the “propulsive boogie piano that was perfectly complemented by the drive of J.M. Van Eaton’s energetic drumming. The listeners to the recording, like Lewis himself, had a hard time remaining seated during the performance.”

A classmate at Bible school, Pearry Green, remembered meeting Lewis years later and asking if he was still playing the devil’s music.

“Yes, I am,” Lewis answered. “But you know it’s strange, the same music that they kicked me out of school for is the same kind of music they play in their churches today. The difference is, I know I am playing for the devil and they don’t.”

 

Angela Lansbury, beloved star of ‘Murder, She Wrote,’ dead at 96

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By Brian Lowry, CNN

Angela Lansbury, who enjoyed an eclectic, award-winning movie and stage career in addition to becoming America’s favorite TV sleuth in “Murder, She Wrote,” has died, according to a statement from her family provided to NBC, which was the network home of the long-running series. She was 96.

“The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at 1:30 AM today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday,” her family said in a statement.

CNN has contacted representatives of Lansbury for comment.

Not yet 20 years old, Lansbury garnered her first Oscar nomination for her movie debut, “Gaslight,” in 1944. Her second came the next year for “The Portrait of Dorian Gray,” and again in 1962 as the mother who betrays her son and her country in “The Manchurian Candidate.” (She received Golden Globes for the latter two films.)

The actress accepted an honorary Oscar in 2013, to go with the five Tony Awards she collected over a 40-plus-year span — beginning with “Mame” in 1966, and finally for a revival of the Noel Coward play “Blithe Spirit” in 2009. Lansbury also amassed 11 Emmy nominations for her role as Jessica Fletcher in “Murder, She Wrote,” but never won.

Lansbury went from ingenue to playing more middle-aged roles practically overnight. She was just 37, for example, when she portrayed Laurence Harvey’s conniving mother in “Manchurian Candidate,” even though her co-star was just two years younger than her.

Born in London, her mother, Moyna MacGill, was an actress, and father Edward Lansbury a politician. He died when she was just nine years old, and not long after the onset of World War II the family moved to the US in 1940, settling in New York.

Lansbury studied drama before moving at her mother’s urging to Los Angeles, where she briefly worked in a department store until landing her breakthrough role as the young maid in “Gaslight,” starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.

Other films included “National Velvet” (playing Elizabeth Taylor’s sister), “The Harvey Girls,” “The Three Musketeers,” the Danny Kaye comedy “The Court Jester” and the Elvis Presley vehicle “Blue Hawaii.”

Lansbury made her Broadway debut in 1957, later starring in iconic Tony-winning roles in “Mame,” “Gypsy” and “Sweeney Todd.”

Generations of children revered Lansbury for her Disney roles, first in the 1971 movie musical “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” and later as the voice of Mrs. Potts in the 1991 Oscar-nominated animated film “Beauty and the Beast.” She also played a small role in the 2018 sequel “Mary Poppins Returns.”

“Oddly enough, children recognize my voice,” she told The Huffington Post in 2012. “They’ll hear me and say, ‘Mom, that’s Mrs. Potts!’”

After a short-lived marriage to actor Richard Cromwell, Lansbury wed British actor Peter Shaw in 1949. They stayed together until his death in 2003 and had two children, Anthony — who directed many episodes of “Murder, She Wrote” — and Deirdre. Shaw eventually became her manager, and was instrumental in the deal that made them the producers of the series which premiered in 1984.

Lansbury achieved her greatest fame in her 60s for her starring role in “Murder, She Wrote” as a crime-solving mystery writer. Of all her roles, Lansbury said Jessica Fletcher was most like her.

”I had a lot of say in it, and I didn’t want the character to be quirky,” she told The New York Times in 2009.  ”I wanted her to be real. I didn’t want to have to put on any kind of veneer for 24 hours a day, which is what a television schedule sometimes feels like.”

Despite “Murder, She Wrote’s” success, the audience skewed older, and CBS irritated Lansbury by moving the series to Thursday night opposite NBC’s “Friends” in 1995, in what turned out to be the mystery’s final season.

“I’m shattered,” Lansbury told the Los Angeles Times, adding, “I really feel angry for all the people who watched us” on Sunday, where the show had consistently delivered big ratings following “60 Minutes.”

After the series ended, Lansbury starred in several “Murder, She Wrote” TV movies. She continued to work into her 80s and 90s, including a 2017 miniseries version of “Little Women” and starring in a 2015 Great Performances production of “Driving Miss Daisy,” opposite James Earl Jones.

“I love this industry and I love being in it,” Lansbury said in a 1998 interview with the Archives of American Television, adding in regard to the “Murder” audience, “They loved it, and they were loyal.”

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Loretta Lynn, coal miner’s daughter and country queen, dies

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Loretta Lynn, the Kentucky coal miner’s daughter whose frank songs about life and love as a woman in Appalachia pulled her out of poverty and made her a pillar of country music, has died. She was 90.

In a statement provided to The Associated Press, Lynn’s family said she died Tuesday at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.

Lynn already had four children before launching her career in the early 1960s, and her songs reflected her pride in her rural Kentucky background.

As a songwriter, she crafted a persona of a defiantly tough woman, a contrast to the stereotypical image of most female country singers. The Country Music Hall of Famer wrote fearlessly about sex and love, cheating husbands, divorce and birth control and sometimes got in trouble with radio programmers for material from which even rock performers once shied away.

Her biggest hits came in the 1960s and ’70s, including “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “You Ain’t Woman Enough,” “The Pill,” “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind),” “Rated X” and “You’re Looking at Country.” She was known for appearing in floor-length, wide gowns with elaborate embroidery or rhinestones, many created by her longtime personal assistant and designer Tim Cobb.

Her honesty and unique place in country music was rewarded. She was the first woman ever named entertainer of the year at the genre’s two major awards shows, first by the Country Music Association in 1972 and then by the Academy of Country Music three years later.

“It was what I wanted to hear and what I knew other women wanted to hear, too,” Lynn told the AP in 2016. “I didn’t write for the men; I wrote for us women. And the men loved it, too.”

In 1969, she released her autobiographical “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” which helped her reach her widest audience yet.

“We were poor but we had love/That’s the one thing Daddy made sure of/He shoveled coal to make a poor man’s dollar,” she sang.

“Coal Miner’s Daughter,” also the title of her 1976 book, was made into a 1980 movie of the same name. Sissy Spacek’s portrayal of Lynn won her an Academy Award and the film was also nominated for best picture.

Long after her commercial peak, Lynn won two Grammys in 2005 for her album “Van Lear Rose,” which featured 13 songs she wrote, including “Portland, Oregon” about a drunken one-night stand. “Van Lear Rose” was a collaboration with rocker Jack White, who produced the album and played the guitar parts.

Born Loretta Webb, the second of eight children, she claimed her birthplace was Butcher Holler, near the coal mining company town of Van Lear in the mountains of east Kentucky. There really wasn’t a Butcher Holler, however. She later told a reporter that she made up the name for the purposes of the song based on the names of the families that lived there.

Her daddy played the banjo, her mama played the guitar and she grew up on the songs of the Carter Family.

“I was singing when I was born, I think,” she told the AP in 2016. “Daddy used to come out on the porch where I would be singing and rocking the babies to sleep. He’d say, ‘Loretta, shut that big mouth. People all over this holler can hear you.’ And I said, ‘Daddy, what difference does it make? They are all my cousins.’”

She wrote in her autobiography that she was 13 when she got married to Oliver “Mooney” Lynn, but the AP later discovered state records that showed she was 15. Tommy Lee Jones played Mooney Lynn in the biopic.

Her husband, whom she called “Doo” or “Doolittle,” urged her to sing professionally and helped promote her early career. With his help, she earned a recording contract with Decca Records, later MCA, and performed on the Grand Ole Opry stage. Lynn wrote her first hit single, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” released in 1960.

She also teamed up with singer Conway Twitty to form one of the most popular duos in country music with hits such as “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” and “After the Fire is Gone,” which earned them a Grammy Award. Their duets, and her single records, were always mainstream country and not crossover or pop-tinged.

The Academy of Country Music chose her as the artist of the decade for the 1970s, and she was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988.

In “Fist City,” Lynn threatens a hair-pulling fistfight if another woman won’t stay away from her man: “I’m here to tell you, gal, to lay off of my man/If you don’t want to go to Fist City.” That strong-willed but traditional country woman reappears in other Lynn songs. In “The Pill,” a song about sex and birth control, Lynn writes about how she’s sick of being trapped at home to take care of babies: “The feelin’ good comes easy now/Since I’ve got the pill,” she sang.

She moved to Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, outside of Nashville, in the 1990s, where she set up a ranch complete with a replica of her childhood home and a museum that is a popular roadside tourist stop. The dresses she was known for wearing are there, too.

Lynn knew that her songs were trailblazing, especially for country music, but she was just writing the truth that so many rural women like her experienced.

“I could see that other women was goin’ through the same thing, ‘cause I worked the clubs. I wasn’t the only one that was livin’ that life and I’m not the only one that’s gonna be livin’ today what I’m writin’,” she told The AP in 1995.

Even into her later years, Lynn never seemed to stop writing, scoring a multi-album deal in 2014 with Legacy Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment. In 2017, she suffered a stroke that forced her to postpone her shows.

She and her husband were married nearly 50 years before he died in 1996. They had six children: Betty, Jack, Ernest and Clara, and then twins Patsy and Peggy. She had 17 grandchildren and four step-grandchildren.

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Florida’s death toll from Hurricane Ian tops 100 as the search for survivors continues

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The number of people killed in Florida by Hurricane Ian rose to at least 100 on Monday, days after the storm made landfall at Category 4 strength, decimating coastal towns and leaving rescue crews searching for survivors while communities face the daunting task of rebuilding.

At least 54 people died in Lee County alone, Sheriff Carmine Marceno said Monday — up from the county’s previously announced death toll of 42 — and officials there are facing questions about whether evacuation orders should have been issued earlier. Twenty-four deaths were recorded in Charlotte County — up from 12.

Hurricane Ian also contributed to the deaths of eight people in Collier County, five in Volusia County, three in Sarasota County, two in Manatee County, and one each in Polk, Lake, Hendry and Hillsborough counties, officials said. Four other people died in storm-related incidents as Ian churned into North Carolina.

More than 1,600 people have been rescued from Hurricane Ian’s path in parts of southwest and central Florida since last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office said Sunday.

Now, as blue skies return, Floridians who took shelter while the hurricane raged have emerged — many of them still without power or clean drinking water — to find their communities unrecognizable.

Nearly 600,000 homes, businesses and other customers in Florida still did not have power as of early Monday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us. Many are without clean tap water, with well over 100 boil-water advisories in places around the state, according to Florida Health Department data.

In Naples, Hank DeWolf’s 4,000-pound boat dock was carried through a condo complex by the powerful hurricane, landing in his neighbor’s yard. And the water brought someone’s car into his own backyard. He doesn’t know who it belongs to or how to remove it.

As crews in Naples comb through the wreckage to make sure no one is still trapped, residents face the enormous task ahead of cleaning up and restoring the city, Jay Boodheshwar, city manager of Naples, told CNN.

“People need to take care of their emotional and mental health, because we’re really going to need to work together on this,” Boodheshwar said.

Naples received record-high storm surge, when the hurricane sent rising ocean water flooding into the city’s streets and tearing through its infrastructure.

“The amount of water that we received and the height of the surge affected a lot of the infrastructure,” Boodheshwar said. “So there are transformers that are fried. It is not simply rehanging lines. There are things that may need to be replaced.”

Similar scenes are playing out in other communities. Hurricane Ian — expected to be the most expensive storm in Florida’s history — devastated neighborhoods from the state’s western coast to inland cities like Orlando.

In some cases, emergency workers out searching for signs of life are at the same time contending with losing their own homes.

“Some of the guys on Pine Island, they lost everything, but they’re doing what they can,” said emergency physician Dr. Ben Abo, who was preparing to join first responders on a rescue mission Sunday near decimated Sanibel Island and Pine Island.

And the flooding isn’t over yet.

Seminole County continues to experience significant flooding in certain neighborhoods, with families being rescued from waist-high waters over the weekend.

Days after the hurricane left, flooding continues to increase in areas near the St. Johns River, Lake Monroe, and Lake Harney, with an additional 100 homes suffering floodwater damage over the last 24 hours, Seminole County emergency management officials told CNN affiliate WESH.

FEMA alone cannot rebuild and provide assistance to all the communities impacted by Hurricane Ian, former FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate told CNN Sunday. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development can provide grants to communities impacted by hurricanes and other natural disasters to help people get back on their feet, Fugate added.

“It’s just not the coast of Florida that’s been impacted. We’ve got impacts all the way through Orlando, up to the East Coast. Places like St. Augustine had devastating flooding,” Fugate stressed.

Hard-hit Sanibel Island will be ‘out of commission’

Hurricane Ian wiped away parts of the Sanibel Causeway, which connects Sanibel Island to the mainland, stranding residents as their only link became impassable.

Search and rescue personnel have been going door-to-door searching properties for anyone who may need to be evacuated, and nearly 100 members of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue continue to conduct rescue efforts along Southwest Florida’s Barrier Islands like Sanibel, Captiva and Pine Island.

The fire rescue team is helping evacuate residents, dispensing medicine, treating injuries, helping people get in touch with family and just providing hard-to-come-by information, said Capt. Michelle Steele, a medical specialist.

“People aren’t getting a whole lot of information right now. So whatever we can offer, that’s what we’re here for,” Steele said.

About 400 people evacuated from Sanibel Island over the weekend, City Manager Dana Souza reported Sunday evening, adding authorities will begin turning their attention to providing medical services to the people who are choosing to stay on the island, rather than evacuations.

Abo “wouldn’t be surprised” if the death toll significantly increases, he told CNN, as rescue and recovery efforts continue on Sanibel Island.

US Coast Guard Commander Rear Admiral Brendan McPherson offered a stark assessment of the damage to Sanibel Island, saying the “area is going to be out of commission for some time.”

“It was hit very hard,” he said. “It does not have water. It doesn’t have the basic infrastructure.”

Amy Lynn was at her friend’s home on Sanibel Island when Ian hit, forcing her to hide in a closet with seven dogs, praying and holding the door shut as the hurricane roared outside.

When she came out, the home had been badly damaged, with walls blown off, video showed.

“I prayed for 6 solid hours and came to peace that it may be my time to go. It wasn’t. God is good. We made it out alive,” Lynn wrote on Facebook. “We lost everything. My car is gone. I haven’t seen my home on Sanibel. I’ve been told it’s destroyed.”

Lynn was thankful to be alive, but, she wrote, “This is so much more than devastating. The heart of the (Southwest Florida) coast is forever changed.”

Questions over timing of evacuation orders as deaths mount

Lee County officials have faced criticism about why the first mandatory evacuations weren’t ordered until a day before Ian’s landfall, despite an emergency plan which suggests evacuations should have happened earlier.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Lee County officials acted appropriately when they issued their first mandatory evacuations on Tuesday, less than 24 hours before Hurricane Ian made landfall on the barrier island Cayo Costa, and a day after several neighboring counties issued their orders.

But people are “used to longer evacuation orders,” Shawn Critser, a pastor in Fort Myers Beach in Lee County, told CNN Monday. “But we got it the day before.”

In the days leading up to the storm, Critser believed — like many others — that the heaviest impacts would be felt further to the north, near Tampa Bay. But then the forecast was revised, showing the storm’s track shifting to the south.

The cone of uncertainty — which forecasters use to represent the likely path of the center of a hurricane, even though storm impacts can and often do extend outside of it — did not include Fort Myers three days before the storm made landfall. But on Wednesday, Ian made landfall in Cayo Costa in Lee County, a point that was inside the cone 72 hours before landfall.

“When that evacuation order came, we’re like, ’24 hours, that’s not a lot. But we’ll still kind of make it,’” Critser said. “And it wasn’t until Wednesday morning when we woke up and saw that it had made another adjustment. And at that point, it’s just too late.”

Lee County Commissioner Kevin Ruane also defended the timing of the orders, calling reports about a possible delay in issuing a mandatory evacuation “inaccurate.”

“As soon as we saw the model shift northeast, we did exactly what we could to encourage people to” evacuate, Ruane said Sunday, adding many people became “complacent” and didn’t evacuate to shelters.

“I think the most important thing that most people need to understand is we opened up 15 shelters. During Irma, there were 60,000 people in our shelters. There’s 4,000 people in the shelters right now,” Ruane said.

Power could be out for weeks

Some residents and businesses in storm-damaged counties may not be back on the grid for “weeks or months” because of the structural damage caused by the hurricane, said Eric Silagy, president and CEO of Florida Power & Light Company.

FPL expects to have power restored by Sunday to 95 percent of its 126,700 customers in Charlotte County, which includes Punta Gorda, Patrick Fuller, the county emergency management director said Monday. About 45% of its customers have had power restored already.

In the meantime, much of the county remains under a boil water advisory, and Punta Gorda, the county seat, will be operating under the notice for at least three days, the city said on Facebook.

In Cape Coral, just southwest of Fort Myers, 98% of the city’s power structure was “obliterated” and will need complete reconstruction, Fire Department Chief and Emergency Management Director Ryan Lamb told CNN’s Jim Acosta.

Florida is also working with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to use his company’s Starlink satellite Internet service to help restore communication in the state, according to DeSantis. “They’re positioning those Starlink satellites to provide good coverage in Southwest Florida and other affected areas,” DeSantis said.

Originally Published: 03 OCT 22 01:25 ET
Updated: 03 OCT 22 14:16 ET
By Nouran Salahieh and Dakin Andone, CNN

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Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, has died at 96

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LONDON (AP) — Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch and a rock of stability across much of a turbulent century, died Thursday after 70 years on the throne. She was 96.

The palace announced she died at Balmoral Castle, her summer residence in Scotland, where members of the royal family had rushed to her side after her health took a turn for the worse.

A link to the almost-vanished generation that fought World War II, she was the only monarch most Britons have ever known, and her name defines an age: the modern Elizabethan Era.

The impact of her loss will be huge and unpredictable, both for the nation and for the monarchy, an institution she helped stabilize and modernize across decades of huge social change and family scandals.

With the death of the queen, her 73-year-old son Charles automatically becomes monarch, though the coronation might not take place for months. It is not known whether he will choose to call himself King Charles III or some other name.

The queen’s life was indelibly marked by the war. As Princess Elizabeth, she made her first public broadcast in 1940 when she was 14, sending a wartime message to children evacuated to the countryside or overseas.

“We children at home are full of cheerfulness and courage,” she said with a blend of stoicism and hope that would echo throughout her reign. “We are trying to do all we can to help out gallant soldiers, sailors and airmen. And we are trying, too, to bear our own share of the danger and sadness of war. We know, every one of us, that in the end all will be well.”

Since Feb. 6, 1952, Elizabeth reigned over a Britain that rebuilt from war and lost its empire; joined the European Union and then left it; and transformed from industrial powerhouse to uncertain 21st century society. She endured through 15 prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss, becoming an institution and an icon — a fixed point and a reassuring presence even for those who ignored or loathed the monarchy.

She became less visible in her final years as age and frailty curtailed many public appearances. But she remained firmly in control of the monarchy and at the center of national life as Britain celebrated her Platinum Jubilee with days of parties and pageants in June 2022.

The same month she became the second longest-reigning monarch in history, behind 17th-century French King Louis XIV, who took the throne at age 4. On Sept. 6, 2022, she presided at a ceremony at Balmoral Castle to accept the resignation of Boris Johnson as prime minister and appoint Truss as his successor

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

LONDON (AP) — Queen Elizabeth II is under medical supervision at her summer residence in Scotland after doctors raised concerns about the 96-year-old monarch’s health, Buckingham Palace said Thursday, as members of the royal family rushed to be at her side.

The announcement by the palace came a day after the queen canceled a virtual meeting of her Privy Council when doctors advised her to rest following a full day of events on Tuesday, when she formally asked Liz Truss to become Britain’s prime minister.

“Following further evaluation this morning, the Queen’s doctors are concerned for Her Majesty’s health and have recommended she remain under medical supervision,” a palace spokesperson said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with customary policy. “The Queen remains comfortable and at Balmoral.”

The palace declined to provide further details about the queen’s condition, but there were worrying signs that it might be serious. A Cabinet minister interrupted Truss during a debate in the House of Commons to inform her about Elizabeth’s condition and family members canceled long-planned engagements to travel to the Highlands.

Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, along with his wife, Camilla, and sister, Princess Anne, were with the queen at Balmoral Castle, her summer residence in Scotland. Other members of the royal family, including Charles’ sons, Princes William and Harry, were said to be en route.

The gathering of the House of Windsor came just three months after people across Britain paused over a long holiday weekend to celebrate the queen’s 70 years on the throne. While crowds of cheering, flag-waving fans filled the streets around Buckingham Palace throughout four days of festivities, the queen herself made only two brief appearances on the palace balcony to wave to her subjects.

Elizabeth has increasingly handed over duties to Charles and other members of the royal family in recent months as she recovered from a bout of COVID-19, began using a cane and struggled to get around.

“The whole country will be deeply concerned by the news from Buckingham Palace this lunchtime,” Truss said on Twitter.

“My thoughts — and the thoughts of people across our United Kingdom — are with Her Majesty The Queen and her family at this time.”

Political leaders from across the spectrum joined Truss in expressing their concern, and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said the “prayers of the nation” were with Elizabeth.

Since assuming the throne after the death of her father on Feb. 6, 1952, Elizabeth has been a symbol of stability as Britain negotiated the end of empire, the dawn of the information age and the mass migration that transformed the country into a multicultural society.

That steadfastness was seen Tuesday when she oversaw the handover of power from Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Truss in a series of carefully choreographed events steeped in the traditions of Britain’s 1,000-year-old monarchy.

Throughout her tenure, the queen has also built a bond with the people of Great Britain through a seemingly endless series of public appearances as she opened libraries, dedicated hospitals and bestowed honors on deserving citizens.

“I have no knowledge of precisely her health condition, but I get the feeling, somehow, we might be being prepared for something,” Deborah Langton, 67, a semi-retired translator, said outside Buckingham Palace. “And if that is, you know, the end, then that’s going to be very sad, I think, for a lot of people.”

Elizabeth, who famously dedicated her “whole life” to the service of Britain and the Commonwealth on her 21st birthday, has ruled out the idea of abdicating. As recently as Wednesday she issued a statement after the killing of at least 10 people in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, saying: “I mourn with all Canadians at this tragic time.”

But the death of her husband, Prince Philip, in April of last year reminded the country that the reign of the only monarch most people in Britain have ever known was finite. During a funeral that was limited to just 30 mourners because of pandemic restrictions, the queen was forced to sit alone, hidden behind a black face mask, as she contemplated the loss of the man who had been at her side for more than 70 years.

That truth was the subtext of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations as newspapers, TV news shows and the walls of the palace were filled with images of Elizabeth as she evolved from a glamorous young queen in crown and diamonds to a kind of global grandmother known for her omnipresent handbag and love of horses and corgis.

Charles was front and center throughout the festivities as he stood in for his mother and demonstrated he was ready to take on her mantle.

Wearing a ceremonial scarlet tunic and bearskin hat, he reviewed the troops during the Queen’s Birthday Parade on the opening day of the jubilee. The next day, he was the last guest to enter St. Paul’s Cathedral and took his seat at the front of the church for a service of thanksgiving in honor of the queen. At a star-studded concert in front of Buckingham Palace, he delivered the main tribute to the woman he addressed as “Your Majesty, Mummy.”

But on Thursday, the nation’s attention was firmly fixed on the queen, with the BBC switching to nonstop coverage of the monarch’s condition.

“It’s quite sad, really,” Kristian Ctylok, a 32-year-old London resident said. “I think half the country is probably expecting it because she’s been quite frail for a while. But, you know, I guess no one thought the day would come, really. So hopefully it’s not as bad as what it seems.”

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Olivia Newton-John, singer and actress, dead at 73

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(CNN) — Olivia Newton-John, the Australian singer whose breathy voice and wholesome beauty made her one of the biggest pop stars of the ’70s and charmed generations of viewers in the blockbuster movie “Grease,” died on Monday, according to a statement from her husband. She was 73.

“Dame Olivia Newton-John passed away peacefully at her Ranch in Southern California this morning, surrounded by family and friends. We ask that everyone please respect the family’s privacy during this very difficult time,” her husband, John Easterling, wrote in a statement on the singer’s verified Instagram account. “Olivia has been a symbol of triumphs and hope for over 30 years sharing her journey with breast cancer.”

The singer revealed in September 2018 that she was treating cancer at the base of her spine. It was her third cancer diagnosis, following bouts with breast cancer in the early ’90s and in 2017.

Her rise to fame
Thanks to a string of country and soft-rock hits, Newton-John was already a popular singer by the late 1970s. But her co-starring role opposite John Travolta in 1978’s “Grease,” arguably the most popular movie musical of all time, lifted her to a new level of stardom.

Although she had little acting experience (and turned 29 during filming), Newton-John gave an indelible performance as Sandy, a sweet-natured Australian transfer student who romances Travolta’s alpha greaser Danny at a Southern California high school in the 1950s.

Their onscreen chemistry as mismatched lovebirds who undergo final-act makeovers to win each others’ hearts — she ditches her frilly dresses for heels, leather, spandex and a cigarette — anchored the movie and inspired repeat viewings by legions of fans.

“I don’t think anyone could have imagined a movie would go on almost 40 years and would still be popular and people would still be talking to me about it all the time and loving it,” Newton-John told CNN in 2017. “It’s just one of those movies. I’m very lucky to have been a part of it. It’s given so many people pleasure.”

Newton-John sang on three of the movie’s biggest hits: the duets “You’re The One That I Want” and “Summer Nights” with Travolta, and her swoony solo ballad, “Hopelessly Devoted To You.”

Born in Cambridge, England in 1948, Newton-John moved with her family to Melbourne, Australia, when she was five. After winning a talent contest on a TV show, “Sing, Sing, Sing,” as a teen she formed an all-girl group and began appearing on weekly pop music programs in Australia.

Newton-John recorded her first single in England in 1966 and scored a few international hits, but she remained largely unknown to US audiences until 1973, when “Let Be There” became a top-10 hit on both the adult contemporary and the country charts.

A series of No. 1 easy-listening hits followed, including “I Honestly Love You,” “Have You Never Been Mellow” and “Please Mr. Please.”

Then came “Grease,” which was 1978’s top-grossing movie and became an enduring cultural phenomenon.

The movie gave Newton-John an opportunity to change her squeaky-clean image. The cover of her next album, “Totally Hot,” featured the singer in black leather, while its songs had an edgier, more contemporary pop sound.

‘Physical’
In 1981, she took her new, sexier persona a step further with “Physical,” a dance number with such suggestive lyrics as, “There’s nothing left to talk about unless it’s horizontally.” Banned by several radio stations, it became her biggest hit, spending 10 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100.

She also appeared in several more big-budget movies, including the musical fantasy “Xanadu” with Hollywood legend Gene Kelly in his final screen role. The film bombed, but its soundtrack sold well and spawned “Magic,” a No. 1 hit.

In 1983 she teamed with Travolta again for “Two of a Kind,” a romantic comedy-fantasy, but it failed to recapture their “Grease” spark.

Over a lengthy career Newton-John won four Grammy Awards and sold more than 100 million albums.

“I’ve had many lives in music. I’ve had country when when I started, then I crossed over into pop,” she told CNN. “I had ‘Xanadu’ and ‘Grease,’ many songs in between. I feel very grateful. I have such a large repertoire to choose from.”

Overcoming tragedy
But Newton-John also faced her share of troubles and tragedy. Her breast cancer diagnoses forced her to postpone and cancel several tours.

And in 2005 Newton-John’s then-boyfriend, Patrick McDermott, disappeared at sea while on a fishing trip off the coast of California. He was never found — an unsolved mystery that haunted the singer for years.

“It’s very hard to live with that,” she told CNN’s Larry King in 2006. “It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve been through a lot of things.” Although her career profile dimmed in her later years, Newton-John never stopped recording and performing. Among her highlights were guest appearances on “Glee,” a long-running “Summer Nights” residency at the Flamingo Las Vegas and a dance-club hit, “You Have to Believe,” recorded with daughter Chloe.

“I love to sing, it’s all I know how to do,” she told CNN in 2017. “That’s all I’ve ever done since I was 15, so it’s my life. I feel very grateful that I can still do it and people still come to see me.”

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Kroger, Walgreens recall medications over poison concerns

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Labs that supply Walgreens and Kroger recall more than 400,000 medication bottles that violate child safety regulations.

According to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, there’s nothing wrong with the medication, but the bottles don’t meet standards for child resistance. This means a child could open them and accidentally ingest the medications inside.

The bottles contain the pain relievers acetaminophen, ibuprofen and aspirin.

Walgreens Recall Details

This recall involves the Walgreens brand acetaminophen product.

The red and white label states Walgreens, Easy Open for Adults, Pain Reliever, Acetaminophen, 500 mg, Fever Reducer, Extra Strength, 150 caplets. The bottle has a red continuous thread gear closure.

UPC number 311917218090 and Lot numbers P2100627, P2100671, P2100672, P2100689 P2100747, P2100859 (each with expiration date Nov-2022) and P2200050 (with expiration date Jan-2023) are included in this recall.

The UPC number, lot numbers and expiration date are printed near the drug facts panel on the label on the back of the bottle.

Remedy

Consumers should immediately store the recalled products in a safe location out of reach and sight of children. Contact Aurohealth for information on how to return the product at your nearest Walgreens store to receive a full refund.

Kroger Recall Details

Arthritis Pain Acetaminophen

This recall involves the Kroger brand acetaminophen.

The red, white, and yellow label states, Kroger, Acetaminophen, Arthritis Pain, Extended-Release, Tablets USP, 650 mg, 225 extended-release tablets. The bottle has a red continuous thread gear closure.

UPC number 0004126001284 and lot numbers P2100890, P2100891, P2100992 (each with expiration date Aug-2023) and P2101010 (with expiration date Apr-2023) are included in this recall.

The UPC number, lot number and expiration date are printed near the drug facts panel on the label on the back of the bottle.

Aspirin and Ibuprofen

This recall involves the Kroger brand aspirin and ibuprofen over-the-counter drugs.

For the aspirin product, the green and yellow label states Kroger, Low Dose, Aspirin, 81 mg Delayed-Release Tablets / Pain Reliever, 300 enteric coated tablets. The bottle has a green continuous thread gear closure.

  • Aspirin UPC: 0004126001295
    •  Lot numbers:
      • A077J
      • F032H
      • F035H
      • J011H
      • K031H

For the ibuprofen product, the blue and white label states Kroger, Ibuprofen, Capsules, 200 mg Pain Reliever / Fever Reducer, 160 softgels. The bottle has a blue continuous thread gear closure. The following UPC and Lot numbers listed in the table are included in this recall and can be found on the label on the back of the bottle.

  • Ibuprofen UPC: 0004126001298
    • Lot numbers:
      • FH1163
      • C11044
      • C11047
      • C11064
      • C11065
      • C11079
      • C11084

Acetaminophen

This recall involves the Kroger brand acetaminophen over-the-counter drug.

The red, white and gray label states Kroger, Acetaminophen, Extended-Release Tablets USP, 650mg, Pain Reliever/Fever Reducer, 100 caplets. The bottle has a white continuous thread closure.

The UPC number is 0004126001287 with the batch codes AC45463, AC38213 or AC30682. The location of the UPC number is under the bar code on the packaging and the batch code is at the bottom of the label on the bottle.

Remedy

Consumers should immediately store the recalled product in a safe location out of reach and sight of children. Contact Kroger for information on how to properly dispose of the product and receive a full refund.

Betty White, TV’s Golden Girl and America’s sweetheart, has died. She was 99 years old.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Betty White, whose saucy, up-for-anything charm made her a television mainstay for more than 60 years, whether as a man-crazy TV hostess on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” or the loopy housemate on “The Golden Girls,” has died. She was 99.

People and the Washington Post reported White’s death.

She launched her TV career in daytime talk shows when the medium was still in its infancy and endured well into the age of cable and streaming. Her combination of sweetness and edginess gave life to a roster of quirky characters in shows from the sitcom “Life With Elizabeth” in the early 1950s to oddball Rose Nylund in “The Golden Girls” in the ’80s to “Boston Legal,” which ran from 2004 to 2008.

But it was in 2010 that White’s stardom erupted as never before.

In a Snickers commercial that premiered during that year’s Super Bowl telecast, she impersonated an energy-sapped dude getting tackled during a backlot football game.

“Mike, you’re playing like Betty White out there,” jeered one of his chums. White, flat on the ground and covered in mud, fired back, “That’s not what your girlfriend said!”

The instantly-viral video helped spark a Facebook campaign called “Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!,” whose half-million fans led to her co-hosting “Saturday Night Live” in a much-watched, watch-hailed edition that Mother’s Day weekend. The appearance won her a seventh Emmy award.

A month later, cable’s TV Land premiered “Hot In Cleveland,” the network’s first original scripted series, which starred Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick as three past-their-prime show-biz veterans who move to Cleveland to escape the youth obsession of Hollywood. They move into a home being looked after by an elderly Polish widow — a character, played by White, who was meant to appear only in the pilot episode.

But White stole the show, and the salty Elka Ostrovsky became a key part of the series, an immediate hit. She was voted the Entertainer of the Year by members of The Associated Press.

“It’s ridiculous,” White said of the honor. “They haven’t caught on to me, and I hope they never do.”

By then, White had not only become the hippest star around, but also a role model for how to grow old joyously.

“Don’t try to be young,” she told The AP. “Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won’t live long enough to find out about, but I’m still curious about them.”

Such was her popularity that even White’s birthday became a national event: In January 2012, NBC aired “Betty White’s 90th Birthday Party” as a star-studded prime-time special. She would later appear in such series as “Bones” and Fireside Chat With Esther” and in 2019 gave voice to one of the toys, “Bitey White,” in “Toy Story 4.”

White remained youthful in part through her skill at playing bawdy or naughty while radiating niceness. The horror spoof “Lake Placid” and the comedy “The Proposal” were marked by her characters’ surprisingly salty language. And her character Catherine Piper killed a man with a skillet on “Boston Legal.”

But she almost wasn’t cast as “Happy Homemaker” Sue Ann Nivens in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in 1973. She and her husband, Allen Ludden, were close friends of Moore and Moore’s then-husband, producer Grant Tinker. It was feared that if White failed on the show, which already was a huge hit, it would be embarrassing for all four. But CBS casting head Ethel Winant declared White the logical choice. Originally planned as a one-shot appearance, the role of Sue Ann (which humorously foreshadowed Martha Stewart) lasted until Moore ended the series in 1977.

“While she’s icky-sweet on her cooking show, Sue is really a piranha type,” White once said. The role brought her two Emmys as supporting actress in a comedy series.

In 1985, White starred on NBC with Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty in “The Golden Girls.” Its cast of mature actresses, playing single women in Miami retirement, presented a gamble in a youth-conscious industry. But it proved a solid hit and lasted until 1992.

White played Rose, a gentle, dim widow who managed to misinterpret most situations. She drove her roommates crazy with off-the-wall tales of childhood in fictional St. Olaf, Minnesota, an off-kilter version of Lake Wobegon.

The role won her another Emmy, and she reprised it in a short-lived spinoff, “The Golden Palace.”

After her co-star Arthur died in 2009, White told Entertainment Tonight: “She showed me how to be very brave in playing comedy. I’ll miss that courage.”

White’s other TV series included “Mama’s Family,” as Vicki Lawrence’s irascible mother; “Just Men,” a game show in which women tried to predict answers to questions directed to male celebrities; and “Ladies Man,” as the catty mother of Alfred Molina.

“Just Men” brought her a daytime Emmy, while she won a fourth prime time Emmy in 1996 for a guest shot on “The John Larroquette Show.”

She also appeared in numerous miniseries and TV movies and made her film debut as a female U.S. senator in Otto Preminger’s 1962 Capitol Hill drama “Advise and Consent.”

White began her television career as $50-a-week sidekick to a local Los Angeles TV personality in 1949. She was hired for a local daytime show starring Al Jarvis, the best-known disc jockey in Los Angeles.

It was then she got a tip to start lying about her age.

“We are so age-conscious in this country,” she said in a 2011 interview with The Associated Press. “It’s silly, but that’s the way we are. So I was told, ‘Knock four years off right now. You’ll be blessing yourself down the road.’

“I was born in 1922. So I thought, ‘I must always remember that I was born in 1926.’ But then I would have to do the math. Finally, I decided to heck with it.”

White proved to be a natural for the new medium. She was bright, pretty and likable, with a dimpled, eye-crinkling smile. A 1951 Los Angeles Times headline said: “Betty White Hailed as TV’s Busiest Gal.”

“I did that show 5½ hours a day, six days a week, for 4½ years,” she recalled in 1975. Jarvis was replaced by actor Eddie Albert, and when he went to Europe for the film “Roman Holiday,” she headed the show.

A sketch she had done with Jarvis turned into a syndicated series, “Life With Elizabeth,” which won her first Emmy. For a time she did interviews on “The Betty White Show” in the daytime, filmed the series at night and often turned up on a late-night talk show. She also appeared on commercials and every New Year’s narrated the Pasadena Rose Parade.

With the glib tongue and quick responses nurtured in the Jarvis years, she was a welcome guest on “I’ve Got a Secret,” “To Tell the Truth,” “What’s My Line” and other game shows — all the way up to the 2008 “Million Dollar Password,” which revived the game once hosted by Ludden, whom she had met when a contestant on his original “Password.”

That was in 1961, and the next year, while touring in summer theater during television’s off season, she starred with Ludden — by then a widower with three children — in the comedy “Critic’s Choice.”

White, who had claimed to be “militantly single” since a 1947-1949 marriage, weakened in her resolve.

“I had always said on `The Tonight Show’ and everywhere else that I would never get married again,” she told a reporter in 1963. “But Allen outnumbered me. He started in and even the children got in the act. And I surrendered — willingly.”

The marriage lasted from 1963 until his death from cancer in 1981.

Off-screen, White tirelessly raised money for animal causes such as the Morris Animal Foundation and the Los Angeles Zoo. In 1970-1971, she wrote, produced and hosted a syndicated TV show, “The Pet Set,” to which celebrities brought their dogs and cats. She wrote a 1983 book titled “Betty White’s Pet Love: How Pets Take Care of Us,” and, in 2011, published “Betty & Friends: My Life at the Zoo.”

Her devotion to pets was such that she declined a plum role in the hit 1997 movie “As Good As It Gets.” She objected to a scene in which Jack Nicholson drops a small dog down a laundry chute.

In her 2011 book “If You Ask Me (And Of Course You Won’t),” White explained the origins of her love for dogs. During the Depression, her dad made radios to sell to make extra money. But since few people had money to buy the radios, he willingly traded them for dogs, which, housed in kennels in the backyard, at times numbered as many as 15 and made White’s happy childhood even happier.

Are there any critters she doesn’t like?

“No,” White told the AP. “Anything with a leg on each corner.”

Then what about snakes?

“Ohhh, I LOVE snakes!”

She was born Betty Marion White in Oak Park, Illinois, and the family moved to Los Angeles when she was a toddler.

“I’m an only child, and I had a mother and dad who never drew a straight line: They just thought funny,” she told The Associated Press in 2015. “We’d sit around the breakfast table and then we’d start kicking it around. My dad was a salesman and he would come home with jokes. He’d say, `Sweetheart, you can take THAT one to school. But I wouldn’t take THIS one.′ We had such a wonderful time.”

Her early ambition was to be a writer, and she wrote her grammar school graduation play, giving herself the leading role.

At Beverly Hills High School, her ambition turned to acting, and she appeared in several school plays. Her parents hoped she’d go to college, but instead she took roles in a small theater and played bit parts in radio dramas.

Explaining in 2011 how she kept up her frantic pace even as an octogenarian, she explained that she only needed four hours of sleep each night.

And when asked how she had managed to be universally beloved during her decades-spanning career, she summed up with a dimpled smile: “I just make it my business to get along with people so I can have fun. It’s that simple.”

___

Associated Press writers Lynn Elber and Bob Thomas contributed.

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