The Golden Girls is a NBC sitcom created by Susan Harris which aired from September 14, 1985, to May 9, 1992, lasting for 7 seasons and 180 episodes.
The show was produced by Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions, in association with Touchstone Television, and Paul Junger Witt. Tony Thomas and Harris served as the original executive producers.
It also spawned three spin-off series: "Empty Nest" and "Nurses" (of which both titles aired on NBC) and "The Golden Place" (which aired on CBS).
Plot[]
The show centered on the lives of four older women who share a house together in Miami, Florida.
Cast[]
- Beatrice Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak
- Betty White as Rose Nylund
- Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux
- Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo
Production[]
Ideas for a comedy series about older women emerged during the filming of a television special at NBC's Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, in August of 1984.
Produced to introduce the network's 1984–85 season schedule, two actresses appearing on Syndication shows, Selma Diamond of "Night Court" and Doris Roberts of "Remington Steele", appeared in a skit promoting the upcoming show, "Miami Vice" as "Miami Nice" a parody about old people living in Miami.
Syndication senior vice president Warren Littlefield was among the executive producers in the audience who were amused by their performance, and he envisioned a series based on the geriatric humor the two were portraying. Shortly afterward, he met with producers Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas, who were pitching a show about a female lawyer.
Even though Littlefield nixed their idea, he asked if they would be interested in delivering a pilot script for "Miami Nice" instead.
Their regular writer declined, so Witt asked his wife, Susan Harris (who was planning to retire after the conclusion of their ABC series, "Soap".) She found the concept interesting, as "it was a demographic that had never been addressed," and soon began working on it.
Even though her vision of a sitcom about women in their 60s differed from Syndication's request for a comedy about women around 40 years old, Littlefield was impressed when he received her pilot script and subsequently approved production of it.
"The Cosby Show" director Jay Sandrich (who had previously worked with Harris, Witt, and Thomas on "Soap") agreed to direct.
The pilot episode included a gay houseboy, Coco, who lived with the women. Levin had been suggested by then-Syndication president Brandon Tartikoff based on Levin's groundbreaking portrayal of a recurring gay character, Eddie Gregg, on NBC's Emmy-winning drama, "Hill Street Blues". After the pilot episode, the character of Coco was eliminated from the series.
Casting[]
The part of Sophia Petrillo was the first of the four roles to be cast. Estelle Getty auditioned and won the role of the feisty mother of character Dorothy Zbornak; this was due in part, to the rave reviews she garnered in her Off-Broadway role reprisal for the 1984 Los Angeles run of "Torch Song Trilogy".
Afterwards, Getty had returned to New York, but she gained permission from her manager to return to California in early 1985. She figured that it would be her last chance to find television or film work and planned to return home to New York if she was unsuccessful.
Casting director Judith Weiner had seen "Torch Song Trilogy" and thought that Getty was terrific in it. She was also impressed by her audition for the role of the mother of Stephen Keaton (played by actor Michael Gross) for a guest episode of "Family Ties".
Although Getty was impressive, the show's producers went with another actress, but she came to Weiner's mind soon after when it became time to begin casting of The Golden Girls
Getty (who went through a three-hour transformation to become Sophia) wore heavy make-up, thick glasses, and a white wig to look the part. The character of Sophia was thought by the creators to enhance the idea that three retirement-aged women could be young.
Disney's Michael Eisner explains, "Estelle Getty made our three women into girls. And that was, to me, what made it seem like it could be a contemporary, young show."
As surprising as it may sound, Estelle Getty continuously battled her stage fright. During an interview in 1988, she commented on her phobia and expressed how working with major stars (such as Bea Arthur and Betty White) made her even more nervous. At times, she even froze on camera while filming.
Hired to film the pilot, director Jay Sandrich also became instrumental in helping to cast the roles of Blanche Devereaux and Rose Nylund. Both Rue McClanahan and Betty White came into consideration as the series "Mama's Family" (in which the two co-starred) had been canceled by Syndication.
Originally, producers wanted to cast McClanahan as Rose and White as Blanche. The thinking for this was based on roles they previously played; White portrayed man-hungry Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, while McClanahan co-starred as sweet but scatter-brained Vivian Harmon in Maude. Eager not to be typecast, they took the suggestion of Sandrich and switched roles last-minute.
In the pilot script, Blanche was described as "more Southern than Blanche DuBois", so McClanahan was perplexed when she was asked by director Sandrich during the filming of the pilot not to use the strong southern accent she had developed, but to use her natural Oklahoma accent instead.
Once the show was picked up for a first season, the new director Paul Bogart felt exactly the opposite, insisting that McClanahan use a Southern accent. McClanahan deliberately exaggerated her accent, stating:
"I played Blanche the way I felt Blanche. She thought an accentuated Southern accent...would be sexy and strong and attractive to men. She wanted to be a southern heroine, like Vivien Leigh. In fact, that's who I think she thought she was."
Though Harris had created the character of Dorothy with a "Bea Arthur type" in mind, Littlefield and the producers initially envisioned actress Elaine Stritch for the part; however, Stritch's audition flopped.
Under the impression that Bea Arthur did not want to participate, Harris asked McClanahan if she could persuade Arthur (with whom she worked previously on the CBS sitcom "Maude") to take the role.
Arthur flipped upon reading the script, but she felt hesitant about McClanahan's approach, as she did not "want to play (their Maude characters) Maude and Vivian meet Sue Ann Nivens." However, she reconsidered after hearing that McClanahan and White had switched roles.
Bea Arthur and Betty White worked well together in shared mutual respect but they did not pursue a personal friendship with one another outside of "The Golden Girls" set. However, both were close to Rue McClanahan off camera. Arthur and White were consummate professionals and thoroughly enjoyed their experiences on the show despite having only a work relationship with each other.
Betty White has always expressed nothing but love and admiration for Bea Arthur. Only after Arthur's death in 2009 did she reveal the fundamental personality clash between Arthur and herself, and that White's positive, perky demeanor would sometimes irritate Arthur.
Writing and taping[]
"The Golden Girls" was the second television series to be produced by the Walt Disney Company under the Touchstone Television label, and was subsequently distributed by Buena Vista International, Inc. (which holds as the ownership stake in Disney Channel Southeast Asia, now Disney–ABC Television Group).
Creator Susan Harris went on to contribute another four episodes to the show's first season, but she became less involved with the sitcom throughout its run; however, she continued reading all scripts and remained familiar with most of the storylines.
Kathy Speer and Terry Grossman were the first head writers of the series and wrote for the show's first four seasons. As head writers, Speer and Grossman (along with Mort Nathan and Barry Fanaro, who won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing the first season) gave general ideas to lower staff writers, and personally wrote a handful of scripts each season.
In 1989, Marc Sotkin (who was previously a writer on "Laverne & Shirley" and a producer on fellow Witt/Thomas series, "It's a Living") assumed head-writing responsibilities, and guided the show (to varying degrees) during what were its final three seasons.
Richard Vaczy and Tracy Gamble (who were previously writers on "227" and "My Two Dads") also assumed the roles of producers and head writers.
Beginning in 1990, Marc Cherry served as writer and producer, years before creating the ABC series, "Desperate Housewives."
Mitchell Hurwitz also served as writer for the show in its last two seasons. Hurwitz later created the series "Arrested Development" for Fox and later for Netflix.
Marc Cherry commented on read-throughs of the scripts that "generally, if the joke was a good one, the women found a way to make it work the very first time they read it. You have a lot of table reads where the actors will mess it up because they don't understand what the characters are doing, or they misinterpret. But the women were so uniformly brilliant at nailing it the first time...we basically knew that if the women didn't get it right the first time, the joke needed to be replaced."
Estelle Getty's stage fright (which affected her from the beginning of the show) grew worse as the show went on, to the point that she would forget her lines more and more. Beginning in Season 5, she would have to read her lines off cue cards held off-camera or from props.
During season six, there was some uncertainty over whether Bea Arthur would commit to future seasons, or leave the show once her contract expired to pursue other projects.
Debbie Reynolds was brought on as a guest star in the season 6 episode, "There Goes the Bride: Part 2" to test her chemistry with the other actresses as a possible replacement for Arthur, but it was decided that nobody could replicate the chemistry of the four original actresses. In any event, Arthur chose to commit to a seventh and final season.
Reception[]
During the NBC upfronts, the preview screening of "The Golden Girls" got a standing ovation. The show immediately received a full order of 12 episodes.
An immediate runaway hit, the show became an NBC staple on Saturday nights. It was the anchor of NBC's Saturday line-up and almost always won its time slot, as ABC and CBS struggled to find shows to compete against it (the most notable being ABC's Lucille Ball sitcom, "Life With Lucy" in the beginning of the 1986–87 season).
"The Golden Girls" was part of a series of Brandon Tartikoff shows that put an end to NBC's ratings slump (along with "The Cosby Show", "227", Night Court, "Miami Vice" and L.A. Law").
The show dealt with many controversial issues, such as coming out and same-sex marriage, elder care and homelessness, HIV/AIDS and discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS, U.S. immigration policy, death and assisted suicide.
Writer and producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason created a sitcom with this kind of image as a "four women" show, which became "Designing Women" on the CBS network.
"Designing Women" began competing against The Golden Girls in the same time slot, however "The Golden Girls" always got the higher rating, resulting in CBS pushing "Designing Women" to Mondays.
At the request of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother (who was reputedly a big fan), the cast of "The Golden Girls" performed several skits as their characters in front of her and other members of the Royal Family at the 1988 Royal Variety Performance in London.
Accolades[]
During its original run, "The Golden Girls" received 68 Emmy nominations, 11 Emmy awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and two "Viewers for Quality Television" awards. All the lead actresses won Emmy Awards for their performances on the show.
"The Golden Girls" is one of three shows (along with "All in the Family" and "Will & Grace") where all the principal actors have won at least one Emmy Award.
As a tribute to the success of the show, all four actresses were later named Disney Legends.