In honor of Betty White’s birthday this month, let’s delve into some little known facts about The Golden Girls from PARADE.
The Golden Girls cleaned up during awards seasons
Throughout The Golden Girls‘ 1985-1992 run, they racked up 68 Emmy nominations and 11 wins; the series was ranked No. 69 on the Writers Guild of America’s list of 100 Best-Written TV Series of All Time.
Bea Arthur actually detested cheesecake
Despite Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia always bonding over the creamy dessert, in real life, Arthur was not a fan of cheesecake at all.
The Golden Girls house wasn’t actually in Miami
The iconic Golden Girls house was actually based on a Brentwood, Los Angeles ranch-style home. Producers had a replica made of the front of the property at the then-Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida, which was used for exterior shots. The home is estimated to be valued at nearly $3 million.
The Property Brothers want to renovate The Golden Girls property
Drew and Jonathan Scott dropped the idea-bomb on The Kelly Clarkson Show in October 2019 after discussing the Property Brothers‘ renovation of The Brady Bunch house. ”So, we’re thinking next, the Golden Girls house,” Drew quipped. He also volunteered to play Blanche if a reboot was ever on the table!
Betty White and Bea Arthur drew on real-life grief for some heartwrenching scenes
Both White and Arthur each lost their mothers while filming Season 1 of The Golden Girls, but wouldn’t take time off. Director Lex Passaris recalled, “We were ready to shut down the show for as long as they needed, but both ladies said, ‘No. We need to work.'”
Betty White channeled true heartbreak for another poignant scene
While filming the episode “The Heart Attack,” White drew from the death of her beloved husband, Allen Ludden, when she was in character as widow Rose Nylund. “Everyone thinks Estelle’s character Sophia is dying, so it was particularly poignant,” Passaris said. “Rose tells a story about her husband Charlie’s death, and Betty’s basically talking about Allen. Betty’s voice kind of cracked and she took a breath and said to me, ‘I’d give anything to have that year of my life back again.'”
Estelle Getty spent three hours in the makeup chair to become Sophia Petrillo
Makeup artist Maurice Stein revealed that Getty, who was younger than White and Arthur, took three hours to transform into the petite, heavily creased Sicilian spitfire. “When she first sits down in the chair, she’s just Estelle, a nice, lovely lady. But as the makeup goes on, she becomes this snappy old lady, wise-cracking and crusty,” he said. “She seems to slum down in her chair and really get into character. By the time she gets up from her chair, I have Sophia on my hands.”
Getty was only 63 and playing 20 years older—and she didn’t want to age offscreen. She got a facelift in between Season 2 and Season 3, driving the makeup team into a tizzy.
Bea Arthur didn’t like to dine alone
McClanahan once said that Arthur refused to go to dinner between shoots unless White walked with her. Arthur’s son confirmed the anecdote years later, noting, “Betty would pick my mom up in the driveway, or my mom would pick her up.”
Betty White thought Bea Arthur couldn’t stand her
Despite Arthur and White dining together between shoots, White didn’t think Arthur liked her, and McClanahan didn’t think so either. “Bea came from a New York stage point of view,” McClanahan admitted. “She always had what we call ‘the fourth wall.’ And Betty came from a television point of view: She would flirt with the audience, and pull her skirt up and say, ‘Hi sailor.’ But Bea never acknowledged the audience.” McClanahan said she could never be totally sure why Arthur sometimes got grumpy about White because Arthur never told her—but she did note that White “adored” Bea.
Estelle Getty struggled with crippling anxiety
Stage fright was an understatement when it came to Getty. McClanahan once said of her costar, “She had an awful time remembering her lines because she would freeze and panic. The day before tape day, you could see a big difference in her. She’d be walking around like Pig-Pen under a black cloud. By tape day, she was unreachable.” White concurred and marveled of Getty’s skill despite her anxiety battle. “You thought, ‘She’s never going to be able to take a step on that stage.’ She’s one of the reasons for the success of the show with young people. They get such a kick out of little Estelle telling big Bea off!”
Betty White was almost cast as Blanche Devereaux instead of Rose Nylund
“You get a lot of scripts mailed to you and not too many of them are good, but when this one came along it just hit the spot and they sent it to each of us,” White recalled in 2010. “They sent it to me with the idea of me doing Blanche. Jay Sandrich, who was our director for most of the Mary Tyler Moore shows, said, ‘If Betty plays another nymphomaniac they are going to think it is Sue Ann Nivens all over again.’ He said, ‘Why don’t we switch them?'”
Betty White, Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan all knew each other before being cast as The Golden Girls
Before Rose, Dorothy and Blanche, the core Golden Girls cast had worked together in various series. “The first table read was an experience. I had worked with Bea, I had done a couple of guest shots on Maude. I had worked with Rue on Mama’s Family,” White said. “Estelle was a new one to all of us. She came from New York after her hit. We all sat down for the first table read and somebody read a line and then somebody else read a line.” She added, “It was the most exciting…We all began to look at each other because there wasn’t any first reading feeling about it. It was like we had been working together forever. I still get goosebumps thinking about it.”
Bea Arthur didn’t have patience for what she believed to be fashion crimes
McClanahan revealed that Arthur loathed backward baseball caps. “That really got to her,” McClanahan said. “We were interviewing directors one time and if someone came in with a baseball cap worn backwards, he didn’t stand a chance.”
Bea Arthur came through for Rue McClanahan in a big way
“She took care of me the Thanksgiving my mother died the first year of Maude,” McClanahan recalled. “It was unexpected. My mother was young, and I was young. I went back to Oklahoma for the funeral and I was devastated. When I came back to California, I was grieving so. I heard from Bea and she said, ‘I’m having Thanksgiving dinner and you come over here immediately.’ I went over to her home in Santa Monica and she put me to bed, and tucked me in and brought me dinner. She calmed me down and I felt safe for the first time. You don’t forget things like that.”
There were rumors of a reboot with Betty White
Those rumors, however, were mostly unfounded. Stan Zimmerman, a writer for Season 1 of The Golden Girls, explained, “It is not a rumor. [Fellow Golden Girls writer] James Berg and I did write a pilot script called Silver Foxes. It is NOT a reboot of The Golden Girls. But it is inspired by the show, a show that we were lucky enough to have written on during the first season of the show.” Saturday Night Live alum Cheri Oteri was attached to the project, which was to be about a group of aging gay men living together in Palm Springs, California, inspired by the classic series—and there was even a one-line role in the works for White. “Unfortunately, we cannot get one network executive to read [the script],” Zimmerman said, “or even a producer to pass it to them. We have found ageism and homophobia alive and well in Hollywood. Hopefully a groundswell of support from the viewing public will get an outlet like Hulu or Amazon to make it.”
The iconic “Thank You for Being a Friend” wasn’t producers’ first choice for The Golden Girls theme song
“They approached the publishing company for Bette Midler‘s song, ‘Friends,’ but it was too expensive. Eventually of the producers remembered Andrew Gold’s song, ‘Thank You For Being A Friend,'” Jim Colucci, author of Golden Girls Forever: An Unauthorized Look Behind the Lanai revealed. “They licensed it and hired a session singer named Cynthia Fee. Even though the recording session was slated to last for an hour, she did it in one or two takes—maybe 20 or 30 minutes—and planned on never thinking of it again. The irony is that thanks to unions, every time your song gets played, you get paid. So this job she did on a random weekday in 1985 has put her kids through college.”
Bea Arthur didn’t like the jabs about Dorothy’s appearance
“Bea was offended. When the writers called Rose [Betty White] dumb or Blanche [Rue McClanahan] a slut or Sophia [Estelle Getty] old, it could roll off those women’s backs because they were not like their characters,” Colucci said. “Unfortunately, the things that were said about Dorothy were that she was big and ugly. And that wears on an actress after a while.” The “Dorothy bashing” was one of the reasons Arthur would ultimately exit the series.
Bea Arthur almost wasn’t Dorothy Zbornak
Arthur wasn’t producers’ first choice for the sassy substitute teacher, in part because of her iconic role as the liberal titular Maude Findlay, especially after her character got an abortion before Roe v. Wade was passed. However, Colucci claimed that writer and creator Susan Harris insisted, “I wrote this role for Bea and I want Bea.” As it turned out, Arthur initially didn’t want to be Dorothy, either, because she thought the character was too similar to Maude, but McClanahan claimed in My First Five Husbands … And The Ones Who Got Away that she talked her into taking the role.
Elaine Stritch almost played Dorothy
Elaine Stritch auditioned for Dorothy Zbornak and almost got the role. Stritch went in for a reading, but cursed during her audition—and irked the writer and lost the part to Arthur. To hear her tell it: “I blew it!”
The Golden Girls concept started out as a joke
Colucci said that The Golden Girls began as a gag sketch for advertisers featuring Everybody Loves Raymond star Doris Roberts in 1984. “They did this schtick where they were confused thinking there was a show on NBC called Miami Nice: ‘Oh, it must be about old people in Miami. That does sound nice.’ When people laughed, the president of the network thought, ‘There might be something there.'”
They had a groundbreaking gay main character…until they didn’t
The Golden Girls had one Golden Guy, albeit very briefly: Coco, a gay housekeeper and cook (and former drag performer), played by the late Charles Levin. He appeared in the pilot, where he made huevos rancheros for the girls. When the series’ pilot ended up being five minutes too long, unfortunately, Coco bore the brunt of it on the cutting room floor—especially since Getty was such a hit with audiences when she delivered her iconic one-liners. Coco disappeared from most of the pilot and from the rest of the show, though The Golden Girls did still have a lot of progressive episodes centered around LGBTQ+ issues, including the AIDS crisis.
Blanche Devereaux’s accent evolved over time
McClanahan is originally from Oklahoma, and producers originally had her keep her natural accent to play Blanche in the pilot. However, in later episodes, the southern belle’s twang was much more pronounced and exaggerated, a move that McClanahan said was a combined idea between her and director Paul Bogart.
Rue McClanahan kept a lot of Blanche’s outfits
In her memoir, McClanahan revealed that she was allowed to keep about 500 of her costumes from The Golden Girls—and she somehow had all the closet space she needed for them in a Manhattan apartment.
Rue McClanahan had her own lingerie line
Blanche Devereaux would approve! McClanahan developed and sold her own lingerie line called A Touch of Rue, which was sold on QVC—and inspired by her adventurous and sultry character.
Bea Arthur made a major contribution to the LGBTQ+ community
Arthur bequeathed $300,000 to the Ali Forney Center, a long-term housing center for LGBTQ+ youth, in her will. She had previously hosted shows with proceeds benefiting the center.
The Golden Girls and The Golden Palace had serious star power
The Golden Girls had guest stars with serious pedigrees at the time, including Bob Hope, Alex Trebek, Merv Griffin, Sonny Bono, Lyle Waggoner, Julio Iglesias and Burt Reynolds, who played themselves in cameos, as well as a young George Clooney, who played a detective investigating the ladies’ jewel thief neighbors. Jerry Orbach played a former flame of Dorothy’s and Mickey Rooney made an appearance as Sophia’s boyfriend. Mario Lopez guest-starred as an immigrant student Dorothy tutored. LA Law star Alan Rachins made an appearance as a love interest for Blanche. Debbie Reynolds played a prankster pal for Dorothy, Rita Moreno played a neighbor and none other than Quentin Tarantino guest-starred in two episodes as an Elvis Presley impersonator. In the finale, Dorothy marries Blanche’s uncle, Lucas, played by Leslie Nielsen.
The Golden Palace, a brief spinoff of The Golden Girls, also starred a young Don Cheadle and Cheech Marin and had a guest appearance from none other than Jack Black.
The same actor played two different boyfriends for Rose Nylund
Actor Harold Gould played Rose Nylund’s boyfriend, Arnie, in Season 1 episode “Rose the Prude.” He later had a recurring role as Rose’s longtime love, Miles Webber.
The Golden Girls performed for the Queen Mother
The Queen Mother—Queen Elizabeth II’s mom, for those of you unfamiliar with royal titles—was such a huge fan of The Golden Girls that she invited the cast to perform live for her and the British royals in London. “It was very exciting,” White gushed. “The Queen was lovely. We were told not to address her unless we were addressed. She was up in a box and she came down on stage after with Princess Anne. She said, ‘Lovely, pretty girls,’ and I said, ‘Not bad bodies,’ and she said ‘Oh, no, not bad bodies!'”
Estelle Getty was sensitive about what she would and wouldn’t joke about onscreen
White wrote in her book If You Ask Me (And Of Course You Won’t)that Getty would never use death for a laugh, explaining, “Estelle Getty was so afraid of dying that the writers on The Golden Girls couldn’t put a dead joke in the script.” Getty herself once explained that death wasn’t her only no-go, noting, “I have a thing about gratuitous pain. Why would you make fun of somebody who’s fat or who’s cross-eyed or who’s bald? And I won’t do gay-bashing jokes.”
Only three characters could sit at the kitchen table
The set wasn’t big enough for all four characters to sit side by side, and producers and directors didn’t want any of The Golden Girls to have their backs to the camera, which is why one of them often sat on a stool near the table. Additionally, Arthur was always seated in the center of whoever was at the table because she was tall and had priceless facial expressions.
Estelle Getty wanted Sophia to be Jewish, not Italian
Estelle Getty wanted to play Sophia as a Jewish woman like herself—which may well have worked, as Bea Arthur was also raised Jewish.
Bea Arthur wanted to leave while the going was good
Arthur’s son, Matthew Saks, said that her decision to leave The Golden Girls wasn’t a very complicated one, and that while she did appear on The Golden Palace later, she was reluctant to do so. “I think she got tired of it. She just thought it was time to leave the show,” he said. “She wanted to leave a year before, but the others asked her to stay for a final year and she did. And then, of course, they did The Golden Palace without mom on it. She came and did one episode, though. I don’t think she really wanted to do that. But she did. Her logic was also that these shows ran their course. Something suffers, whether it’s the production, the writing. It loses its magic.”
SOURCE: PARADE
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