Television had never seen anything like it: four female friends living in a major city, frequently sitting around a table discussing their lives and loves over food — with a healthy dose of sex talk thrown into the mix. No, we’re not talking about Sex and the City. More than a decade before Carrie Bradshaw and her besties first graced our screens, The Golden Girls, which premiered on NBC Sept. 14, 1985, was the first beloved TV series to focus on four female friends.
But here’s the twist: Our heroines were all played by actresses over 50. Bea Arthur was top-billed as divorcée Dorothy Zbornak, who shared a house in Miami with widows Blanche Devereaux (Rue McClanahan) and Rose Nylund (Betty White) as well as her eighty-something mother, Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty). “There was no question that we had something wonderful,” Tony Thomas, 76, who executive-produced all seven seasons with Paul Junger Witt, recalls of the first table read with the actresses. “It was like watching an all-star game. And it just got better every day.”
The Golden Girls was an immediate hit. “There was a universality in the show,” the series’ creator, Susan Harris, 84, says. “It didn’t depend on people being young or pretty, and people really identified with that.” Thomas adds of the unprecedented focus on older characters: “This is life after your first life. You don’t have to slow down. You can create a new family. Life does not end. That’s the promise of the show.”
More than 30 years after its final episode in 1992 and nearly four years after the death of the last surviving Golden Girl (White, who died in 2021 at age 99), the reruns — all seven seasons are currently streaming on Hulu — continue to attract young fans whose parents weren’t even alive when the show began. “It’s amazing how it appeals to women, young kids—my grandkids loved The Golden Girls from when they were little,” Harris says. “It presented real women in a real way.”
In celebration of The Golden Girls’ 40th anniversary, which ABC News will mark with a one-hour special this fall, here are some surprising revelations from behind the scenes.
The Golden Girls was supposed to be about just two older women, and the idea was sparked by . . . Miami Vice.
Night Court star Selma Diamond and Remington Steele actress Doris Roberts were introducing a new show called Miami Vice on The NBC All Star Hour in 1984 when they started arguing about the popular cop show’s title. The banter gave two NBC executives an idea. “Brandon [Tartikoff] and Warren [Littlefield] turned to each other and said, ‘There might be something in this kind of relationship with older women,’ ” says Thomas. “Paul and I and another writer went to a pitch meeting [with them] for another show, and they were not interested, but they told us about the ‘two old ladies’ thing. The writer who was with us said, ‘I don’t write old people.’ ” So Thomas and Witt brought in Harris (Witt’s wife), who had previously worked with them on the sitcom Soap, to make TV history. “The original premise was two women,” Thomas adds, “so we kind of went a little crazy.”
The actress who played the young version of Bea Arthur’s Dorothy in flashbacks believes Arthur disliked Betty White because she thought White was phony.
“Bea prided herself in her lack of artifice, in the fact that she was a straight shooter, and she didn’t suffer fools, and you couldn’t bulls— her,” says Lyn Greene, 71, who appeared in four episodes. “And I think there were times Bea saw more of Sue Ann Nivens [White’s Mary Tyler Moore Show antagonist] than of Rose Nylund, in that I’m not sure she thought that Betty was always sincere. Somebody being overly agreeable can sometimes contrast and make you look like you’re an ogre. I don’t think it was easy for Bea, who was so serious.” That also made getting Arthur’s stamp of approval all the more meaningful. Greene remembers being “terrified” to make her first appearance in 1987. “But it got easier with every episode, because I caught Bea looking at a playback of my scene in her dressing room and smiling. I could see she was pleased at the portrayal. That was everything.”
An Emmy-winning guest star got booed at the end of taping an episode in which she played an anti-Semitic author.
“I didn’t think that much of it,” Bonnie Bartlett, 96, says of her first impression after reading the script for season 3’s “Dorothy’s New Friend” episode, in which she played bigoted author Barbara Thorndyke. “But then when we were shooting it, they had three different old gentlemen that came in [to play Sophia’s Jewish boyfriend], and two quit. That’s when I realized that two old gentlemen gave up a day’s work because they were offended by the scene. And then when I came out before the show, there was applause [from the live studio audience]. They knew me from Ellen Craig [on St. Elsewhere]. And when I came out after the show, they booed me. My husband [her St. Elsewhere and Boy Meets World costar William Daniels] said, ‘That’s what you get for taking an anti-Semitic part.’ ” Nearly four decades later, she still gets recognized by fans as Barbara Thorndyke.
The man who directed the most episodes of the series initially turned down the gig.
“I had been approached fairly early on about doing it, and I said no, not having seen it,” recalls Terry Hughes, 85, whose pre-Golden Girls credits included episodes of the Sarah Jessica Parker sitcom Square Pegs. “I didn’t really want to work with four old ladies on a show, and I very casually and stupidly said, ‘No, I’m not interested.’ ” When the two directors who’d done the 10 episodes after the pilot didn’t work out, Bea Arthur suggested they go back to Hughes, who says, “I went in and watched the pilot, and I realized how stupid I was just to reject it out of hand and realized how brilliant it was.” He took the job and stayed from episode 12 in 1985 until 1990. “It was an instant rapport with the ladies. By the end of that first week I felt as if I’d been there forever.”
Estelle Getty didn’t think her scene-stealing character was funny.
“Her experience had been in the Jewish theater in New York, and [this] must have been an overwhelming experience that she handled so well, to find herself internationally famous in her 60s,” Hughes says. “But she had a down-to-earth skill. She didn’t always know why what she was doing was funny, but it was, and she would sometimes question it. It must have been hard for her at the beginning to fit in with those ladies. By the end she created an incredible character in Sophia.”
Getty, who died in 2008 at age 84 after suffering from dementia for years, struggled with memory issues while on the show.
“She would do 20 takes before she’d nail it, so that you were doing it over, and over, and over. By the time you got to 20, you weren’t so great, but she would get it,” Greene says. “And I think there was a lot of frustration with her until people realized this was a [medical] condition.”
Dorothy’s ex-husband Stanley Zbornak, played by Herb Edelman, was The Golden Girls’ secret weapon.
“I had a fail-safe if ever a script was not up to scratch, or I thought we weren’t getting the laugh. My go-to was always, ‘Let’s get Stan in for a couple of episodes,’ because he was a surefire laugh riot,” says Hughes. “I loved that man. And we would sometimes, even if he wasn’t in the script — at least on two occasions I remember bringing him in just to bolster a scene and give us some extra comedy because he was so terrific, and the relationship between him and Bea was great, often overlooked. His contribution to the show was enormous.”
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