Vanna White
Encyclopedia
Vanna White is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 television personality and film actress best known as the hostess of Wheel of Fortune
Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show)
Wheel of Fortune is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin, which premiered in 1975. Contestants compete to solve word puzzles, similar to those used in Hangman, to win cash and prizes determined by spinning a large wheel. The title refers to the show's giant carnival wheel that...

since 1982.

Early life

White was born in 1957 in Conway, South Carolina
Conway, South Carolina
Conway is a city in Horry County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 16,317 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Horry County and is part of the Myrtle Beach metropolitan area. It is the home of Coastal Carolina University....

 the daughter of Joan Marie and Miguel Angel Rosich. Her father, who was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico
Ponce, Puerto Rico
Ponce is both a city and a municipality in the southern part of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government.The city of Ponce, the fourth most populated in Puerto Rico, and the most populated outside of the San Juan metropolitan area, is named for Juan Ponce de León y Loayza, the...

, abandoned the family and White took the name of her stepfather, Herbert Stackley White Jr., a former real estate agent in what is now North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
North Myrtle Beach is a coastal resort city in Horry County, South Carolina, United States. It was created in 1968 from four existing municipalities north of Myrtle Beach, and serves as one of the primary tourist towns along the Grand Strand...

.

Television career

White's first appearance in a game show was on the June 20, 1980 episode of The Price Is Right
The Price Is Right (U.S. game show)
The Price Is Right is an American game show which was created by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. Contestants compete to identify the pricing of merchandise to win cash and prizes. The show is well-known for its signature line of "Come on down!" when the announcer directs newly selected contestants to...

, in which she was among the first four contestants. She did not make it onstage, but the clip of her running to Contestants' Row was rebroadcast as part of The Price Is Right 25th Anniversary Special in August 1996 and also was featured on the special broadcast Game Show Moments Gone Bananas
Game Show Moments Gone Bananas
Game Show Moments Gone Bananas is a television series on VH1. The first of five hour-long episodes aired on May 21, 2005 with the last first-run episode airing on June 18. Each episode aired for the first time on Saturday mornings at 11:30 ET, but "officially" premiered at 10:00 PM that night.The...

. After Wheel of Fortune
Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show)
Wheel of Fortune is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin, which premiered in 1975. Contestants compete to solve word puzzles, similar to those used in Hangman, to win cash and prizes determined by spinning a large wheel. The title refers to the show's giant carnival wheel that...

hostess Susan Stafford
Susan Stafford
Susan Stafford was the original hostess of the game show Wheel of Fortune from January 6, 1975 until she left on October 22, 1982...

 left in October 1982, White was chosen as one of three substitute hostesses (along with Vicki McCarty
Vicki Iovine
Vicki McCarty Iovine is an American model, writer, and lawyer.-Biography:Iovine received her undergraduate degree in Journalism from University of California, Berkeley. She earned a law degree from Hastings College of the Law and an LL.B...

 and Summer Bartholomew
Summer Bartholomew
Summer Robin Bartholomew is a model and actress who won the 1975 Miss USA pageant.Her first pageant experience came in 1973 when she won the Miss Oktoberfest title....

) to co-host the show. On December 13, 1982, White became the show's regular hostess and remained as the show's daytime hostess until 1991.

White's popularity peaked after the syndicated version of Wheel of Fortune made its debut in September 1983. Her 1987 autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

, Vanna Speaks!, was a best-seller. Also in 1987, she was featured in a Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...

pictorial, showing photos taken of her (before her career on Wheel of Fortune) wearing see-through lingerie.

In 1988, she appeared in the NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 television film Goddess of Love, in which she played Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...

; fellow game-show personality Betsy Palmer
Betsy Palmer
Betsy Palmer is an American actress, best known as a regular panelist on the game show I've Got a Secret, and later for playing Pamela Voorhees in the notorious slasher film Friday the 13th.-Life and career:...

 co-starred as Juno
Juno (mythology)
Juno is an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister of the chief god Jupiter and the mother of Mars and Vulcan. Juno also looked after the women of Rome. Her Greek equivalent is Hera...

. The film was panned universally by critics, with TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...

joking that White's acting was "wheely" bad. Film historian Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin is an American film and animated film critic and historian, author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.-Personal life:...

 added that said picture was "...bottom-of-the-barrel yet, on its own terms, a must-see."

White also has made cameo appearance
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...

s on television shows such as The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! is an American television series based upon Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2 video games. It was originally broadcast via first-run syndication to mostly independent or Fox television stations from September 4, 1989, to December 1, 1989, with...

, 227
227 (TV series)
227 is an American situation comedy that originally aired on NBC from September 14, 1985, until May 6, 1990. The series starred Marla Gibbs as a sharp-tongued, inner-city resident gossip and housewife, Mary Jenkins...

, Simon and Simon, and Full House
Full House
Full House is an American sitcom television series. Set in San Francisco, the show chronicles widowed father Danny Tanner, who, after the death of his wife, enlists his best friend Joey Gladstone and his brother-in-law Jesse Katsopolis to help raise his three daughters, D.J., Stephanie, and...

; and in films such as Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult. She appeared in the supporting role of Doris in the low-budget B-Movie
B-movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....

 Graduation Day
Graduation Day (film)
-Plot:It's just weeks before high school graduation and members of the track team are being mysteriously and gruesomely murdered, one by one. When the team's star runner, Laura Ramstead, falls dead from a heart attack at the championship meet, her U.S...

in 1981. She guest-starred on Married...With Children, in a gender-bending parody of the film Indecent Proposal
Indecent Proposal
Indecent Proposal is a 1993 drama film, based on the novel of the same name by Jack Engelhard. It was directed by Adrian Lyne and stars Robert Redford, Demi Moore, and Woody Harrelson.-Plot:...

; White had the Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...

 role, while Al Bundy
Al Bundy
Al Bundy is a fictional character from the U.S. television series Married... with Children. He was played by Ed O'Neill.-Character history:...

 was in Demi Moore
Demi Moore
Demi Guynes Kutcher , known professionally as Demi Moore, is an American actress. After minor roles in film and a role in the soap opera General Hospital, Moore established her career in films such as St...

's. She served as guest timekeeper for WrestleMania IV
WrestleMania IV
WrestleMania IV was the fourth annual WrestleMania professional wrestling pay-per-view event produced by the World Wrestling Federation . It took place on March 27, 1988 at the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, New Jersey....

. In 1992, the Guinness Book of World Records recognized White as "television's most frequent clapper." In 1996, she was the main narrator and singer in the CD release of Leslie Bricusse
Leslie Bricusse
Leslie Bricusse is an English composer, lyricist, and playwright.Although best known for his partnership with Anthony Newley, Bricusse has worked with many other composers. He was educated at University College School in London and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge...

's "Santa's Last Ride". On April 20, 2006, she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...

.

Personal life

White dated Playgirl
Playgirl
Playgirl is a print quarterly adult magazine published in the United States that is marketed mainly to heterosexual women, but has also gained a considerable gay following...

 centerfold
Centerfold
The centerfold of a magazine refers to a gatefolded spread, usually a portrait such as a pin-up or a nude, inserted in the middle of the publication, or to the model featured in the portrait...

/Chippendales-dancer-turned-actor John Gibson in the 1980s, and they eventually became engaged. However, in 1986 Gibson was killed in a plane crash.

White married restaurant owner George San Pietro in December 1990 and they divorced in November 2002. To accommodate her wedding, White was absent from Wheel of Fortune for two weeks of episodes that aired in January 1991, so Tricia Gist filled in for her. From this marriage, White had two children, a son born in 1994 and a daughter born in 1997. From 2004 to 2006, she was engaged to businessman Michael Kaye, senior partner in a large leveraged buyout
Leveraged buyout
A leveraged buyout occurs when an investor, typically financial sponsor, acquires a controlling interest in a company's equity and where a significant percentage of the purchase price is financed through leverage...

 fund based in southern California.

White is an avid crochet and knitting enthusiast and has a line of yarns called "Vanna's Choice" through Lion Brand Yarns.

Litigation

White sued the Samsung Electronics
Samsung
The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...

 corporation over its use of a humorous ad featuring a robot turning letters on a game show. The lower court decision in Samsung's favor was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Alaska* District of Arizona...

, White v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc., 971 F.2d 1395 (1992), and the Ninth Circuit denied a rehearing over a colorful dissent by Judge Kozinski. White v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc. 989 F.2d 1512 (9th Cir. 1993). The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari. Samsung Electronics America, Inc. v. White, 508 U.S. 951 (1993). White ultimately was awarded $403,000 in damages.

External links

  • Vanna White's biography on wheeloffortune.com
  • Judge Alex Kozinski's
    Alex Kozinski
    Alex Kozinski is Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, an essayist, and a judicial commentator.-Biography:...

     dissent in the White v. Samsung Electronics appeal
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