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The Golden Girls is an American sitcom that originally aired Saturday nights on NBC from September 14, 1985 to May 9, 1992. It can now be seen in syndication frequently on the Lifetime cable network in the United States, Living/Living2 in the UK, FOX Classics in Australia, TV4 Komedi in Sweden and Nelonen in Finland.
The sitcom was originally conceptualized by NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff. Tartikoff was visiting his elderly aunt one day and saw how she and her next-door neighbor, who was also her best friend, interacted with each other. Despite their constant bickering and arguments, they were still the best of friends and loved each other. He thought that would make a great storyline for a show.
[edit] Beginnings
The show was created by Susan Harris, who had also created the sitcoms Soap and Benson.
The premise of the show was four older women sharing a fashionable house together in Miami Beach. Blanche owned the house; Dorothy and Rose responded to an ad on the bulletin board of a local grocery store for roommates. Blanche, Rose and Dorothy were later joined by Dorothy's mother Sophia, when Sophia's retirement home, Shady Pines, burned down. In the pilot episode, the character of Coco (played by Charles Levin), a gay man who was the cook, was also featured, but was dropped from the show after the pilot was filmed.
[edit] Characters
The show starred Bea Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak, who maintained an arsenal of withering put-downs and killer glares; Betty White as dense Minnesotan Rose Nylund; Rue McClanahan as the oversexed Southern belle Blanche Devereaux; and Estelle Getty as the wisecracking Sicilian Sophia Petrillo, Dorothy's mother (Getty is actually two months younger than Arthur, and was heavily made up to seem much older). In many episodes, the ladies eat cheesecake at the kitchen table as they talk about their problems and/or flash back to the past.
In the early days of casting, McClanahan auditioned for the role of Rose, while White auditioned for the role of Blanche, only to switch roles before the pilot. (White had previously played Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, making Blanche a more obvious casting choice.) During its original run, The Golden Girls won 65 Emmy nominations, 11 Emmy awards, 4 Golden Globe Awards, and 2 Viewers for Quality Television awards. All the lead actresses won Emmy Awards for their performances on the show. The Golden Girls, along with All in the Family and Will & Grace, are the only shows where all the principal actors have won Emmy Awards.
[edit] Dorothy Zbornak
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The Golden Girls opening title featuring
Beatrice Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak.
Dorothy Zbornak (née Petrillo) was an Italian-Catholic girl raised in Brooklyn, New York City by her mother, Sophia, and her father, Salvadore (played in flashbacks by Sid Melton). Nicknamed "Pussycat" by her mother, Dorothy had a younger brother and sister. Phil, a crossdresser, was often referred to, but never seen. He later died in the series of a heart attack. Gloria was the youngest Petrillo sibling, who married into money; she appeared in two different episodes and was played by two different actresses. After moving to Miami in her later years, Dorothy continued working as a substitute teacher.
In high school, Stanley Zbornak got Dorothy pregnant and a wedding took place to give the baby a name. Stan and Dorothy were married for 38 years, although Stan cheated on her numerous times, finally leaving her for a young flight attendant named Chrissy, whom he met on the way to a business conference in Hawaii. As Dorothy explained in one episode, the captain on the flight told the flight attendants to "give the passengers a "lei". Chrissy got confused (implying that she had sex with Stan) and she and Stan ended up marrying and live in Maui. Dorothy had two children, Michael and Kate, and a grandchild named Robbie (through Michael and his wife Lorraine, who was in her forties and was African-American). The grandchild was barely mentioned in the series, possibly retconned from the show's storyline.
Though Dorothy and Stan were divorced, he made numerous appearances on the show (played by Herb Edelman), usually running to Dorothy whenever something went wrong in his life. Stan continually saw Dorothy as a comforting, reliable figure, even though he was the one who destroyed their marriage. Dorothy emerged from the divorce a stronger person, while her ex seemed to descend further into childishness. They ended up having a one-night stand in the first season (which Stan mistakenly thought would lead to a reconciliation), and, a few seasons later, started dating again and planned to remarry. Dorothy called off the reconciliation on the day of the wedding when Stan asked her to sign a pre-nuptial agreement. (Dorothy's proud mother Sophia, who had never quite forgiven her "yutz" son-in-law for cheating on her daughter, proudly announced to the wedding guests: 'She dumped him. Remember that!')
In the series' final episode, Dorothy married Blanche's uncle, Lucas Hollingsworth, played by Leslie Nielsen, making her Dorothy Zbornak Hollingsworth. Stan, though saddened to see Dorothy move on into her new life without him, attended the wedding and wished her a happy marriage.
[edit] Rose Nylund
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The Golden Girls opening title featuring
Betty White as Rose Nylund.
Rose Nylund (nee Lindstrom) was from the small farming town of St. Olaf, Minnesota, a community of Swedish-Americans that was once referred to by Dorothy as "the cradle of idiocy." Rose delighted in telling profoundly strange stories of life growing up in St. Olaf, stories which provided comedic fodder for her character. Most of the stories focused on people named Hans, Lars, or Sven and their interactions with herring fish.
Rose spent the first few years of life in the St. Olaf orphanage, and as was discovered in one memorable episode, spent much of her life convinced that Bob Hope was her biological father. Toward the end of the series run, however, she learned that she had been born out of wedlock to a monk (Don Ameche) and his lover, Ingrid, who died in childbirth. At around age eight, Rose was adopted and raised by the large (and apparently somewhat bizarre) Lindstrom family. Her adoptive father had died prior to the start of the series, but in one episode she was visited by her free-spirited adoptive mother, Alma (played by veteran star Jeanette Nolan); she later died offscreen during the course of the series. Rose was one of nine siblings (once stating that her parents loved 'all nine of us equally'); several were, like Rose, named after types of flowers. These included the two sisters who visited Rose in Miami: Lily, who was blind, played by Polly Holliday and Holly, played by Inga Swenson, a professional musician whom Rose could not stand.
Rose was married for many years to traveling insurance salesman Charlie Nylund, and they had five children: three daughters, Kirsten, Bridgette, and Jeanella, and two sons, Adam and Charlie, Jr. Kirsten and Bridgette would visit their mother in Miami on more than one occasion, while Adam, Charlie, Jr. and Jeanella were mentioned but never seen on the show. Rose had several grandchildren, including (female) Charlie and Charlene (the latter of whom visited Rose in The Golden Palace).
After Charlie's death in 1980 (he died of a heart attack while making love to her), Rose lived alone in St. Olaf for a while, and then moved to Miami and found work at a grief counseling center. During the show's run, Charlie's pension was cut off, and Rose was not able to make enough money to support herself at the counseling center, so she took a job as consumer reporter Enrique Mas' assistant at local TV station. Over the course of the series, Rose also volunteered at the local hospital and worked on a number of charity projects.
In later seasons, Rose became romantically involved with Miles Webber (played by Harold Gould), a college professor; Rose later discovered that Miles was part of the Witness Protection Program. Incidentally, the same actor who played Miles also played "Arnie", one of Rose's love interests in the first season.
Later on, when the Girls sold the house and bought a hotel (Golden Palace), Rose was the Wedding Consultant for the hotel. She was also in charge of handling all banquets, conferences, and affairs for the hotel. While she was handling a wedding reception for a bride and setting up the special "Cow Theme Wedding", Miles' name was found in the hotel registry several times. It seems that Miles had checked in several times with another woman. Blanche proceeds to inform Rose that Miles' name has been found several times in the hotel registry and that he didn't check in alone. Rose confronts Miles with the information and it comes out that he's not the Miles Webber that was in the hotel registry. Miles did admit that he was seeing another woman who worked in a restaurant, and that couldn't choose between them. Rose ends the relationship stating that after all they've been through if he isn't sure that she's the one that he wants to spend the rest of his life with, then he'll never know. Later on Rose finds out that the bride who is having the special "Cow Theme Wedding", which has always been Rose's dream wedding (for her and Miles) is going to be for Miles and his Bride. At the end of the episode, Rose is in the hotel kitchen looking into the banquet room during the wedding ceremony. Rose tells Blanche that she has to be there in order to say good-bye and have closure
Rose suffered from a number of health problems during the course of the show, most notably a massive heart attack during the show's final season. In one episode it was also indicated that Rose had been addicted to painkillers for many years, even though the story concept never appeared anywhere other than that stand-alone episode. Throughout the series, Rose showed a sometimes nasty competitive streak that went against her usual sweet nature.
The town of St. Olaf created the Rose Nylund award for civic excellence.
[edit] Blanche Devereaux
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The Golden Girls opening title featuring
Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux.
Blanche Devereaux (née Hollingsworth) was a Southern belle who grew up on a plantation outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Blanche was always the apple of her father's ("Big Daddy") eye, even though she tried to spin it the other way many other times. Blanche had a love-hate relationship with her sisters Charmaine (Barbara Babcock) and Virginia (Sheree North). She also faced difficulty coming to terms with her brother Clayton (Monte Markham)'s homosexuality and her brother Tad (Ned Beatty)'s mental illness, which was shown in The Golden Palace.
The house on Richmond Street the girls shared initially belonged to Blanche, who had lived there for many years with her late husband, George (played in flashbacks by George Grizzard). (Later in the series, however, she sold equal shares of the house to Dorothy, Rose and Sophia.) Blanche and George had six children; two daughters, Rebecca and Janet, both of whom made appearances on the show, and four sons, including Matthew, a CPA who appeared in the spin-off series The Golden Palace, and Biff, Doug, and Skippy (who had asthma) who are mentioned but never seen on the series. Blanche had several grandchildren, notably David (a teenage rebel who visited Miami), Sarah (who visited with her mother, Janet, during the last season), Melissa (a young beauty-pageant contestant), and Aurora (Rebecca's infant daughter, conceived by artificial insemination in one of the series' ongoing storylines).
George Devereaux's illegitimate son, David (played by Mark Moses), the seventh Devereaux child, was discovered when the young man turned up at the house, looking for George. This led Blanche to struggle with the fact that her husband, to whom she was devoted, was unfaithful during their marriage.
Throughout most of the series, Blanche was portrayed as man-hungry, and she clearly had the most male admirers -- and stories detailing various sexual encounters -- over the course of the series. At the funeral for her husband, George (who had died when a wrong-way driver hit him head-on), she made a date with a man, because, as Rose said, "she can't be without a man, do you know what I mean?". Sophia, in particular, had some of the best lines in relation to Blanche's oversexed nature, referring to her as a "human mattress". When Rose asked Blanche how long she waited to have sex after George died, Sophia responded, "Till the paramedics came!"
Blanche was very vain, and as a result, she always tried to act younger than she was. Although it is widely believed that her exact age was never revealed (it was mentioned she even had her true date of birth removed from vital records "by order of the Governor"), in Season 3, Episode 25 entitled "Mother's Day" (Aired May 7, 1988), it is revealed in a flashback that Blanche was 17 in 1949. That would make her 53 years old when the series began in 1985 and 60 when it ended in 1992.
Blanche was employed at an art museum and her boss was Mr. Allen, a very nice man, although he admitted to having an affair with his best friend's wife. Dorothy came to work at the museum in later episodes, sparking jealousy in Blanche, which was always an ongoing trait of hers.
Blanche's unapologetic enjoyment of sex contributed to some of the best dialogue on the show. For example:
Blanche: Do you know what I hate doing most after a party?
Rose: Trying to find your underwear in the big pile?
[edit] Sophia Petrillo
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The Golden Girls opening title featuring
Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo.
Sophia Petrillo, Dorothy's mother, was born in Sicily and moved to New York after annulling her first (arranged) marriage to Guido Spirelli (she was also briefly engaged to a young man from her village, Augustine Bagatelli, as a teenager). She married Salvador Petrillo (Sid Melton) and they had three children: Dorothy, Phil, a crossdresser who was married with kids, and Gloria, who married rich.
Sophia was put away in the Shady Pines nursing home by Dorothy prior to the start of the series. She had suffered a stroke, which, on more than one occasion, was said to have destroyed the part of her brain that acted as a censor; indeed, much of Sophia's popularity comes from her humorous and often shocking frankness and general lack of inhibition. In the pilot episode, she came to live with the girls after Shady Pines burned to the ground. In a later episode Sophia ran away to Sicily after becoming the prime suspect for the fire. Sophia never had good things to say about her retirement home, and she alluded to poor treatment by the staff many times throughout the series' run (although, in an episode meant to raise awareness about poor-quality nursing homes, she did admit that the treatment at Shady Pines was satisfactory). There were constant hints in the series that she and her family back in Sicily had some mafia connections; she once stated that she had lived through "two world wars, fifteen vendettas, four operations and two Darrins on Bewitched". In one episode, she accidentally let slip that she knew what happened to Jimmy Hoffa.
Members of Sophia's family who appeared on the program include her sister Angela (played by Nancy Walker), her brother Angelo (played by Bill Dana), her daughter Gloria, and, in flashbacks, her husband Sal, and her mother (played by Bea Arthur), and Dorothy herself at a younger age, played by Lynne Green. Phil, her only son, was never seen; he died later on in the series, when he suffered a heart attack (due to his obesity) while trying on large women's clothing. In the episode, "Ebbtide's Revenge", after her son's funeral, Sophia (with the help of Dorothy's no-nonsense personality and Rose's caring counseling expertise from her grief centre job) finally realized the root of her anger, broke into tears and ended the long feud with Phil's wife Angela (played by Brenda Vaccaro). Sophia always referred to Angela as "Big Sally" so that it got on Angela's nerves. Phil, Angela and their children lived in a trailer home in Newark. During the series' run, Sophia married Max Weinstock (played by Jack Gilford), Sal's business partner, and attempted to revive Sal and Max's old pizza-and-knish business, but they soon separated, realizing they were better off as friends (with occasional benefits).
[edit] NBC Broadcast History
September 1985-July 1991--------Saturdays--------9pm
August-September 1991--------Saturdays--------8:30pm
September 1991-May 1992--------Saturdays--------8pm
[edit] Episodes
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[edit] Response
Scene from
The Golden Girls featuring Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo and Beatrice Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak.
The Golden Girls was quite risqué for its time, as its main characters were four single older women who lived together, but were still up-to-date with pop culture and sexually active. Mild profanity and strong sexual innuendo were common on the program. The effects of Sophia's stroke, which according to Dorothy, "rendered her totally annoying," enabled the character to get away with much more than the other women. The show was extremely controversial for often tackling topics that, at the time of airing, were taboo for TV and often simply not addressed in society. These included the coming out of Blanche's brother and his gay marriage (this still in the AIDS era), menopause, gun control, impotence, safe sex, domestic violence, suicide, cross-dressing, lesbianism, euthanasia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, artificial insemination and senility. Perhaps the most controversial episode involved Rose getting tested for HIV years after receiving an untested blood transfusion and having to wait 72 hours for the results.
[edit] The show's popularity declines
The first head writers of the series were Kathy Speer and Terry Grossman, and wrote for the show's first four seasons (although it should be noted that as head writers, Speer and Grossman gave general ideas to lower staff writers, and personally wrote a mere handful of scripts each season). It was the popularity of the show's four leads and the stability in the show's writing staff, including Emmy winners Mort Nathan and Barry Fanaro, that kept the ratings as high as they were (eventually peaking at #4 for one season).
In 1989, Marc Sotkin, previously a writer on Laverne & Shirley, took over head writing responsibilities and guided the show, to varying degrees, during what would be its final three seasons. Other writers, including Richard Vaczy and Tracy Gamble, previously writers on 227 and My Two Dads, also assumed the roles of showrunners, and were themselves replaced in 1990 with Marc Cherry and Jamie Wooten. Mitchell Hurwitz was also a long-time member of the writing staff. It was partially the abrupt and fast change in writing teams that slowly brought the ratings down, ultimately pulling it out of contention as a viable Top 10 show. Also, in 1990, Terry Hughes, regular director since early 1986, left the series.
In September 1991, NBC moved the series from its comfortable 9:00 p.m. ET time slot to 8:00 p.m. NBC had trouble filling the slot since 227 vacated it in the spring of 1990. Each show they put in the time period failed, and The Golden Girls was stuck there as a last resort to save the night. As a result, the show fell from 10th place in the previous season to 30th place.
During the seventh season, Bea Arthur decided that she wanted to leave the series. The last episode of that season saw her character of Dorothy marry Blanche's Uncle Lucas (Leslie Nielsen).
[edit] Annual Ratings
[edit] Trivia
- Despite Estelle Getty playing Dorothy's mother, in reality, Dorothy (Beatrice Arthur) is two months older than Estelle Getty.
- Blanche's name and her father's nickname (Big Daddy) are allusions to Tennessee Williams plays - Blanche Dubois, the aging Southern belle of A Streetcar Named Desire, and Big Daddy, the head of the family in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
- The kitchen area of the Golden Girls set was, in fact, recycled from an earlier Susan Harris series. The exact same kitchen was used on the short-lived ABC sitcom It Takes Two, which ran in 1982-83. The series starred Patty Duke Astin and Richard Crenna as one of TV's first "yuppie couples", and their kids were played by Helen Hunt and Anthony Edwards. The only member of this family who would have come close to being a "Golden Girl" was Astin's mother on the show, played by Billie Bird. Presumably, after It Takes Two was cancelled, Harris & Co. liked the kitchen set so much that they saved it in storage until she developed a new show. The Golden Girls was that next show.
[edit] The Series Finale
After 6 consecutive seasons never out of the top 10 or top 5, and a seventh season at #30, The Golden Girls came to an end when Bea Arthur decided it was time to move on. In the hour-long finale which aired in May 1992, Dorothy marries Blanche's Uncle Lucas and moves to Hollingsworth Manor. Presumably, Sophia was to join her, but in the end, Sophia stays behind for the other girls. In the bittersweet final moments, Dorothy comes rushing back in through different entrances of the house for their final goodbyes, until making her final exit, leaving the other three ladies alone. The finale garnerned over 27 million viewers.
[edit] Post cancellation
[edit] Network Reruns
Golden Girls had the distinction of replacing the long-running Wheel of Fortune on NBC's daytime schedule in June 1989, airing reruns at 11:00am (EST). Wheel of Fortune moved to CBS a few weeks later.
[edit] Syndication
American syndicated reruns began in the fall of 1990, distributed by Buena Vista Television, the syndication arm of Disney, whose Touchstone Pictures division produced the series. Starting in 1997, the Lifetime cable network acquired the exclusive rights to repeat the episodes in the US, which they still have as of 2007. The show remains popular in its second decade, with nightly airings still attracting roughly 1.2 million viewers.
In 2003, Lifetime hosted a special Golden Girls retrospective, showing some popular episodes as well as a reunion special featuring Arthur, McClanahan and White reminiscing about their times on the show; Estelle Getty was too ill to participate. Bea Arthur acknowledged that the reunion was not as touching as it should have been because of Getty's absence. Herb Edelman, who had played Dorothy's unorganized ex-husband Stan, had died before the reunion was broadcast. Arthur paid tribute to Edelman, saying that he was a wonderful, funny and very warm man, and was not like his character, Stan.
[edit] DVD Releases
Buena Vista Home Entertainment has released the entire series on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time.
