The Golden Girls
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The Golden Girls was a popular sitcom that originally aired Saturday nights on NBC from September 14, 1985 to September 7, 1992. It can now be seen in syndication frequently on the Lifetime cable network in the United States, Prime in Canada and Living TV in the UK. 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, and "The Golden Girls" was born.
Beginnings
Image:Thegoldengirlscast2.jpg The show was created by Susan Harris, who had also created the sitcoms Soap and Benson. In its later years, it was followed by Harris' other series Empty Nest and Nurses, both of which took place in Miami. Because of this, the three shows would occasionally have specials where characters from one show made appearances in the other ones in order to boost ratings.
The premise of the show was four older women sharing a fashionable house together. Blanche owned the house, while Dorothy and Rose responded to an ad for roommates, to be joined later by Dorothy's mother Sophia.
Characters
The show starred Bea Arthur as the sarcastic Dorothy Zbornak (early casting ideas included Elaine Stritch as Dorothy); Betty White as dimwit Rose Nylund; Rue McClanahan as sexpot Blanche Devereaux; and Estelle Getty as the wisecracking Sophia Petrillo, Dorothy's mother (although Getty is actually two months younger than Arthur so was heavily made up to seem much older). In the early days of casting, McClanahan auditioned for the role of Rose, while White auditioned for the role of Blanche. During its original run, The Golden Girls won 65 Emmy nominations, 10 Emmy awards, 3 Golden Globe Awards, 2 Viewers for Quality Television awards. All these actresses won Emmy Awards for the show, the first time in history that all the principal characters in an ensemble series won Emmy Awards for themselves.
Dorothy Zbornak
Main article: Dorothy Zbornak Image:Gg beaarthur.jpg Dorothy Zbornak (née Petrillo), who, in the last episode of the series became Dorothy Zbornak Hollingsworth, is an Italian girl raised in Brooklyn, New York by her mother, Sophia, and her father, Salvadore. "Pussycat" is her mother's nick name for her. In high school, Stanley Zbornak got her pregnant and a wedding took place to give the baby a name. They were married for 38 years and Stan cheated on her numerous times before leaving her for a flight attendant, named Chrissy, whom he met on the way to a business conference in Hawaii. After moving to Miami, Dorothy continued working as a substitute teacher. Dorothy has two children, Michael and Kate, and a grandchild (born to Michael). The grandchild was never shown on the series. At the end of season seven, she married Blanche's uncle, Lucas Hollingsworth, played by Leslie Nielsen.
Though Dorothy and Stan were divorced, he made several appearances on the show, usually running to Dorothy whenever something goes wrong in his life. Stan continually saw Dorothy as a comforting, reliable figure, even though he was the one who ended 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 wedding when Stan asked her to sign a pre-nuptial agreement. Sophia then proudly announced to the wedding guests: 'She dumped him. Remember that!'
Rose Nylund
Main article: Rose Nylund Image:Gg bettywhite.jpg Rose Nylund (née Lindstrom) is from the small farming town of St. Olaf, Minnesota, a community of Norwegian-Americans. Born out of wedlock to a monk and his lover, she was adopted by the Lindstrom family. She was married for many years to Charlie Nylund, until he died of a heart attack while having sex with her. After living alone for a while, she moved to Miami and found work at a grief counseling center. During the middle of the show's run, her husband's pension is cut off, and she is not able to make enough money to support herself at the counseling center, so she takes a job as consumer reporter Enrique Mas' assistant at local TV station. She has three daughters, Kirsten, Bridget, and Jeanella, and a son, Adam. The latter two are mentioned, but never seen on the show. She has a granddaughter, Charlie, who appears only once. Other family members who have appeared are her free-spirited mother, Alma (whom Rose nearly smothered with her over-protectiveness), her sister Lily (who is blind), and another sister, Holly (whom Rose cannot stand). Given that Rose has stated that her parents loved 'all nine of us equally', there is a noticeable lack of visiting siblings during the course of the show's run. Her granddaughter by Kirsten is named Charlie Jr., after the grandfather she never met. This can be seen in the episode where Kirsten comes to visit to discuss Rose's will.
In later seasons, Rose becomes romantically involved with Miles Webber (played by Harold Gould), a college professor, whom we later find out is 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.
Blanche Deveraux
Main article: Blanche Deveraux Image:Gg ruemcclanahan.jpg Blanche Devereaux (née Hollingsworth) is a Southern belle, who grew up on a plantation outside of Atlanta, Georgia and was always the apple of her father's ("Big Daddy") eye, even though she tries to spin it the other way many other times. She has many sibling rivalries with her sisters Charmaine (played by Barbara Babcock) and Virginia (played by Sheree North). She also faces difficulty coming to terms with her brother Clayton's homosexuality. Throughout most of the series, Blanche is portrayed as man-hungry. At the beginning of the series, the house the girls share belongs to her. However, later in the series, she sells equal shares of the house to Dorothy, Rose and Sophia, so one of them is not forced to move out due to local ordinances on the number of people Blanche can rent to. Her husband George died when a drunk driver hit him head-on. At his funeral, she picked up a man, as Rose said, because "she couldn't live without a man." Very vain, she always tries to act younger than she is (the youngest of the group, estimated to be in her fifties, even had her true date of birth removed from vital records "by order of the Governor"). She works as an art gallery employee. Judging from her brief mentions of them on the show, it appears she has six children; two daughters, Rebecca and Janet, both of whom appear on the show, and four sons, Matthew (a CPA), Biff, Doug, and Skippy (who has asthma) who are mentioned, but never seen on the series.
A seventh Devereaux child, David (played by Mark Moses), 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.
Sophia Petrillo
Main article: Sophia Petrillo
Image:Gg estellegetty.jpg Sophia Petrillo, Dorothy's mother, was born in Sicily and moved to New York, after she annulled her first (arranged) marriage to Guido Spirelli (she was also briefly engaged to a young man from her village, Augustine Bagatelli, as a teenager). Then, she married Salvadore Petrillo and had three children with him, Dorothy, Phil (who sometimes cross-dressed), and Gloria (who married rich). She was put away in a nursing home by Dorothy and comes to live with the girls when her retirement home, Shady Pines, burned to the ground. Sophia does not have many good things to say about the home, and alludes to poor treatment by the staff many times throughout the series' run, though at least once, she compliments their services. Due to Sophia's Sicilian descent, there are constant hints in the series that she and her family have some mafia connections; she once stated that she had lived through "two world wars, fifteen vendettas, four operations and two Darrins in Bewitched".
Members of Sophia's family who have appeared on the program: her sister Angela (played by Nancy Walker), her brother Angelo, her daughter Gloria, and, in flashbacks, her husband Sal, and her mother (played by Bea Arthur). Phil is never seen, but he passes away later on the series. At her son's funeral, Sophia ends the long feud she had with her daughter-in-law Angela (played by Brenda Vaccaro). Sophia also married Max Weinstock, Sal's business parter, but soon separated from him.
Response
Image:Gg scene.jpg 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. Estelle Getty's character, Sophia, was written as a woman who had a stroke that destroyed the part of her brain that censored her speech, thus enabling her to get away with much more than the other women. Nevertheless, the show was hugely successful with older and middle-aged women in America.
The show was extremely controversial for often tackling topics that, at the time of airing, were taboo for TV and often times simply not addressed in society. These included the coming out of Blanche's brother, menopause, domestic violence, euthanasia, 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.
Continuity errors
The Golden Girls was one of the last sitcoms to have its complete initial run before the widespread advent of the Internet. With fans of a TV show now able to watch and discuss each episode, offer suggestions and even point out continuity mistakes, writers and producers have the option of keeping much better tabs on their potential viewers. As The Golden Girls took place before such avenues of communication were as widely available, the characters were written more as "concepts first, people second." While the sitcom was not unique in this respect, it did have its fair share of minor continuity errors, ranging from disappearing siblings and illnesses that may or may not have happened to the question of Sophia's age (after a while, her character simply replied "in my 80s" when asked). One of the core cast members, their gay cook, Coco, was dropped after the pilot episode, with no mention of what had happened to him. The off-screen explanation for Coco's dissapearance had to do with network ratings. Although the Sophia character was only introduced as a guest who might make spot appearances to the sitcom, she garnered so much audience favoritism in her debut that the network executives decided to place Sophia (Estelle Getty) in permanently and removed the Coco character from the cast. Rose's mother appeared early on in the series, however a few seasons later, Rose mentioned her mother as being dead, yet no episode had explained that she died. (In actuality, Rose's birth mother had died, as she often revealed in the show. Her adoptive mother, Alma Lindstrom, is often referenced to as "mother," though the show made this clear during its run.)
It can also be noted that throughout the seasons various actors double up as other characters. This is evident when the women take on a petition against the mean woman who lives down the street, who later emerges in a future episode to be Dorothy's potential mother who was separated at birth (her potential father was also used in an episode as the cousin who redesigned their garage into a guestroom.) this is one minor flaw in a range of similar actor reversal roles present on the show.
Also early on, Sophia married her deceased husband's former business partner, ending with the two calling it quits, but not quite seeking a formal, legal end to the marriage, such as divorce or annulment, nor was there any mention of his death later on. Later in the series, Sophia became a nun; however, nuns may not be married women.
The greatest discontinuity is the where abouts of Dorothy and Stanley's child that forced them to be married and should be in his early to mid forties after 38 years of marriage and several years of divorce. The pregnancy is presented from the first episode to be the cause of the marriage, but in 7 seasons the child is never mentioned. Both of their children appear on the series as in their early to mid twenties.
Subsequent series, such as Friends, have carefully-organized flashback episodes, timelines, and even profiles for the fictitious characters.
The show's popularity and decline
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 department that kept the ratings as high as they were (eventually peaking at #4 for one season).
In 1989, Richard Vaczy and Tracy Gamble, previously writers on 227 and My Two Dads, took over head writing responsibilities, and were themselves replaced in 1990 with Marc Cherry (who went on to create Desperate Housewives) and Jamie Wooten. 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 PM EST time slot to 8:00 PM. 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).
Annual Nielsen Ratings
- 1985-1986 season: 7th place (tied with Dynasty), 21.8 average rating
- 1986-1987 season: 5th place, 24.5 average rating
- 1987-1988 season: 4th place, 21.8 average rating
- 1988-1989 season: 6th place, 21.4 average rating
- 1989-1990 season: 6th place, 20.1 average rating
- 1990-1991 season: 10th place, 16.5 average rating
- 1991-1992 season: 30th place (tied with In the Heat of the Night), 13.1 average rating
Post cancellation
Image:Gg season1.jpg Image:Goldenseason2.jpg Image:Gg season3.jpg
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 2005.
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. Herb Edelman, who had played Dorothy's unorganized ex-husband Stan, had passed away before the reunion was broadcast. Arthur paid tribute to Edelman, saying that he was very nice and was not like his character, Stan.
DVD
On November 23, 2004, the first season of the series went on sale on DVD in Region 1 and on June 28, 2005, in Region 2. The second season went on sale in Region 1 on May 17, 2005, while the second season went on sale in Region 2 on August 1, 2005. The third and fourth seasons go on sale in Region 1 on November 22, 2005, and February 14, 2006 (respectively). These discs are the only way to see uncut episodes of the series; these versions have not seen the light of day since their original network airings, and include snippets of dialogue and entire scenes that do not appear in the current syndicated versions.
Spinoffs
The Golden Palace
After the original series ended, White, McClanahan, and Getty reprised their characters in the CBS series The Golden Palace, which ran from September 1992 to May 1993. The show never approached the popularity or acclaim of the original and ranked 57th place in the annual Nielsen ratings. There was reportedly a second season to this series, but it was cancelled the day before the fall schedule was announced.
Lifetime, the current US syndicated home of Girls, aired reruns of The Golden Palace in the summer of 2005. This was the first time since the end of the series that The Golden Palace was seen on American TV.
Brighton Belles
Also in 1993, ITV premiered Brighton Belles, a United Kingdom version of the American sitcom. The show was nearly identical to Girls except for character name changes and actor portrayals. Only ten episodes of this version ever surfaced, due to low ratings. That was most likely due to the fact that most Britons had seen The Golden Girls.
SNL Spoof
In the early 2000s, Saturday Night Live had a skit that comically combined The Golden Girls with the then-popular MTV show, Jackass. Satirizing the many teens who had gotten themselves injured or killed by attempting to recreate the dangerous Jackass stunts, an SNL skit featured a group of teenage boys who idolized The Golden Girls and got together to recreate the goings-on of the four old women in the show.
Theme song
The theme song is Thank You For Being A Friend, which was a #25 hit for Andrew Gold in 1978. However, this version is a re-recorded one sung by Cynthia Fee:
- Thank you for being a friend
- Traveled down the road and back again
- Your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidant
- And if you threw a party, invited everyone you knew
- You would see the biggest gift would be from me
- And the card attached would say, "Thank you for being a friend"
Awards
ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards
Top TV series
- 1991 - George Aliceson Tipton
- 1990 - George Aliceson Tipton
- 1989 - George Aliceson Tipton
- 1988 - George Aliceson Tipton
American Comedy Awards
Funniest supporting female performer in a TV series
- 1992 - Estelle Getty
- 1991 - Estelle Getty
Funniest female performer in a TV series (leading role) network, cable or syndication
- 1987 - Betty White
BMI Film & TV Awards
Best TV series (title song)
- 1991 - Andrew Gold
- 1990 - Andrew Gold
- 1989 - Andrew Gold
- 1988 - Andrew Gold
- 1987 - Andrew Gold
Bambi Awards
Reader's choice
- 1989 - Beatrice Arthur
Directors Guild of America Awards
Outstanding directorial achievement in comedy series
- 1987 - For episode, "Isn't It Romantic?" - Terry Hughes, Director; Gary Shimokawa, Associate Director; Lex Passaris, Associate Director; Tom Carpenter, Stage Manager; Jane Greene, Stage Manager; Robert Spina, Production Associate; Ellen Deutsch, Production Associate
- 1986 - For Pilot episode - Jay Sandrich, Director; Harry Waterson, Unit Production Manager; Gary Shimokawa, Associate Director); Tom Carpenter, Stage Manager; Doug Tobin, Stage Manager; Laurie Gilbert, Production Assistant
Emmy Awards
Outstanding lead actress in a comedy series
- 1986 - Betty White
- 1987 - Rue McClanahan
- 1988 - Beatrice Arthur
Outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series
- 1988 - Estelle Getty
Outstanding comedy series
- 1987 - Barry Fanaro, Co-Producer; Terry Grossman, Producer; Susan Harris, Executive Producer; Winifred Hervey, Co-Producer; Mort Nathan, Co-Producer; Kathy Speer, Producer; Tony Thomas, Executive Producer; Marsha Posner Williams, Co-Producer; Paul Junger Witt, Executive Producer
- 1986 - Paul Bogart, Supervising Producer; Terry Grossman, Producer; Kathy Speer, Producer; Tony Thomas, Executive Producer; Marsha Posner Williams, Co-Producer; Paul Junger Witt, Executive Producer
Outstanding directing in a comedy series
- 1987 - Terry Hughes, Director
Outstanding writing in a comedy series
- 1986 - Barry Fanaro, Writer; Mort Nathan, Writer
Outstanding technical direction/electronic camerawork/video control for a series
- 1992 - Dave Heckman, Camera Operator; Chester Jackson, Camera Operator; Randy Johnson, Video Control; Stephen A. Jones, Camera Operator; Ritch Kenney, Camera Operator; Bob Keys; John O'Brien, Video Control; Richard Steiner, Video Control; Kenneth Tamburri, Technical Director
- 1988 - Jack Chisholm, Cameraperson; Stephen A. Jones, Cameraperson; Robert G. Kaufmann, Senior Video Control; Ritch Kenney, Cameraperson; O. Tamburri, Technical Director; Ken Tamburri, Cameraperson
- 1986 - Randy Baer, Cameraperson; Victor Bagdadi, Senior Video Control; Gerry Bucci, Technical Director; Dale Carlson, Cameraperson; Steve Jones, Cameraperson; Donna J. Quante, Cameraperson
Golden Globes Awards
Best TV series - comedy/musical
- 1988 - Golden Girls
- 1987 - Golden Girls
Best performance by an actress in a TV series - comedy/musical
- 1986 - Estelle Getty
Retirement Research Foundation Awards
Television and theatrical film fiction - special achievement award
- 1989 - Golden Girls - Susan Harris, Executive; Paul Junger Witt, Executive; Tony Thomas, Executive
TP de Oro, Spain Awards
Best foreign series (mejor serie extranjera)
- 1989 - Golden Girls
Viewers for Quality Television Awards
Best actress in a quality comedy series
- 1988 - Betty White
- 1987 - Betty White
Young Artist Awards
Exceptional performance by a young actor, guest starring in a television, comedy or drama series
- 1987 - Billy Jayne aka Billy Jacoby (playing "David" in episode, "On Golden Girls" (episode #1.6) October 26, 1985)
