Trivia / The Golden Girls

• Acting for Two: George Grizzard played both Jamie Devereaux, Blanche's brother-in-law in "That Old Feeling", and George Devereaux, her late husband in "Mrs. George Devereaux". This plays up the Actor Allusion of Blanche telling Jamie how much he looked like his brother, even though he hadn't yet appeared in person.
• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • Bea Arthur had a horrible fear of chickens (alektorophobia, for the curious). As such, the episode "Long Day's Journey into Marinara," which features a live piano-playing chicken named Count Bessie, was difficult for her to film. Pay attention and you'll notice that Dorothy is always as far from Count Bessie as possible, which was the only way that Arthur could be on the set and not panic.
  • Estelle Getty, who played Sophia, put together an "old lady" ensemble for her final audition. She knew that a woman of Sophia's age would never be without her purse, and so spent a great deal of time choosing one from a thrift store. The straw bag she selected was so perfect that the producers not only kept it on the show for her, but had spares made in case of any accidents.
• Actor-Shared Background: Betty White is famous for being an animal lover, so her character Rose often had subplots involving finding or taking care of animals.
• Adored by the Network: In general, any station that has the rights to this series will play the hell out of it, either in daily/nightly blocks or weekly hours-long marathons. Even though Lifetime played the show at least six times per day during the 1990s and 2000s (to the point where a post-9/11 Onion parody article stated that while every channel was airing a program tied with the tragedy, Lifetime aired nothing but Golden Girls), other networks seem to be playing the show even more times than that nowadays.
• All-Star Cast: Bea Arthur, Betty White, and Rue McClanahan were all veteran comedy actors from very popular sitcoms, and the show was largely written for the three of them. The only relative unknown in the main cast was Estelle Getty, who ironically became the breakout star as Sophia.
• California Doubling: The show is set in Miami, FL. but was shot in Los Angeles. Stock Footage of the city was used in opening credits and other scenes. The exterior of the girls' house was part of an actual studio backlot house at Disney/MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida, until the backlot ride was demolished in 2004 to make room for a new attraction.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Betty White was offered Blanche due to playing Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rue McClanahan had played a ditzy character named Vivian on Maude which lead to her being offered Rose. However, there was fear of Blanche being too much like Sue Ann and Rue didn't feel comfortable with Rose and they swapped.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • Bea Arthur got to sing in a few episodes. Not to mention Betty and Rue get to show off their dancing skills.
  • Subverted with Rose's occasionally playing the piano; Betty White was actually unable to do so, so the crew had to use trick camera angles to cover her hands.
• Corpsing:
  • Deliberately invoked by the show's crew during a Christmas episode. The plot has Blanche give the other three girls homemade calendars titled "The Men of Blanche's Boudoir," featuring pictures of some of Blanche's lovers. As a joke, some of the male members of the show's staff posed in exaggerated erotic positions while either nude or half-nude, took photographs, and filled the prop calendars with them. When the actresses rehearsed the scene and discovered the gag, they completely lost all composure.
  • In-universe, when Rose tells the "Herring War" story from her past to Dorothy and Blanche, they find it so outrageous that they burst out laughing.
  • Another time, Rose tells about a man known as the Aqua Midget who had a crush on her— Blanche keeps making puns and Dorothy tries to stifle her, but their faces give it all away.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Bea Arthur grew tired of the increasing reliance on Dorothy put-down jokes as the series progressed. Jokes about Blanche's promiscuity or Rose's naivety only applied to the characters, so McClanahan and White could shake them off. For Dorothy, however, most jokes about the character focused on her height and appearance, traits which also applied to Arthur. Arthur was reportedly quite insecure underneath her tough façade, and had a hard time handling the insults.
  • Bea Arthur intensely disliked the subplot from "End of the Curse" about raising minks for fur coats. She unsuccessfully lobbied the writers to change it. It's reported that none of the other women liked the plot, either (especially Betty White, a lifelong animal rights' activist), but couldn't make any alterations because "End of the Curse" was the second season opener—there wasn't any time to do another episode, because none existed yet.
  • Estelle Getty felt uncomfortable making jokes about Phil's cross-dressing while standing at his casket in "Ebbtide's Revenge" and wouldn't do the scene without some rewrites. Unlike Arthur's discomfort with the mink fur plot, Getty was successful in prompting the writers to tone the scene down.
• Dawson Casting: Slightly, in Betty White and Bea Arthur's case, as they were in their 60's while Dorothy and Rose were in their 50s in the first season. Averted with Rue McClanahan, who was 51 in the first season and Blanche, being (probably)about the same age or slightly older. Completely averted with Estelle Getty who was 20 years younger than Sophia.
• The Danza: George Grizzard as George Devereaux.
• Deleted Scene:
  • The famous shot seen in the opening titles of Blanche pulling her sleeve over her hand was taped for the episode "Break In," but was deleted from the final cut. It has subsequently been called the "Flying Dutchman" of deleted scenes for this series.
  • The Season Five episode "Like the Beep Beep Beep of the Tom-Tom" has one deleted scene that didn't even make it into the DVD release of the series. The plot of the episode involves Blanche struggling with making adjustments in her life after she has a pacemaker implanted. In the deleted scene, Sophia is craving microwave popcorn but then sees the popcorn is gone, and Dorothy and Rose mention they're giving away the microwave at doctor's orders out of concern for Blanche's safety. This scene (aired in 1990) was likely cut due to medical knowledge at the time that has been debunked since.
    • This also helps explain the scene later in the episode in which Blanche says, "I don't care about anything anymore, life has no meaning," and Sophia responds, "So, who's for popcorn?"
    • A reconstruction of the scene, along with the latter joke by Sophia, can be found here.
  • A joke about Scientology was cut from reruns (and the DVD) of the episode "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sophia?".
• Distanced from Current Events:
  • In June 2020, Hulu removed Season 3's "Mixed Blessings" from its website for featuring a blackface joke^note Rose and Blanche walk in from the kitchen wearing a new mud facial treatment when Dorothy's son's (black) fiancée and her family are in the living room that the streaming platform was afraid would be perceived as racist following the George Floyd protests and the amplified Black Lives Matter movement. This was heavily criticized even at the time as overzealous, and the episode was quietly restored by November 2022.
  • Sophia makes a joke about the CBS sitcom My Sister Sam (1986-88) in "Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself." In July 1989, nearly two years after the episode aired, the young star of My Sister Sam, Rebecca Schaeffer, was shot to death in her front doorway by a stalker. The joke was removed from the syndicated cut of the episode, possibly out of respect for Schaeffer.
  • Hallmark Channel pulled the Season 1 episode “The Flu” from its lineup in 2020 after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic since the girls all attend a charity dinner despite still being clearly sick.
• Dueling Shows: With Designing Women, a similar series of four women friends that aired on CBS and which ran also for seven years (1986-1993). Both are very popular in their own right, but The Golden Girls was and continues to be the more well-known, won several Emmys and there wasn't nearly as much backstage drama as with Designing Women. Both would later air alongside each other on Lifetime. Humorously, in "Three on a Couch," Sophia name drops the rival show when complaining about Blanche's accent: "What is this, Designing Women?"
• Fake Nationality: In keeping with the precedent set by the casting of Dorothy and Sophia, every prominent Italian on the series was played by a Jewish actor.
• Follow the Leader: Oh, yeah. Technically, the Four-Girl Ensemble didn't start with this show (as both The Facts of Life and It's a Living predate it by five years^note The former series was originally envisioned as more of an ensemble cast of various girls, but come season two, it had trimmed down the cast significantly with just the four girls—something It's A Living also did in its more successful first-run syndication years—to drastically improved results), but it became popularized with The Golden Girls. To this day, whenever a show, especially a sitcom, consisting of four women premieres (including but not limited to Living Single, Girlfriends (2000), Girls, and most notably Designing Women and Sex and the City), it will inevitably be compared to this show and its characters.
• From the Ashes: At the end of the series, three of the four main characters buy a hotel with Don Cheadle as the manager in a new series called The Golden Palace. It lasted only one season.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: In a minor example, Betty White improvised the various "Scandinavian" words her character uses.
• Hostility on the Set: Bea Arthur reportedly did not get along with her co-stars very well. Betty White admitted that they did not have a good relationship, and that she found White's optimism annoying (it was also very much a Technician Versus Performer situation, with the former disapproving of the latter's fourth-wall breaking). Rue McClanahan has said she didn't have a relationship with Bea either (despite the fact that they had previously worked together on Maude) calling her very eccentric. Rue would also get very annoyed with Estelle Getty's constant line flubs and retakes in later seasons (though she changed her tune quite considerably when it was revealed Getty was going through dementia). With the exception of Betty and Rue, the cast weren't really friends. However, throughout the show, the four of them maintained that they would always have lunch together and could work with each other in spite of any tensions.
• In Memoriam: Each of the four Girls' passings brought about a marathon held in their honor on whichever network had the rights to the series at the time. Estelle Getty and Bea Arthur's respective marathons aired on Lifetime, Rue McClanahan's aired on the Hallmark Channel, and Betty White's aired on TV Land.
  • When Bob Hope died, Lifetime ran the episode he guest-starred in, "You Gotta Have Hope," and added an "In Memoriam" banner after the end credits.
• Old Shame: In later years, Bea Arthur declined interviews to talk about the show, claiming it was from "an unhappy period" in her life, and much preferred to speak about her work on Maude.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Lots. From Dorothy's sister Gloria, to Blanche's daughter Rebecca, to Rose's daughter Kirsten, and even the cast of the episode that was a pilot for the spin-off series Empty Nest.
  • The Empty Nest example might not count, since the entire plot changed between the Poorly Disguised Pilot and the actual series. In the pilot, the story was about a middle-aged married couple learning to reconnect and begin a new part of their life after their youngest daughter leaves for college (an actual "empty nest.") In the spin-off show, the main character was Harry, who had been established as a recurring character on The Golden Girls - a pediatrician who lived near the title characters. Harry was a recent widower whose self-supporting adult daughters move back in with him (creating something of an Artifact Title.) None of the characters from the pilot actually made it to the show with the exception of David Leisure as the Drop-In Character neighbor, and even he was changed from a pilot named Oliver to a cruise ship employee named Charlie. The house in which the pilot was filmed was the only other thing carried over to the actual series.
  • Interestingly enough, Herb Edelman, Monte Markham, Sheree North, Scott Jacoby, Lynnie Green, Sid Melton, Bill Dana, and Nancy Walker were (as Stanley Zbornak, Clayton Hollingsworth, Virginia Hollingsworth, David Zbornak, Young Dorothy Zbornak, Sal Petrillo, and Sophia's brother Angelo and sister Angela) the only recurring family members to appear throughout the series without changing actors.
  • In "That Was No Lady" when Dorothy starts seeing a married man named Glen, he's portrayed by Alex Rocco. In the follow-up episode several seasons later, "Cheaters", he's played by Jerry Orbach.
• The Pete Best: Charles Levin as Coco, the gay cook, in the first episode. The popularity of Estelle Getty's character Sophia led to her getting a regular role on the series instead of him (essentially making her the Ringo Starr).
• Phallic Object: The questionable penis-shaped tin in the kitchen is actually a lobster.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Rue McClanahan and Betty White were initially sought after to play Rose and Blanche, respectively. At the time, Betty White was well-known for playing "Happy Homemaker" Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Outside of her TV persona, Sue Ann was cruel and man-hungry, the antithesis of Rose. Rue, meanwhile, had played sweet but scatterbrained Vivian Harmon on Maude, as well as prissy spinster Aunt Fran on Mama's Family. It was director Jay Sandrich who suggested switching them during the audition process. McClanahan was delighted, as she coveted the role of Blanche and had no handle on how to play Rose.
    • Rue McClanahan had previously appeared in a famous episode of All in the Family as the exhibitionist wife in a swinger couple whom Edith invites to the house after misunderstanding their personal ad.
    • According to Rue, the casting swap was a major factor in getting Bea Arthur to sign on; previously, she'd told Rue that she had no interest in doing "Maude and Vivian meet Sue Ann Nivens."
• Post-Script Season: Bea Arthur decided to leave the show after the seventh season, and the series ends with Dorothy getting married and moving to Atlanta. However, her mother Sophia decides to stay in Miami with the roommates, setting up the premise for said After Show, The Golden Palace, as the girls buy a struggling high-end hotel. It wasn't well received, but has gained something of a cult following in subsequent years.
• Real-Life Relative: Blanche's grandson David was played by Billy Jayne/Jacoby, brother of Scott Jacoby, who portrayed Dorothy's son Michael; then in the finale, the characters are related when Dorothy marries Blanche's and David's Uncle Lucas.
• Reality Subtext:
  • In the episode "Sick and Tired", Dorothy is diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, from which condition creator Susan Harris also suffers.
  • In "A Piece of Cake," Rose holds a One-Person Birthday Party in her old home to say goodbye to her recently departed husband Charlie. Betty White had recently lost her husband Allen Ludden, and said in interviews that she channeled her feelings about Allen's loss for the scene, and it was "as close to Betty as Rose ever came."
• Real Song Theme Tune: "Thank You for Being a Friend" was originally a huge hit for Andrew Gold (its composer) in 1978. The show uses a cover version by a female singer.
  • The producers originally wanted to use Bette Midler's "Friends" as the theme song, but the licensing fees proved too much.
• Recycled Script: "High Anxiety" (about Rose's prescription pill addiction) and "All Bets Are Off" (about Dorothy's gambling addiction). They both feature similar dialogue near the end, with one of the characters commenting that Rose/Dorothy is cured, and Rose/Dorothy correcting them by saying that they're not cured, but that they can fight their addiction by taking it one day at a time.
• Recycled Set:
  • The girls' kitchen was recycled from Susan Harris' earlier short-lived sitcom It Takes Two.
  • The show frequently made use of a "lobby" set in several episodes, including "Grab That Dough" and "Valentine's Day", usually dressed for use as a hotel lobby. It was even featured in an episode of The Golden Palace as the set for Shady Pines.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting:
  • Though she’s later retconned as being Rose’s adoptive mother, Jeanette Nolan as Alma Lindstrom could still pass as her biological mother had the retcon never happened.
  • David Wayne, while being The Other Darrin for Big Daddy Hollingsworth due to Murray Hamilton’s passing, admittedly looks more like Rue McClanahan than Hamilton did.
  • A universally-praised aspect of Sophia’s Brooklyn flashbacks is Lynnie Greene as the younger Dorothy, who not only bears a strong resemblance to Bea Arthur but nails Dorothy’s cadence and mannerisms to a T. Greene's casting was so spot-on that her performance even received praise from Arthur herself.
• Throw It In!: A particularly sweet version occurs in "Valentine's Day." Throughout the episode, Sophia claims that she has a date with famed Latin singer Julio Iglesias; when the girls leave for their own dates, Julio himself shows up at the back door. The producers of the show wanted Iglesias to sing a song, but when it came time to film, he felt he was not able to do so and refused, leaving them panicked. However, Estelle Getty, who played Sophia, suffered from stage fright of her own and promised to handle the situation...by singing to Iglesias herself. The plan worked, and the episode ends with Sophia and Julio singing "Begin the Beguine" together as they leave the house.
  • Getty provided another example from her final audition. She decided to wear age-appropriate clothing, and found various thrift store items—including a purse, which she felt was key to the character, as a woman of Sophia's age would carry all of her important medications and items in her bag (indeed, Sophia almost always had her purse with her during the show, including moments when she came into the kitchen in the middle of the night). The props department ended up using the purse Getty chose on the show, and even had a spare made.
• Underage Casting:
  • Estelle Getty was 62 when she started playing Sophia, the 80-year-old mother of Dorothy, despite being a year younger than her onscreen daughter Bea Arthur.
  • Murray Hamilton, who played the first Big Daddy, was only eleven years older than Rue McClanahan^note and nine years older than Sheree North (Virginia), twelve years older than Monte Markham (Clayton), and fourteen years older than Barbara Babcock (Charmaine). He was replaced by David Wayne, who was nine years older than Hamilton and therefore (barely) not an example.
  • Averted by Jeanette Nolan, who played Rose's mother Alma Nylund... her adoptive mother, so her being only eleven years older than Betty White isn't an example. (Inga Swenson and Polly Holliday, who played Rose's adoptive sisters Holly and Lily, are both over 20 years younger than Nolan.)
• What Could Have Been:
  • The role of Dorothy was allegedly described as a "Bea Arthur type", but the first actress producers sought for the role was Lee Grant, who declined because she did not want to play a grandmother (although Dorothy does not have grandchildren when the series begins, she is certainly old enough to). Susan Harris probably approached Grant first due to her pre-existing connections: Grant had previously starred in her short-lived sitcom Fay, and her daughter Dinah Manoff had appeared in Soap (and would later play Carol in Spin-Off Empty Nest). Elaine Stritch was approached next, but did not get along with Susan Harris at all and deliberately sabotaged her audition to remove herself from contention, a decision she would openly regret after the show became such a big (and enduring) hit. Arthur was finally approached once her former Maude co-star Rue McClanahan was cast, but see below.
  • Betty White was the first choice for Blanche, perceived as a riff on her famous Maneater character Sue Ann Nivens from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Rue McClanahan was the first choice for Rose, whose ditzy character evoked her previous role Vivian Harmon on Maude. (White and McClanahan had previously appeared together on the first run of Mama's Family, which had recently been cancelled). McClanahan, by her own account, fell in love with the role of Blanche immediately and wanted to play her, but was curtly informed that White had been cast and that it was Rose or bust. McClanahan loved the script and wanted to participate, so she reluctantly accepted. Sometime early in pre-production, before the producers had cast their Dorothy, director Jay Sandrich suggested that White and McClanahan switch roles, which helped both actresses escape Typecasting and piqued Arthur's interest, as she had not wanted to do "Maude and Vivian meet Sue Ann Nivens".
  • The originally-planned theme song was Bette Midler's "Friends", but the rights holders refused to licence it, costing them a fortune in royalties once the show entered syndication. Andrew Gold's "Thank You for Being a Friend" was chosen instead, though a new cover of the song was recorded especially for the series, by Cynthia Fee.
  • Coco was originally going to be a regular character on the show, with Sophia a recurring character. After filming the pilot, the audience loved Sophia so much that she became a regular instead, and Coco was never seen again.
  • Bea Arthur had originally intended to leave after the sixth season, but was persuaded by the producers to stay for one more. This seemed to be a recurring thing with Arthur, as her previous series Maude had ended after its sixth season because Arthur had wanted to leave. Had the producers not been successful in convincing Arthur to return, Debbie Reynolds was considered as a replacement, which is why she was cast as the girls' new roommate Truby in "There Goes the Bride".
  • Doris Roberts^note who, funnily enough, had been part of the original "Miami Nice" skit that inspired The Golden Girls was approached about possibly joining the cast as a replacement roommate for Dorothy once Bea Arthur left the series. Ultimately, the crew decided to instead cancel the show (as ratings had fallen considerably from the Top 10 berth it had enjoyed in the first six seasons) and launch The Golden Palace in its place.
  • In her autobiography, Estelle Getty wrote that she'd heard the producers had a particular physical type in mind for Sophia: "big, fat Italian mama with a bun." She decided to go for the audition anyway and ended up getting the part despite not meeting the envisioned image for the role.
• Working Title: Miami Nice. Get it??
• You Look Familiar:
  • In the first season, actor Harold Gould plays Arnie Peterson, a date of Rose's. Years later, he would return to play Miles Webber, Rose's primary love interest, who appears in 13 episodes. Funnily enough, one of the last episodes revealed Miles was in the Witness Protection Program. Maybe Arnie was one of his identities?
  • Sid Melton was largely seen as Salvatore Petrillo, Sophia's late husband and Dorothy's father, in flashbacks (and as the occasional ghost). The season six episode "What a Difference a Date Makes", however, also casts him in the role of "Don the Fool" at the medieval-type restaurant where Dorothy goes on her date.
  • Chick Vennera plays Kid Pepe, a boxer Sophia invests in as part of a get-rich-quick scheme, and later becomes Rose's boss, TV personality Enrique Mas.
  • All three actors playing the Boscos in the season four episode "Foreign Exchange" are examples of this. The elder Boscos, Dominic and Philomena, are respectively played by Vito Scotti (who had previously played Vincenzo, the elderly Italian who helped remodel the girls' garage in "Rose's Big Adventure") and Nan Martin (who had previously played the girls' curmudgeonly neighbor Frieda Claxton in "It's a Miserable Life"). The Boscos' daughter, Gina, is played by Flo Di Re, who would later play a younger version of Sophia in a flashback sequence in the season five episode "Clinton Avenue Memoirs".
  • In "Second Motherhood," Dorothy and Rose butt heads with a chauvinistic plumber played by Alan Blumenfeld. In "A Piece of Cake," Blumenfeld returns as the obnoxious Mr. Ha-Ha, who runs the Suck E. Cheese's (Mr. Ha-Ha's Hot Dog Hacienda) where Rose takes Dorothy for her birthday.
  • Season Two's "The Actor" features Lloyd Bochner as the titular character, a ladies' man named Patrick who romances every woman—including Dorothy, Rose, and Blanche—in a community theatre production. Bochner returned in Season Four's "Rites of Spring" as Sophia's beautician Eduardo, who gives all of the girls the same Sophia-esque hairstyle.
  • In "Vacation," one of the girls' obnoxious fellow hotel guests is played by Tom Villard, who appeared in "Rose: Portrait of a Lady" as Randy, a former student of Dorothy's who gives her a job.
  • "Yes, We Have No Havanas" features Ralph Ahn as Jim Shu, one of Dorothy's history students (his Punny Name that isn't a pun causes Dorothy some embarrassment); Ahn later appeared in "We're Outta Here" as Mr. Yakamora, a businessman who tries to buy the girls' home. Worth noting that "Havanas" was the season four opener and "Outta Here" was the season four finale.

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