October 8, 2025 • 53 mins
Hosts Susan Lambert Hatem and Sharon Johnson dive deep into the beloved 'The Golden Girls' with a delightful overview and 50 fun facts about the show. Discover fascinating show details, cast secrets, and notable legacy moments as they share their passion for this iconic series.
Learn about the iconic characters played by Bea Arthur (Dorothy Zbornak), Betty White (Rose Nylund), Rue McClanahan (Blanche Devereaux), and Estelle Getty (Sophia Petrillo). Along the way, explore production quirks and the enduring impact of 'The Golden Girls' on TV history.
Explore the show's legacy, including its international remakes and impact on pop culture. Packed with laughter, nostalgia, and insightful anecdotes, this episode is perfect for longtime fans and new viewers alike.
Stay tuned to learn about our next episode with a special upcoming guest - Cindy Fee, the voice behind the theme song 'Thank You for Being a Friend.' Don't miss it!
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
01:30 General Show Facts
08:09 Cast Facts
15:43 Production Facts
24:47 Legacy Facts
32:26 Break
32:45 Character History Facts
48:55 Audioography
AUDIOOGRAPHY
The Golden Girls Streaming: Hulu, Disney+, Philo
Purchase: Apple TV, YouTube (for rent/purchase), on DVD, and more
Maude Streaming (free): Tubi, Pluto TV
Book Recommendation Golden Girls Forever: An Unauthorized Look Behind the Lanai by Jim Colucci. Check it out at Amazon. Find it at Harper Books.
In Memoriam Todd Cochrane: Learn more about the founder of the Podcast Awards and early podcaster in these obituaries: Obituary in Podnews, Obituary from Eagle Funeral Homes
Get Involved in Your Community
Indivisible: Find a group near you and get involved at indivisible.org
Contact Your Representatives: Check out Five Calls to quickly and easily call your representatives.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Weirdy Way Media, Eighties Lend So Pretty through the City
and gunning.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Man World eighty.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Welcome to Eighties TV Ladies, where we thank you for
being a friend and dear listeners.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Here are your.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Hosts, Susan Lambert had Them and Sharon Johnson.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hello, I'm Susan and I'm Sharon.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
In order to kick off this wonderful upcoming series of
episodes looking at the incredible eighties TV Lady show The
Golden Girls, we want to give you a little overview.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
A little primmer or primer if you will.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
There's so much to say about Golden Girls, and we
have so many great guests coming on, so why don't
we start with a few fun facts, if you will.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
How many fun facts do you think we need? Sharon, Well,
I mean, I don't know, what do you think? Oh?
I was thinking like fifty fifty.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
That's a lot, But this show is a lot, so
that works for me.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
We can do it. I think we can do it
because it also makes for a nice alliteration. Fifty fun
facts about the Folden Furls I mean the Golden Girls obviously,
but that's a lot and we can do it. Absolutely,
let's do it. Let's do it. Okay, We're going to
do the top ten show facts, just like general show facts.
(01:35):
All right, Sharon, you start well.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
The Golden Girls is created by Susan Harris, a mentee
of Norman Lear, who started writing scripts for All in
the Family, The Partridge Family, and Maud.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
She would go on to create thirteen TV shows between
nineteen seventy five and nineteen ninety eight, including Soap Emptiness, Nurses,
It Takes Two, and of course The Golden Girl. The
Golden Girls ran on NBC from September fourteenth, nineteen eighty five,
which was almost exactly what is that forty years?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Oh my gosh, I couldn't do the math there for
a second.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I know.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
To May ninth, nineteen eighty two, one hundred and eighty
half hour.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Episodes made four decades ago. All right. Fact four. It
starred b Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty
as four older and by older we mean three of
them were in their gap fifties who were living together
in sin Okay. That's not really true. That's not a
fact in Miami, Florida because they were widowed and divorced
(02:43):
and needed to save money.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
B Arthur played Dorothy's Bornak, the sarcastic, sharp witted divorcee
and substitute teacher.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Betty White played the naive widow Rose Nyland, who told
stories of her hometown if Saint Olaf, Minnesota.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Rue McClanahan played Blanche Devereaux, the provocative Southern bell, and
Estelle Getty played Sophia Petrillo, also a widower.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
She was also a widower. Also a widow, a widow,
not a widower. Correct, and men are widowers and women
are black widows. Interesting, Okay, that's interesting. Widow and widower. Oh,
I've learned something. Also a widow. And Dorothy's mom. Originally
(03:35):
she's from Italy and then Brooklyn, New York and ended
up in Miami.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Fun Fact number five. The production companies were with Thomas
Harris Productions and Touchstone Television, a spinoff brand from the
Walt Disney Network Television, and The Golden Girls was the
first TV show under that brand.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
That was That was something I learned.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I actually knew that having worked at ABC, but you know, because.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
You know things. Fun Fact number six Wit Thomas Harris
was the movie and TV production company of Paul Younger.
Wit Tony Thomas and Susan Harris. They also produced shows
that did not involve Susan Harris and then it would
be called Wit Thomas Productions. Those shows included It's a Living,
The Practice, Beauty and The Beast, Blossom and even the Office.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
And as a side note, they also produced one of
Susan's Our Susan not Susan Harris. Susan's favorite TV movies
Brian Song from nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
That was like kind of the first TV movie that
broke my heart.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Oh, it broke everyone's heart. It's for those It starred
Billy d Williams and from The Godfather, Heaven help me?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
What's his name? I can't see us? Con thank you,
con As, Brian Piccolo, Billy d Williams, Gale Sayers, Great
great book, great TV movie. That one broke my heart.
Oh it was in Beauty. It was a fantastic nineteen
seventy one Go look it up, kids, all right. Fun
(05:12):
fact number seven. Wit and Thomas met each other in
nineteen seventy three when Paul Younger Witt went to work
for Danny Thomas Productions and turns out that Tony Thomas
was the son of actor and comedian Danny Thomas, who
had his own production company. Number eight.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
When Tony Thomas and Paul younger Wit formed their own
production company, Susan Harris was their first hire and ultimately
a partner.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
And then guess what what, Paul Younger Wit and Susan
Harris got married later I fell in love, I got married.
I love a love story. Is it me okay? Fact
Number nine. The idea for the Golden Girls came to
Brandon Tartakoff from a TV special promotional preview show which
(06:05):
they did back in the eighties. They were always so
fun because they were all Star. This was called the
nineteen eighty four NBC All Star Hour and they were
used to introduce the new shows and the new cast,
and Selma Diamond from Night Court and Doris Roberts from
Remington Steele were introducing the stars of a new show
(06:25):
that Selma thought was called Miami Nice. And she's like, oh,
it's about chaw Shaw lessons and mint coats and sitting
on the beach. And then Doris Roberts has to tell her, no, no,
it's not Miami Nice, it's Miami Vice. And then she
introduced the world to Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas.
I thought that was great. We have a link for
that little YouTube clip in there, but it sort of
(06:47):
stuck in your head, as you do when you're like
a head of a TV network and you coming up
with things you want that it might be a funny
idea for a show. Yeah, you never know where a
good idea is going to come from.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
And to their credit, NBC followed up on it and
the rest, as they say, is history. Fun fact number ten,
Everybody Wins. The Golden Girls is one of only four
sitcoms in history where all four of the main cast
members won an Emmy Award. The others were all in
(07:20):
the family Carol O'Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner, and Sally
Struthers all one Emmys, Will and Grace, Eric McCormick, Deborah Messing,
Sean Hayes and Megan Malally all one Emmys, and Shitz Creek,
Eugene Lovey, Katherine O'Hara, Dan Levy and Annie Murphy all
one Emmys.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I am so glad you took all those names from Sharon.
That's like taking a bullet from me. I really appreciate that.
My words don't always work. But I didn't know that either.
That was a good fun fact to discover in research.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
The same I had no idea that it was only
just these shows were something like that. It happened well,
and yet it also felt like a lot of shows. Yeah, actually,
yeah it does. But yeah, it's so very interesting. So
all right, so that's that's our general.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Now we got ten cast and character facts I'm calling them. Now,
we got to do eleven to twenty.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
There you go go. B Arthur was reluctant. B Arthur
hesitated about taking the role of Dorothy, her co star
Room McClanahan convinced her by saying, and I quote, why
are you going to turn down the best script that's
ever going to come across your desk as long as
you live.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
That's what friends are for people, That's what friends are for.
And everybody talks about how great that pilot script was
by Susan Harris, and you know, she had already starred
in MOD. I mean, she didn't have to do this show.
So in some ways there was a lot of like,
you know, if you do another show after you've done
a show like MOD, there's a chance it won't work, right,
and so then you sort of like, well, why would
(08:57):
I just get a little egg of my face? But
thank god she was willing to take that. Also, there
was a role reversal. Betty White was originally cast as
the lusty southern bell Blanche, and Rue McClanahan was cast
as the naive Rose. They switch roles, and I've heard
both that they decided to do that and also that
(09:19):
Jay Sandrich was part of that conversation. So because they
were sort of that was sort of type cast of
their previous roles where White played the man hungry sue
An nivens On Mary Tyler Moore, and McClanahan had played
Maud's best friend, Vivian Harmon, who was naive. So I
(09:39):
think that ended up being a pretty spectacular switch.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
And it's one of those little, the seemingly small things
that happens with casting and shows that makes you know
that ultimately makes the show work and makes it makes
it into something like a a lasting hit like The
Golden Girls. It's not clear. We'll never know, but it's
(10:04):
not it's not clear that if they had stayed in
the original roles as they were cast, whether or not
the show would have worked.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Who knows. It's all that chemistry and the mix of
those chemistals. I was trying not to say chemicals and people.
All right, whatever, it's fine, it's fine. And then you know,
the ages were a little bit of funny. We like
to think that age is just a number, but it
(10:30):
turns out that Estelle Getty, who played the oldest character,
she played Sophia, who was supposed to be eighty. She
was a year younger in real life than be Arthur,
who played her daughter, and the oldest actress for the
show was Betty White. I thought that that always surprises me, same,
especially the Estelle Getty. When I learned that so good
(10:52):
that was? That was? That was really a surprise. Well
that does bring us two fun fact number four of
the second round of it took makeup artists almost three
hours to transform Estelle Getty into the elderly Sophia, and
between season one and two Getty went and had a
facelift because in her real life she wanted to be like, hey,
(11:13):
I'm cool, I could do other things too, and so
it became even harder because you were Junker when she
came back to the show.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Clearly though she didn't care about how much time she
had to spend in the makeup chair. Our next fun
fact is that Betty White and Rue McClanahan were close
friends in real life, having worked together on Mama's Family previously.
They would often pass the time on the set playing
word games, which is so cute.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
I know, I love that, I love that, you know,
and it does feel like they were professional friends. I
do think that because I don't think you can carry
a show that long in a sitcom format like in
you know, an hour drama. You can be like, I'm
not going to be here for this if you If
the leads are fighting, the production can force them to
(12:00):
work around it if they have to. But I think
that's much harder in a sitcom. But it did turn
out that Bee Arthur and Betty White you know, famously
had a more strained relationship. They weren't quite the same
kind of friends. They had very different working styles, and
White has been quoted as saying that be Arthur was
not that fond of me unquote.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Shows the level of their talent and professionalism that you
really couldn't tell and watching and you still can't tell.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
In watching the show. You can't get good on both
of them.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Our next fun fact Number seven in this group, Rue
McClanahan loved Blanche's extravagant wardrobe so much that she had
a clause in her contract that allowed her to keep
all of her characters custom made clothing.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Good for her, I know.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
You know, I'd imagine most people don't realize that most
of the time, the actors don't get to take the
clothes home at the end of the day, and it
belongs to the production. So good for her.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yes. Fun fact number eight in this group about the cast.
Despite years of being an award winning Broadway and off
Broadway actress, Estelle Getty when she was playing Sophia suffered
extreme stage fright. You can't really tell on the show.
I think it's pretty amazing, but she would apparently freeze
and panic during recordings. She often relied on cue cards
(13:23):
in later seasons. It did come out that a Stelle
Getty later suffered from dementia, which probably contributed to some
of that difficulty. Even though she wasn't that old, those
that may have been beginning to cause issues for memorization.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
It's lovely that the production was able to find ways
to work around that for her to allow her to
continue in the role and continue performing as spectacularly as
she did throughout the series. I didn't know about that
either until you know, we really started looking into this,
and I say, good on her, good on them. So yeah,
(14:01):
so a little bit on a little bit lighter side,
despite the frequent cheesecake eating scenes, be Arthur disliked cheesecake
in real life.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
That would be hard.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Well, you know, maybe she was glad that the dessert
that they were the ladies were sitting around the table
eating in these scenes was not something she was fond of,
so she didn't have to worry about sitting there and
eating lots of cheesecake because she really loved it for
however long it took for them to make their way
through those scenes, or just having it around too much.
(14:38):
I know, for me having it nearby something I really love,
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, you wouldn't stop. You'd be like, bring on some
more cheesecakes. Yeah. And so I was, you know, as
I'm relooking at this show and we're starting, I'm sort
of in season one right now, I was watching the
evolution of the little kitchen table and for the most part,
there's all almost always only three chairs around the little table.
(15:03):
Even though four women lived in the house, every once
in a while they'll be a fourth. I think earlier
on they tried to get all four. But it's both
for camera because it's just easier to shoot, and then
be Arthur almost always sits in the center chair, and
that's I think for sort of the symmetry of she's
so very tall and the others aren't as tall. But
(15:24):
also it's so you can really see all of her
expressions when she's basically making some takes to camera sometimes,
but it's good. It's part of the.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Comedy, all right. So now we're off to ten production facts.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
We've done twenty. That's twenty five, ight.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
So the fast these will be facts twenty one to
thirty as we go through these. So let's start with
a pilot. The pilot was called The Engagement and in
it the Sophia monologue that started with her saying picture.
It was a late addition to the pilot script, added
(16:03):
after the writers realized the character was a hit with
the audience. They reshot and re edited the pilot a
lot to cut out Coco, the gay housekeeper, slash cook
and bring Sophia forward well.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
And I remember those picture it monologues, Oh yeah, picture it.
Cicily guys became a real staple, a real staple of
the show. They really became her one of her signature bits.
And speaking of Coco, the gay cook who acted sort
of as their housekeeper, the character was dropped from the
(16:39):
pilot really as much as they could and been from
the series because of Stellgetty. Sophia popped so much that
they were like, oh no, she's moving in with them.
She's going to be the fourth and she was intended
to be a recurring character. The Coco was played by
the actor Charles Levin, who played a lot of eighties
(17:02):
and nineties and onward.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yeah, and it's not something that's unusual that happened then
and today, where something happened during the pilot that went
better or worse than they expected, and they made some
adjustments and some changes and it's it's just it's just a.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Normal part of the process. In the John Cryer episode,
they talked about the pilot for two and a half
Men and how it was life Danner, Yes, and then
and then they were like, it doesn't work. She's not
mean enough. So they got Holland Taylor who plays an
excellent mean yes and is not mean either in real life.
(17:43):
That's why she's such a great actor. I know, she's amazing.
Oh is it me? Yes? Okay? Number three of this series.
The iconic house used for the show exterior shots is
not in Miami, Florida, a real house located in Brentwood,
which is the neighborhood of Los Angeles. And then later
(18:05):
they rebuilt the house facade in what was then at
the time the Disney World MGM Studios and became Hollywood
Studios in Florida's.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
I wonder if, I don't know if they ever used
that for production. I would imagine not because it was
in Florida.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Oh you think they just built that facade for people
to go, oh, look it's the Golden Girls.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Probably probably because they really didn't shoot anything for the
show outside. It was all shot on a stage.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Well, they may have shot it for the exterior, just
that little exterior shot where they show you the house.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
No, you always kind of almost always see them just
coming in the front door. They're always on set right
or through the kitchen door, through the or something, and
the Lani moves around. Well, nobody's supposed to notice that.
But I noticed that, all right.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Number four in this section where we're talking about production facts,
is that there's no real Saint Olaf. Rose's hometown of
Saint all Off, Minnesota is entirely fictional.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
But I love all those stories, and we got a
great we got a speaking of stories, we got a
great story from when we interviewed Stan Zimmerman back season ago. Uh,
and we're going to have him coming back and to
talk about the origin of Saint Olaf because he was there.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Yes, he was there for the first season, so he
has lots and lots of great stuff to share.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
So look forward to that. So during the run of
the show, both Betty White and b Arthur lost their
mothers in that first season actually, but continued with filming.
It didn't really interrupt filming, which is weird because you
would probably interrupt filming now. That was just sort of
the the time. You couldn't have anything interrupt your work,
(19:55):
even personal tragedy. You don't think even now that they
I think now they would really okay.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Because I don't know. I guess I'm just thinking about
me in some ways. Obviously everybody's different. Having something to
focus on would be helpful for me dealing with the grief.
It's but everybody's different, and I mean it's they're doing
a comedy.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Right, Well, I think it's both. I think that certainly
the schedules get moved around when someone dies during production.
But I think sometimes there's in in in the industry,
particularly those that come for theater, there's so much of
a show must go on kind of mentality, which has
(20:43):
I think rightfully lessened a little bit, and people understand like, hey,
if you're sick, don't come in. Hey, if you're having
an emotional time, take care of yourself first and then
do the work, because we all need to have that time.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Yeah, I'd like to think it's an option that people
have so that if somebody is like, no, no, I'm good,
I don't want to it's okay. I don't want to
hold up production, and they want to go forward, you
go forward. But if somebody says, yeah, I need I
need a little bit of time, and that's also okay. Yeah,
you know, I'd like to think that there's some more
(21:22):
humanity in that way, which there isn't enough of even
to this day, even though there's a little.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Bit from that all right, Next So.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
The next fun fact in this section, there were over
one hundred cheesecakes consumed by the cast during the show's
seven year run. Many of them were sent to the
set by bakeries around the country, and I'd like to
think that everyone except for maybe be Arthur, enjoyed them immensely.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yes, now here's the interesting thing. There were one hundred
and eighty episodes, so they did not consume cheesecake in
every episode. This is true. This is very true.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I don't know about you, but many of the cheesecake
scenes were some of my all time favorites.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
They were because they were usually the late night conversations,
right the like, Hey, you know, that's usually when we
get the Sane Olaf stories from That is true. That
is true, the Sane Olaf cheesecake stories. Okay, so let's
talk a little bit about the theme song for our
seventh fact in our production facts. Thank You for Being
(22:28):
a Friend was actually an existing song before it became
the theme song for The Golden Girls. It was written
and recorded in nineteen seventy eight by Andrew Gold and
then the version that was used for the show was
performed by Cynthia Fee and someone who's from Golden Girls
will come on and tell you about that later?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Who look forward to that up next? In production facts,
the kitchen set on The Golden Girls was originally used
on an earlier with Thomas Harris series called It Takes Two,
which aired on ABC from nineteen eighty two to nineteen
eighty three.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And created by Susan Harris exactly Susan Harris show. Yeah.
I just love the idea that they just sort of
stored that set, or maybe it was still up or something,
and it's just like, we'll do this is fine.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yeah, depending on the timing, maybe they realized that they
had this set sitting there when they were making the
pilot and they thought, what the heck, let's use this.
Who knows, but that kind of tickles me.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, okay, So the Golden Girls, they were a pioneer
in covering controversial and serious issues including homelessness, menopause, sexual harassment,
and especially LGBTQ representation, featuring episodes with gay and lesbian
characters and talking about aids.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Absolutely, there certainly were a lot more television shows tackling
these kinds of issues, but The Golden Girls, being as
popular as it was, certainly didn't have to fact that
they chose to and put those stories out there.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I think I have to give them some credit for that. Agreed, Agreed.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
So the last production fun fact for Golden Girls is
about the renowned director Jay Sandrich. He was known for
The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Cosby Show, and Soap
And he only directed two episodes of Golden Girls, the
pilot and the Backdoor pilot for Empty Nests. He also
(24:28):
directed the pilot of a Different World, which we talked about. Yes, so,
needless to say, he was definitely a talented and season
eighties comedy series director.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Engineering. Yes, absolutely, all right. Our next group is talking
about the legacy of Golden Girls. These are facts thirty
one through forty. Golden Girls is beloved by critics and writers.
The Writers Guild of America placed it at number sixty
nine on its recent list of the one hundred and
one best written Tea TV Series of All Times. Variety
(25:02):
put it on as number eighteen in their top one
hundred television shows of all time. That was like twenty
nineteen or something. So it still is beloved.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Oh absolutely, And it's just as popular, if not more popular,
today than it was back then. It continues to live
on in syndication and now streaming as a whole new
audience is.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Finding it great. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Absolutely, Next up a spinoff. The show had a short
lived spinoff called The Golden Palace, which aired after the
original series finale. It followed Rose, Blanche and Sofia as
they bought and managed a hotel.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
It's not as loved as the original, No.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
And it certainly didn't last as long, but I was
very glad they tried to continue on because it was
lovely for at least a little bit longer to spend
some time with Rose and Blanche and Sofia after the
end of The Golden Girls.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
And then there was yet another spinoff. The nineteen eighty
eight show Empty Nest, starring soaps Richard Mulligan, was a
show about the next door neighbors of The Golden Girls.
And that's kind of a funny way to spin off
a show. I think that show started as a backdoor pilot.
In the final episode of season two of The Golden Girls,
(26:23):
they did an episode entitled Empty Nests with an s
which guest starred readA Moreno and Paul Dooley. It is
arguably one of the least favorite episodes of The Golden Girls,
and even Riada Moreno says it's not very good. She
says the script wasn't right and Susan Harris was sick
and it never got right.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Oh yeah, that's such a shame. One wonders what might
have happened if Susan Harris had been able to write
the script for the pilot.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
You just never know. You never knows. Again, it's that
special chemistry. Yeah, everything has to line up. It's hard not.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
To think that Riada Moreno and Paul Do would have
made for a great pairing.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I would love that pairing.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yeah, Now, there were more than two spinoffs, because.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
You had another spinoff show.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
I know we've kind of already mentioned, but it begs
mentioning again because Empty Nest once it did come on
the air, Retooled had its own network spinoff, Nurses, which
launched in nineteen ninety one and ran for three seasons,
and it starred Lonnie Anderson in the final season.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
A fabulous eighties TV lady absolutely rest in peace. Yes,
all right, So, yeah, that again was news to me.
I really didn't until we started looking at this. I
think maybe at some point I might have known that
Empty Nest was a spin off of Golden Girls. I
had no idea that Nurses was at least to a
spinoff off of a spinoff of Golden Girls, and so
(27:52):
I think that just just kind of cool. This show,
Golden Girls was a global phenomenon. This is fact number
five in this series. There were ten international remakes of
the Golden Girls for countries like Chile, Israel, Greece, the Philippines, Spain, Russia,
Turkey and the others. It sort of is a concept
(28:16):
that got retooled and involved a lot of writers like
Stan I think worked on one or two of those
just to help them get started. So I think that's
pretty amazing. Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
It clearly has some themes and characters that are international.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Universal even yes, that's the word. I was defly serre
because unknown university.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Because frankly, where people of all countries are all aging,
and the challenges as you go from one stage of
life to another, there's probably a lot of universality.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
To that universality. That's good, that's hard. So the next
step in this is legacy.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
The show has inspired countless drag shows, including Golden Girls Live,
an illegally produced off Broadway show in two thousand and
three and two Puppet shows. There was also an animated
pilot set in the future, Golden Girls thirty thirty three.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
How insane. I feel like I have to track that down,
you know, I had no idea of that one.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I do hope the internet will be our friend in
this case, and that's somewhere it can be found, at
least so that we can get a glimpse of it.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
And then Fact seven of the legacy. There are also
countless books, including a brand new Golden Girls murder mystery series,
Murder by Cheesecake, a Golden Girls Cozy Mystery. There's going
to be a series that's insane that just came out.
Oh my gosh, Wow, there came out.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Take there are they trying to take over from where
Jessica Fletcher left off.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
It's kind of a Jessica Fletcher kind of thing. From
what I understand, this is Disney basically churning the Golden
Girls love into any aspect of the world that they can. Well,
there's a lot of love out there, so I guess.
But that's very very interesting.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Next up in the section, as discussed in one of
our episodes last season, the Facts of Life was moved
to Saturday night to help launch The Golden Girls, and
that turned out to be a very successful move, top
ratings hit for NBC. It was a top ten show
for the first six seasons. We're talking about Golden Girls here,
(30:39):
and the series finale of Golden Girls was watched by
twenty seven point two million viewers, and as of twenty sixteen,
it was a seventeenth most watched television finale.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Of all time, of all time. That's fantastic, that's pretty great.
It is an award winning show, which makes a lot
of sense. The Golden Girls was nominated for sixty eight
Emmys and one eleven of them.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Well, it would have been nice to see them get
a few more, but you know, that's you can't win
them all.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
It was a golden time. I would say, there's a
lot going on in those you know, there was some
designing women, there was Cagnium Lacy, there was a lot
going on. Absolutely. Oh, I guess it wouldn't have been
in the same category Cagneum Lacey.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
So the last one, the last fun fact in this category.
For the fortieth anniversary of The Golden Girls, which again
the September eighteenth, twenty twenty five. It's forty years ago
that date when The Golden Girls first aired, and Disney
is celebrating. We'll have a link in the show notes
(31:42):
for all of the things that Disney is planning for
the fortieth anniversary. But Disney also claims that The Golden
Girls has had over one billion that's billion with a
bee ours streamed on Hulu and Disney plus of Golden Girls.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
That's a lot of Golden Girls, absolutely, a lot of hours.
ABC News is supposed to be doing a one hour
special this fall, although I couldn't find anything. They announced it,
but they haven't seen anything. But don't worry because there's
Golden Girls theme wine pillows, toys, and cheesecake candles coming
from Disney just in time for your Christmas shopping. That's right,
(32:21):
Golden Girls everywhere. We're down to the last ten, Sharon,
and we're back, all right.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
These are ten character facts, yes, about the characters of
The Golden Girls. Yes, so over the course of seven seasons.
There are some discrepancies with time and the character's histories,
but here are some character facts.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
And we're saying facts with quotes correct.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
First up, Rose's children, Rose and her late husband Charlie
had five children, daughters Kirsten, Bridget and Good and sons
Adam and Charlie Junior.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
And I think it's gonna works for me. We're going
to say it is till someone corrects us. Right. Blanche
and her late husband George also had five children, daughters
Janet and Rebecca and sons Doug, Bith and Matthew, also
nicknamed Skippy. Dorothy and her ex husband Stan had two children,
(33:25):
a daughter Kate and a son Michael. Okay, now, they
never really nailed down a lot of ages in this show.
In particular, Blanche was very secretive about her age, but
a few episodes hinted that she was basically in her
fifties for most of the show's run.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
I just assume they all were kind of about the
same age.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I assume that too. I assume that too.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Dorothy's ex husband, Stan was a recurring character and appeared
in twenty six episodes of the show. They were married
for thirty eight years before their divorce, so.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
It was a long relationship. It's interesting that that's an
ongoing kind of relationship because they have kids together. Because
he's getting remarried, and there's all sorts of history between them.
I thought that was kind of interesting since everyone else
was a widow, not a widower I learned a widow
(34:19):
on the show that this was a more complex relationship.
They all have sort of that one style relationship with
their former husband. The other ladies, Dorothy's was an ongoing,
evolving relationship, which is sort of always interesting to me
as the child of divorce and someone who's married into
a family with step kids. That's more interesting to me
(34:44):
in some ways sometimes, And so I think that I
find that interesting.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
And perhaps that was delivered on the part of Susan
Harrison creating the characters, because both Blanche and Rose had
very successful, very loving marriages, whereas because because of the
nature of the relationship between Dorothy and Stan, especially the
fact that they got divorced after having been married so long,
(35:08):
there is more tension there. So they were able to
use it in a way that they could not with
Blanche and Rose's husbands.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, we're almost there were almost at the end. Lanche's
southern accent Rue McLanahan apparently like that was not written
in the script that she was that southern and all
that stuff. It sort of came out of that It
may have been a Room McClanahan choice, it may have
been a Jay Sandridge Rum McClanahan choice, but it was
(35:38):
not originally in the script that she was that Southern,
and then of course, over the course of the show
they really lean into it. So I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Then there's the Sicilian curse. Sophia famously
put a quote unquote Sicilian curse on her neighbor, Missus Claxton,
which led to aes of humorous missteps.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
That's a goofy Sophia episode in particular, But it's interesting
because I know that both Sophia and Dorothy are supposed
to be basically Italian American, and in real life the
actresses are Jewish, and they both kind of felt like,
why can't we just be Jewish on this show? But
they were not. But I will say that one of
(36:22):
the things I like about the show, and this is
a fact all their milkshakes brought the boys to the yard.
Because during the course of the show, all of the
ladies were sexually active had romantic partners, and that included
Rose and Sophia. Rose had several boyfriends, and the one
that I liked the best was Miles Weber played by Harold.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Gould, and for those of you that may not remember,
he was Rhoda's father on this jof Rhoda.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
I had forgotten that. That's so funny. Yeah, I liked him,
but I thought that was a wonderful, wonderful thing, and
they didn't make a big deal about it. It was
just a very natural part of their lives that they were,
you know, having relationships, and I think that was great.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Next up, clip on earrings. B Arthur did not have
pierced deers, so Dorothy's iconic statement earrings were all clip ons.
I did not know that, but I think it's something
that my mother would have appreciated, because to this day
she only wears clip on earrings.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
I do not have pierced ears either. Yeah. Do you
always clip on sailor do you have pier steers?
Speaker 1 (37:32):
You do? Oh?
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Yeah? Do you have pierced other things? Oh, you have
a couple pierce deers, Okay, a couple pierced earrings, a
couple piercings, piercings, I got there. Yeah. I did not
get my ears pierced in the eighties when it was
very cool to do that, because my mom said I
(37:54):
had to wait till I was sixteen, and by the
time I was sixteen, I was like, I don't do that.
That seems like a waste time of money. And then
I had a boyfriend who I dated for several years,
and he gave me a Christmas present that was in
a little box, and I was like, oh, this is interesting.
(38:16):
And then I opened the little box and inside was
basically a jewelry box, a small jewelry box. It looked
like the size of a ring box. And I was like, oh, no,
we would have talked about this if he was going
to play this card, because the answer would have been
very unclear. And then it turns out that they were earrings.
They were diamond earrings. It was not a ring, which
(38:37):
is what I was concerned. It was in the moment
that he gave me a gift and I'm like, I'm
literally opening them and looking them and going, oh, my gosh,
this is a beautiful gift. Diamond earrings at the time
very expensive gifts. But I'm also thinking I don't have
pierced ears. And we have been dating for four years
(39:00):
going on in that so by the end of that
conversation that followed, I felt so bad that I'd made
him feel bad that I got my ears pierced. Oh
so I could wear them. I no longer have pierced ears,
nor those earrings, nor that person. We got to finish
(39:25):
the story. What happened to the earrings? Did you? Why
did you let the whole two are? I think the
earrings are somewhere. I think I probably kept the earrings,
but I did let my ears go back to normal.
How interesting. Yeah, just over time, I was like, I
just don't wear earrings. I don't wear jewelry. It is
very unusual for me to wear a jewelry. I don't
(39:46):
like it. It was weird. It was just like, but
you know, my skin's are sensitive, very sensitive person.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
I don't like to wear rings. I just I have
a couple, but I never wear them. But I've had
pierced earrings since I was fourteen or fifteen. We were
stationed in Japan. My mother took me to the dispensary
where they numbed my ear lobes and then put this
little plastic thing through the ear to make the hole.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Because the idea for me.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
I don't remember any of the thing around it, but
I know there was this whole thing about you get
a potato and numb it with some.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Ice and all this.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
I'm like, no, because I to this day hate anything
needle related. And I'm still amazed that I allowed myself
to be jabbed to get But yeah, I don't remember
exactly how old I was, but I was fourteen fifteen,
And as I think about it, I'm thinking, that's kind
of unlike my mother to have been okay with me
(40:47):
doing that. Getting my ears pierced.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
It was kind of a thing, I know, but it's
kind of a thing, like more than so than it
is now. Although again, Dashel just went and got his
ears pierced and with his girlfriend, so that's kind of
a thing. It was really sweet you get both. He
got both. Ah, okay, yeah, And I was like not
(41:10):
sure how I was going to feel about it, but
I'm like, okay, he can. He can pull off a
lot of things and he can definitely pull it off.
So but yeah, and like I have any say, he's eighteen,
but I think he likes it. I like them, and
I do good, but it is so weird earrings. Ear
rings are weird to me. Well, all all jewelry is
(41:32):
somewhat weird. And it's interesting that we have had jewelry
for forever, right, as long as there have been humans,
there has been jewelry. Now, part of that is it's
the it's the thing that survives, right, it can survive
over thousands of years. It was hard and you know,
metal and diamonds. But I think about the stuff that
(41:55):
that you know ends up in museums. Oh yeah, you know.
And and when we were at the British Museum, they
had their sort of money exhibit going on and that
was pretty amazing, but kind of going through the rest
of the exhibits, it's so much of it is jewelry
and crowns, and you're like, wow, people really spend a
(42:20):
lot of time with that.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
Yeah, that the shiny adornment was clear has clearly been
a part of human history for a very very very
long time, obviously mostly for the for the wealthy to
show off your wealth, right exactly, and over time has
become more it's a galitarian the right word. I mean,
(42:44):
more people are able to afford to adorn themselves and
whatever manner they choose with gold and all sorts of
other precious metals and gems. But yeah, I guess people
just humans to some degree or another. I've always wanted
to to adorn themselves with pretty things, little peacock and uh, well,
(43:08):
you know you look at the birds and you go, well,
they look kind of fun with their feathers.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
How come I can't have that feathers on? Well, and
then you're like, okay, and then that's the stuff, the
sort of more metal and stone and gem is the
stuff that last. Right, you know, the feathers. If they
didn't get fossilized, we're gone, right. The other adornments aren't
(43:32):
as prominent, but may have been at the time. Anyway.
That was sort of something I was thinking about when
we were talking about the earrings complete off campus, because
we're at our last fact. This is number fifty. Oh okay,
see that there are three there, because I didn't know
which one I wanted to use, Okay, so I did three. Okay.
(43:56):
The Rose character once claimed to have given fifty young
men and one very confused pe teacher Mono at a
Founder's Day fair by kissing them, right, isn't that the
isn't that the thing? I think the kissing booth, yeah,
which I just thought was a very Rose kind of thing.
But she Rose also had two teddy bears that she
(44:18):
named Fernando and mister Longfellow, and those are from episodes
in season one and season three blind Ambitions and Old Friends.
I just thought that was weird. And also in the
flashback of how they met, she has a cat that
she gives away in a store to a little boy.
So those are rose facts. Oh that's right. Yeah. Anyway,
(44:43):
so we did fifty fifty fun fast facts about the
Golden Girls.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
We hope you enjoyed them as much as we have
enjoyed looking back at all of those.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
That was a lot of fun. It was super fun,
all right. As we start down our path with everybody
that were about to talk to and I was going
to see if you had any favorite episodes of season one.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Well, first of all, I think the pilot is a
really great episode. You get all four of our lead
characters coming out basically fully formed, You have the little
bit of information that you need to understand why they're
all there, and the story itself was also I thought terrific.
So it's a terrific pilot.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
And it totally holds up. Yeah, it totally holds up. Yeah,
the engagement Season one episode one. I also like Season one,
episode eight, the break in, which is that they come
back and there's been a break in at the house
and so they all are responding to that and getting scared.
Rose in particular gets the most scared. They talk a
(45:44):
little bit about guns because Rose wants to get a
gun and goes and gets a gun, but apparently also
in the middle they also go and get a dog,
but they don't talk about that. They're having a whole scene.
This totally threw me, this whole scene. And then they
start walking to the kitchen and a dog starts barking
off camera, and it turns out that they somehow got
(46:06):
a dog to protect them and kept it in the
kitchen and it hasn't been part of the scene until
they just start walking towards the kitchen and the dog
is too scary and they're all afraid of the dog,
and then they have to send the dog back to
the pound, which made me sad, but also it's got
this weird breakout scene. They'd never leave the sitcom world
(46:27):
very much. It's all sets. It's mostly the you know,
it's mostly the house, right, but then they'll have other
sets and stuff. But they have this scene where Rose
is chased in a parking lot, that's shot handheld in
a parking lot, and it just was so out of
character of the show that it just stood out to me.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
Yeah, I don't remember that one specifically, but yeah, that
I guess it's probably part of the show kind of
finding itself and what works and what doesn't for them,
you know, which often happens in the first season. One
of the ones that I really liked was also in
season one and written by upcoming guests Stan Zimmerman, Adult
(47:14):
Education because of the sexual harassment theme there, and it's
Blanche that's taking an adult education class, and the teacher
is basically saying, well, if you sleep with me, you know,
without coming in Actually I actually I think at one
point he really does kind of come out and say it,
then I'll give you the grade you need.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
And she Blanche, she would I think.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
On one level it was Blanche, and I was like, well,
maybe Blanche would do.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
It, but she does not, and she tells him. I
was lovely, like, yeah, those telloff moments exactly. You want
to cheer. And I also liked that episode and then
I'm a fan of the I think it's the last
episode of season one the way we met, and it's
a flashback that tells the story of how the fore
women came together. What I love about it is it
(47:59):
feels like, of course that's the story by that point
in the show. The show has successfully created the history
of these women together in such a way that it
is delightful to watch them come together. It definitely stood
(48:20):
out for me.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
Yeah, it was done very well in terms of showing
you where they started and making sense as to where
they are now in the story as we know it. So, yeah,
that was really well done.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Okay, so listeners, you know, tell us what your favorite
episodes of season one are. You did start sending us
the episodes you think we should get to the nineties
TV babies because that's going to be coming up a
little down the line because we have a lot of people,
awesome people to talk to. I can't wait. And yeah,
so it's time for audioography. Sounds like a plan.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
So for today's audiography. You can watch Golden Girls streaming online.
It's currently on Hulu, Disney Plus, or Filo, and it's
available for sale on YouTube, Apple and more. And there
are also some various channels cable and otherwise. That show
it regularly, but if you want to look for a
(49:22):
particular episode, your best bet is one of the streaming
or as I always like to say, check your local
library to see if they have the DVDs, because that way,
if there's a specific episode that you wanted to go
and rewatch or that you haven't watched before, that's a
great way to try to find it, and the.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
DVDs are always going to be the best quality sound
and picture. I recommend the book Golden Girls Forever, an
unauthorized look behind the Lunai by Jim Calucci.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
It's great, fantastic and if you want to check out
maud Wave mentioned which be Arthur and Rubyn Clanahan start
in before they work together again on The Golden Girls.
You can find it currently free on TV and Pluto TV.
Links will be in our description.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
And I just want to give a little moment for
someone we lost in the podcast community. On September eighth,
a champion of indie podcast and an early adventurer in
the space, Todd Cochrane passed away suddenly. He started podcasting
in two thousand and four. Before that, he ran a
(50:33):
weblog about tech. He was the founder of the podcast Awards,
the first award show that we submitted to and won.
And he wrote arguably the first book on podcasting because
it came out in two thousand and five. It was
called Podcasting Do It Yourself Guide. There are several obituaries
(50:55):
and articles out there about him, so we're linking some
of them in our description. He was really great and
welcoming to us. He was I think one of the
first people who recognized us in our first time when
we went to podcast Movement Evolutions. We were at a
booth and he was like, are you guys the Eighties
TV Ladies? And We're like what, And he was so
(51:18):
welcoming to us, and then I just want to give
him a shout out. Yeah, he will absolutely be missed. Okay,
if you want to help us make more episodes, please
go to patreon dot com slash Eighties tv Ladies.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
You can also support the show by hitting that follow
like subscribe and rating wherever you listen, or tell your
eighties loving friends.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
You know there's a lot going on out there. If
you want to get involved in your community, I highly
recommend indivisible dot org. There are groups all over the country,
likely there's one near you. Please take a look and.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
Don't forget your voice matters. It may not seem like
it sometimes, but it absolutely does. You can call you
representative and tell them what you think about what is happening.
You can check out five calls dot org. They make
it easy and fast to call your representatives, even if
you're not sure who they are. On our next episode,
(52:14):
it's going to be such a delight.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
I can't wait.
Speaker 3 (52:18):
When we covered the facts of life last season, we
got to talk with the lovely Gloria Loring. That was
so fun that we decided talking to the women behind
some of our favorite theme songs is the way to go.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
So in this next episode, we will be talking to
none other than Cindy Fe, the voice of the Golden Girls.
Yes she's the singer behind the theme song, thank you
for being a friend. Travel down the road and back again.
Your heart is true. You're a pal and a comfee.
Speaker 3 (52:51):
Done and if you're threw a party, invited everyone you knew.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
You.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
Let's see, the biggest gift would be from me and
the car attached would say.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
Thank you for being a friend. Thank you for being
a friend. I want to thank you, thank you for
being a friend.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
As always we hope Eighties TV Ladies brings you joy
and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows
to watch, all of which will lead us forward toward
being amazing ladies of the twenty first century.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
I wanna thank you, thank you for being a friend some.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
San sol pretty into the city.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
And gunning good Man World
Weirdy Way Media, Eighties Lend So Pretty through the City
and gunning.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Man World eighty.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Welcome to Eighties TV Ladies, where we thank you for
being a friend and dear listeners.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Here are your.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Hosts, Susan Lambert had Them and Sharon Johnson.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hello, I'm Susan and I'm Sharon.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
In order to kick off this wonderful upcoming series of
episodes looking at the incredible eighties TV Lady show The
Golden Girls, we want to give you a little overview.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
A little primmer or primer if you will.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
There's so much to say about Golden Girls, and we
have so many great guests coming on, so why don't
we start with a few fun facts, if you will.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
How many fun facts do you think we need? Sharon, Well,
I mean, I don't know, what do you think? Oh?
I was thinking like fifty fifty.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
That's a lot, But this show is a lot, so
that works for me.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
We can do it. I think we can do it
because it also makes for a nice alliteration. Fifty fun
facts about the Folden Furls I mean the Golden Girls obviously,
but that's a lot and we can do it. Absolutely,
let's do it. Let's do it. Okay, We're going to
do the top ten show facts, just like general show facts.
(01:35):
All right, Sharon, you start well.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
The Golden Girls is created by Susan Harris, a mentee
of Norman Lear, who started writing scripts for All in
the Family, The Partridge Family, and Maud.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
She would go on to create thirteen TV shows between
nineteen seventy five and nineteen ninety eight, including Soap Emptiness, Nurses,
It Takes Two, and of course The Golden Girl. The
Golden Girls ran on NBC from September fourteenth, nineteen eighty five,
which was almost exactly what is that forty years?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Oh my gosh, I couldn't do the math there for
a second.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I know.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
To May ninth, nineteen eighty two, one hundred and eighty
half hour.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Episodes made four decades ago. All right. Fact four. It
starred b Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty
as four older and by older we mean three of
them were in their gap fifties who were living together
in sin Okay. That's not really true. That's not a
fact in Miami, Florida because they were widowed and divorced
(02:43):
and needed to save money.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
B Arthur played Dorothy's Bornak, the sarcastic, sharp witted divorcee
and substitute teacher.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Betty White played the naive widow Rose Nyland, who told
stories of her hometown if Saint Olaf, Minnesota.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Rue McClanahan played Blanche Devereaux, the provocative Southern bell, and
Estelle Getty played Sophia Petrillo, also a widower.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
She was also a widower. Also a widow, a widow,
not a widower. Correct, and men are widowers and women
are black widows. Interesting, Okay, that's interesting. Widow and widower. Oh,
I've learned something. Also a widow. And Dorothy's mom. Originally
(03:35):
she's from Italy and then Brooklyn, New York and ended
up in Miami.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Fun Fact number five. The production companies were with Thomas
Harris Productions and Touchstone Television, a spinoff brand from the
Walt Disney Network Television, and The Golden Girls was the
first TV show under that brand.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
That was That was something I learned.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I actually knew that having worked at ABC, but you know, because.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
You know things. Fun Fact number six Wit Thomas Harris
was the movie and TV production company of Paul Younger.
Wit Tony Thomas and Susan Harris. They also produced shows
that did not involve Susan Harris and then it would
be called Wit Thomas Productions. Those shows included It's a Living,
The Practice, Beauty and The Beast, Blossom and even the Office.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
And as a side note, they also produced one of
Susan's Our Susan not Susan Harris. Susan's favorite TV movies
Brian Song from nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
That was like kind of the first TV movie that
broke my heart.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Oh, it broke everyone's heart. It's for those It starred
Billy d Williams and from The Godfather, Heaven help me?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
What's his name? I can't see us? Con thank you,
con As, Brian Piccolo, Billy d Williams, Gale Sayers, Great
great book, great TV movie. That one broke my heart.
Oh it was in Beauty. It was a fantastic nineteen
seventy one Go look it up, kids, all right. Fun
(05:12):
fact number seven. Wit and Thomas met each other in
nineteen seventy three when Paul Younger Witt went to work
for Danny Thomas Productions and turns out that Tony Thomas
was the son of actor and comedian Danny Thomas, who
had his own production company. Number eight.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
When Tony Thomas and Paul younger Wit formed their own
production company, Susan Harris was their first hire and ultimately
a partner.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
And then guess what what, Paul Younger Wit and Susan
Harris got married later I fell in love, I got married.
I love a love story. Is it me okay? Fact
Number nine. The idea for the Golden Girls came to
Brandon Tartakoff from a TV special promotional preview show which
(06:05):
they did back in the eighties. They were always so
fun because they were all Star. This was called the
nineteen eighty four NBC All Star Hour and they were
used to introduce the new shows and the new cast,
and Selma Diamond from Night Court and Doris Roberts from
Remington Steele were introducing the stars of a new show
(06:25):
that Selma thought was called Miami Nice. And she's like, oh,
it's about chaw Shaw lessons and mint coats and sitting
on the beach. And then Doris Roberts has to tell her, no, no,
it's not Miami Nice, it's Miami Vice. And then she
introduced the world to Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas.
I thought that was great. We have a link for
that little YouTube clip in there, but it sort of
(06:47):
stuck in your head, as you do when you're like
a head of a TV network and you coming up
with things you want that it might be a funny
idea for a show. Yeah, you never know where a
good idea is going to come from.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
And to their credit, NBC followed up on it and
the rest, as they say, is history. Fun fact number ten,
Everybody Wins. The Golden Girls is one of only four
sitcoms in history where all four of the main cast
members won an Emmy Award. The others were all in
(07:20):
the family Carol O'Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner, and Sally
Struthers all one Emmys, Will and Grace, Eric McCormick, Deborah Messing,
Sean Hayes and Megan Malally all one Emmys, and Shitz Creek,
Eugene Lovey, Katherine O'Hara, Dan Levy and Annie Murphy all
one Emmys.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I am so glad you took all those names from Sharon.
That's like taking a bullet from me. I really appreciate that.
My words don't always work. But I didn't know that either.
That was a good fun fact to discover in research.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
The same I had no idea that it was only
just these shows were something like that. It happened well,
and yet it also felt like a lot of shows. Yeah, actually,
yeah it does. But yeah, it's so very interesting. So
all right, so that's that's our general.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Now we got ten cast and character facts I'm calling them. Now,
we got to do eleven to twenty.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
There you go go. B Arthur was reluctant. B Arthur
hesitated about taking the role of Dorothy, her co star
Room McClanahan convinced her by saying, and I quote, why
are you going to turn down the best script that's
ever going to come across your desk as long as
you live.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
That's what friends are for people, That's what friends are for.
And everybody talks about how great that pilot script was
by Susan Harris, and you know, she had already starred
in MOD. I mean, she didn't have to do this show.
So in some ways there was a lot of like,
you know, if you do another show after you've done
a show like MOD, there's a chance it won't work, right,
and so then you sort of like, well, why would
(08:57):
I just get a little egg of my face? But
thank god she was willing to take that. Also, there
was a role reversal. Betty White was originally cast as
the lusty southern bell Blanche, and Rue McClanahan was cast
as the naive Rose. They switch roles, and I've heard
both that they decided to do that and also that
(09:19):
Jay Sandrich was part of that conversation. So because they
were sort of that was sort of type cast of
their previous roles where White played the man hungry sue
An nivens On Mary Tyler Moore, and McClanahan had played
Maud's best friend, Vivian Harmon, who was naive. So I
(09:39):
think that ended up being a pretty spectacular switch.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
And it's one of those little, the seemingly small things
that happens with casting and shows that makes you know
that ultimately makes the show work and makes it makes
it into something like a a lasting hit like The
Golden Girls. It's not clear. We'll never know, but it's
(10:04):
not it's not clear that if they had stayed in
the original roles as they were cast, whether or not
the show would have worked.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Who knows. It's all that chemistry and the mix of
those chemistals. I was trying not to say chemicals and people.
All right, whatever, it's fine, it's fine. And then you know,
the ages were a little bit of funny. We like
to think that age is just a number, but it
(10:30):
turns out that Estelle Getty, who played the oldest character,
she played Sophia, who was supposed to be eighty. She
was a year younger in real life than be Arthur,
who played her daughter, and the oldest actress for the
show was Betty White. I thought that that always surprises me, same,
especially the Estelle Getty. When I learned that so good
(10:52):
that was? That was? That was really a surprise. Well
that does bring us two fun fact number four of
the second round of it took makeup artists almost three
hours to transform Estelle Getty into the elderly Sophia, and
between season one and two Getty went and had a
facelift because in her real life she wanted to be like, hey,
(11:13):
I'm cool, I could do other things too, and so
it became even harder because you were Junker when she
came back to the show.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Clearly though she didn't care about how much time she
had to spend in the makeup chair. Our next fun
fact is that Betty White and Rue McClanahan were close
friends in real life, having worked together on Mama's Family previously.
They would often pass the time on the set playing
word games, which is so cute.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
I know, I love that, I love that, you know,
and it does feel like they were professional friends. I
do think that because I don't think you can carry
a show that long in a sitcom format like in
you know, an hour drama. You can be like, I'm
not going to be here for this if you If
the leads are fighting, the production can force them to
(12:00):
work around it if they have to. But I think
that's much harder in a sitcom. But it did turn
out that Bee Arthur and Betty White you know, famously
had a more strained relationship. They weren't quite the same
kind of friends. They had very different working styles, and
White has been quoted as saying that be Arthur was
not that fond of me unquote.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Shows the level of their talent and professionalism that you
really couldn't tell and watching and you still can't tell.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
In watching the show. You can't get good on both
of them.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Our next fun fact Number seven in this group, Rue
McClanahan loved Blanche's extravagant wardrobe so much that she had
a clause in her contract that allowed her to keep
all of her characters custom made clothing.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Good for her, I know.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
You know, I'd imagine most people don't realize that most
of the time, the actors don't get to take the
clothes home at the end of the day, and it
belongs to the production. So good for her.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yes. Fun fact number eight in this group about the cast.
Despite years of being an award winning Broadway and off
Broadway actress, Estelle Getty when she was playing Sophia suffered
extreme stage fright. You can't really tell on the show.
I think it's pretty amazing, but she would apparently freeze
and panic during recordings. She often relied on cue cards
(13:23):
in later seasons. It did come out that a Stelle
Getty later suffered from dementia, which probably contributed to some
of that difficulty. Even though she wasn't that old, those
that may have been beginning to cause issues for memorization.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
It's lovely that the production was able to find ways
to work around that for her to allow her to
continue in the role and continue performing as spectacularly as
she did throughout the series. I didn't know about that
either until you know, we really started looking into this,
and I say, good on her, good on them. So yeah,
(14:01):
so a little bit on a little bit lighter side,
despite the frequent cheesecake eating scenes, be Arthur disliked cheesecake
in real life.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
That would be hard.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Well, you know, maybe she was glad that the dessert
that they were the ladies were sitting around the table
eating in these scenes was not something she was fond of,
so she didn't have to worry about sitting there and
eating lots of cheesecake because she really loved it for
however long it took for them to make their way
through those scenes, or just having it around too much.
(14:38):
I know, for me having it nearby something I really love,
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, you wouldn't stop. You'd be like, bring on some
more cheesecakes. Yeah. And so I was, you know, as
I'm relooking at this show and we're starting, I'm sort
of in season one right now, I was watching the
evolution of the little kitchen table and for the most part,
there's all almost always only three chairs around the little table.
(15:03):
Even though four women lived in the house, every once
in a while they'll be a fourth. I think earlier
on they tried to get all four. But it's both
for camera because it's just easier to shoot, and then
be Arthur almost always sits in the center chair, and
that's I think for sort of the symmetry of she's
so very tall and the others aren't as tall. But
(15:24):
also it's so you can really see all of her
expressions when she's basically making some takes to camera sometimes,
but it's good. It's part of the.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Comedy, all right. So now we're off to ten production facts.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
We've done twenty. That's twenty five, ight.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
So the fast these will be facts twenty one to
thirty as we go through these. So let's start with
a pilot. The pilot was called The Engagement and in
it the Sophia monologue that started with her saying picture.
It was a late addition to the pilot script, added
(16:03):
after the writers realized the character was a hit with
the audience. They reshot and re edited the pilot a
lot to cut out Coco, the gay housekeeper, slash cook
and bring Sophia forward well.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
And I remember those picture it monologues, Oh yeah, picture it.
Cicily guys became a real staple, a real staple of
the show. They really became her one of her signature bits.
And speaking of Coco, the gay cook who acted sort
of as their housekeeper, the character was dropped from the
(16:39):
pilot really as much as they could and been from
the series because of Stellgetty. Sophia popped so much that
they were like, oh no, she's moving in with them.
She's going to be the fourth and she was intended
to be a recurring character. The Coco was played by
the actor Charles Levin, who played a lot of eighties
(17:02):
and nineties and onward.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yeah, and it's not something that's unusual that happened then
and today, where something happened during the pilot that went
better or worse than they expected, and they made some
adjustments and some changes and it's it's just it's just a.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Normal part of the process. In the John Cryer episode,
they talked about the pilot for two and a half
Men and how it was life Danner, Yes, and then
and then they were like, it doesn't work. She's not
mean enough. So they got Holland Taylor who plays an
excellent mean yes and is not mean either in real life.
(17:43):
That's why she's such a great actor. I know, she's amazing.
Oh is it me? Yes? Okay? Number three of this series.
The iconic house used for the show exterior shots is
not in Miami, Florida, a real house located in Brentwood,
which is the neighborhood of Los Angeles. And then later
(18:05):
they rebuilt the house facade in what was then at
the time the Disney World MGM Studios and became Hollywood
Studios in Florida's.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
I wonder if, I don't know if they ever used
that for production. I would imagine not because it was
in Florida.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Oh you think they just built that facade for people
to go, oh, look it's the Golden Girls.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Probably probably because they really didn't shoot anything for the
show outside. It was all shot on a stage.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Well, they may have shot it for the exterior, just
that little exterior shot where they show you the house.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
No, you always kind of almost always see them just
coming in the front door. They're always on set right
or through the kitchen door, through the or something, and
the Lani moves around. Well, nobody's supposed to notice that.
But I noticed that, all right.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Number four in this section where we're talking about production facts,
is that there's no real Saint Olaf. Rose's hometown of
Saint all Off, Minnesota is entirely fictional.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
But I love all those stories, and we got a
great we got a speaking of stories, we got a
great story from when we interviewed Stan Zimmerman back season ago. Uh,
and we're going to have him coming back and to
talk about the origin of Saint Olaf because he was there.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Yes, he was there for the first season, so he
has lots and lots of great stuff to share.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
So look forward to that. So during the run of
the show, both Betty White and b Arthur lost their
mothers in that first season actually, but continued with filming.
It didn't really interrupt filming, which is weird because you
would probably interrupt filming now. That was just sort of
the the time. You couldn't have anything interrupt your work,
(19:55):
even personal tragedy. You don't think even now that they
I think now they would really okay.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Because I don't know. I guess I'm just thinking about
me in some ways. Obviously everybody's different. Having something to
focus on would be helpful for me dealing with the grief.
It's but everybody's different, and I mean it's they're doing
a comedy.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Right, Well, I think it's both. I think that certainly
the schedules get moved around when someone dies during production.
But I think sometimes there's in in in the industry,
particularly those that come for theater, there's so much of
a show must go on kind of mentality, which has
(20:43):
I think rightfully lessened a little bit, and people understand like, hey,
if you're sick, don't come in. Hey, if you're having
an emotional time, take care of yourself first and then
do the work, because we all need to have that time.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Yeah, I'd like to think it's an option that people
have so that if somebody is like, no, no, I'm good,
I don't want to it's okay. I don't want to
hold up production, and they want to go forward, you
go forward. But if somebody says, yeah, I need I
need a little bit of time, and that's also okay. Yeah,
you know, I'd like to think that there's some more
(21:22):
humanity in that way, which there isn't enough of even
to this day, even though there's a little.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Bit from that all right, Next So.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
The next fun fact in this section, there were over
one hundred cheesecakes consumed by the cast during the show's
seven year run. Many of them were sent to the
set by bakeries around the country, and I'd like to
think that everyone except for maybe be Arthur, enjoyed them immensely.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yes, now here's the interesting thing. There were one hundred
and eighty episodes, so they did not consume cheesecake in
every episode. This is true. This is very true.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I don't know about you, but many of the cheesecake
scenes were some of my all time favorites.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
They were because they were usually the late night conversations,
right the like, Hey, you know, that's usually when we
get the Sane Olaf stories from That is true. That
is true, the Sane Olaf cheesecake stories. Okay, so let's
talk a little bit about the theme song for our
seventh fact in our production facts. Thank You for Being
(22:28):
a Friend was actually an existing song before it became
the theme song for The Golden Girls. It was written
and recorded in nineteen seventy eight by Andrew Gold and
then the version that was used for the show was
performed by Cynthia Fee and someone who's from Golden Girls
will come on and tell you about that later?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Who look forward to that up next? In production facts,
the kitchen set on The Golden Girls was originally used
on an earlier with Thomas Harris series called It Takes Two,
which aired on ABC from nineteen eighty two to nineteen
eighty three.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And created by Susan Harris exactly Susan Harris show. Yeah.
I just love the idea that they just sort of
stored that set, or maybe it was still up or something,
and it's just like, we'll do this is fine.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yeah, depending on the timing, maybe they realized that they
had this set sitting there when they were making the
pilot and they thought, what the heck, let's use this.
Who knows, but that kind of tickles me.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, okay, So the Golden Girls, they were a pioneer
in covering controversial and serious issues including homelessness, menopause, sexual harassment,
and especially LGBTQ representation, featuring episodes with gay and lesbian
characters and talking about aids.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Absolutely, there certainly were a lot more television shows tackling
these kinds of issues, but The Golden Girls, being as
popular as it was, certainly didn't have to fact that
they chose to and put those stories out there.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I think I have to give them some credit for that. Agreed, Agreed.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
So the last production fun fact for Golden Girls is
about the renowned director Jay Sandrich. He was known for
The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Cosby Show, and Soap
And he only directed two episodes of Golden Girls, the
pilot and the Backdoor pilot for Empty Nests. He also
(24:28):
directed the pilot of a Different World, which we talked about. Yes, so,
needless to say, he was definitely a talented and season
eighties comedy series director.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Engineering. Yes, absolutely, all right. Our next group is talking
about the legacy of Golden Girls. These are facts thirty
one through forty. Golden Girls is beloved by critics and writers.
The Writers Guild of America placed it at number sixty
nine on its recent list of the one hundred and
one best written Tea TV Series of All Times. Variety
(25:02):
put it on as number eighteen in their top one
hundred television shows of all time. That was like twenty
nineteen or something. So it still is beloved.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Oh absolutely, And it's just as popular, if not more popular,
today than it was back then. It continues to live
on in syndication and now streaming as a whole new
audience is.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Finding it great. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Absolutely, Next up a spinoff. The show had a short
lived spinoff called The Golden Palace, which aired after the
original series finale. It followed Rose, Blanche and Sofia as
they bought and managed a hotel.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
It's not as loved as the original, No.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
And it certainly didn't last as long, but I was
very glad they tried to continue on because it was
lovely for at least a little bit longer to spend
some time with Rose and Blanche and Sofia after the
end of The Golden Girls.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
And then there was yet another spinoff. The nineteen eighty
eight show Empty Nest, starring soaps Richard Mulligan, was a
show about the next door neighbors of The Golden Girls.
And that's kind of a funny way to spin off
a show. I think that show started as a backdoor pilot.
In the final episode of season two of The Golden Girls,
(26:23):
they did an episode entitled Empty Nests with an s
which guest starred readA Moreno and Paul Dooley. It is
arguably one of the least favorite episodes of The Golden Girls,
and even Riada Moreno says it's not very good. She
says the script wasn't right and Susan Harris was sick
and it never got right.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Oh yeah, that's such a shame. One wonders what might
have happened if Susan Harris had been able to write
the script for the pilot.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
You just never know. You never knows. Again, it's that
special chemistry. Yeah, everything has to line up. It's hard not.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
To think that Riada Moreno and Paul Do would have
made for a great pairing.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I would love that pairing.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yeah, Now, there were more than two spinoffs, because.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
You had another spinoff show.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
I know we've kind of already mentioned, but it begs
mentioning again because Empty Nest once it did come on
the air, Retooled had its own network spinoff, Nurses, which
launched in nineteen ninety one and ran for three seasons,
and it starred Lonnie Anderson in the final season.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
A fabulous eighties TV lady absolutely rest in peace. Yes,
all right, So, yeah, that again was news to me.
I really didn't until we started looking at this. I
think maybe at some point I might have known that
Empty Nest was a spin off of Golden Girls. I
had no idea that Nurses was at least to a
spinoff off of a spinoff of Golden Girls, and so
(27:52):
I think that just just kind of cool. This show,
Golden Girls was a global phenomenon. This is fact number
five in this series. There were ten international remakes of
the Golden Girls for countries like Chile, Israel, Greece, the Philippines, Spain, Russia,
Turkey and the others. It sort of is a concept
(28:16):
that got retooled and involved a lot of writers like
Stan I think worked on one or two of those
just to help them get started. So I think that's
pretty amazing. Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
It clearly has some themes and characters that are international.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Universal even yes, that's the word. I was defly serre
because unknown university.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Because frankly, where people of all countries are all aging,
and the challenges as you go from one stage of
life to another, there's probably a lot of universality.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
To that universality. That's good, that's hard. So the next
step in this is legacy.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
The show has inspired countless drag shows, including Golden Girls Live,
an illegally produced off Broadway show in two thousand and
three and two Puppet shows. There was also an animated
pilot set in the future, Golden Girls thirty thirty three.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
How insane. I feel like I have to track that down,
you know, I had no idea of that one.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I do hope the internet will be our friend in
this case, and that's somewhere it can be found, at
least so that we can get a glimpse of it.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
And then Fact seven of the legacy. There are also
countless books, including a brand new Golden Girls murder mystery series,
Murder by Cheesecake, a Golden Girls Cozy Mystery. There's going
to be a series that's insane that just came out.
Oh my gosh, Wow, there came out.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Take there are they trying to take over from where
Jessica Fletcher left off.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
It's kind of a Jessica Fletcher kind of thing. From
what I understand, this is Disney basically churning the Golden
Girls love into any aspect of the world that they can. Well,
there's a lot of love out there, so I guess.
But that's very very interesting.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Next up in the section, as discussed in one of
our episodes last season, the Facts of Life was moved
to Saturday night to help launch The Golden Girls, and
that turned out to be a very successful move, top
ratings hit for NBC. It was a top ten show
for the first six seasons. We're talking about Golden Girls here,
(30:39):
and the series finale of Golden Girls was watched by
twenty seven point two million viewers, and as of twenty sixteen,
it was a seventeenth most watched television finale.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Of all time, of all time. That's fantastic, that's pretty great.
It is an award winning show, which makes a lot
of sense. The Golden Girls was nominated for sixty eight
Emmys and one eleven of them.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Well, it would have been nice to see them get
a few more, but you know, that's you can't win
them all.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
It was a golden time. I would say, there's a
lot going on in those you know, there was some
designing women, there was Cagnium Lacy, there was a lot
going on. Absolutely. Oh, I guess it wouldn't have been
in the same category Cagneum Lacey.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
So the last one, the last fun fact in this category.
For the fortieth anniversary of The Golden Girls, which again
the September eighteenth, twenty twenty five. It's forty years ago
that date when The Golden Girls first aired, and Disney
is celebrating. We'll have a link in the show notes
(31:42):
for all of the things that Disney is planning for
the fortieth anniversary. But Disney also claims that The Golden
Girls has had over one billion that's billion with a
bee ours streamed on Hulu and Disney plus of Golden Girls.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
That's a lot of Golden Girls, absolutely, a lot of hours.
ABC News is supposed to be doing a one hour
special this fall, although I couldn't find anything. They announced it,
but they haven't seen anything. But don't worry because there's
Golden Girls theme wine pillows, toys, and cheesecake candles coming
from Disney just in time for your Christmas shopping. That's right,
(32:21):
Golden Girls everywhere. We're down to the last ten, Sharon,
and we're back, all right.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
These are ten character facts, yes, about the characters of
The Golden Girls. Yes, so over the course of seven seasons.
There are some discrepancies with time and the character's histories,
but here are some character facts.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
And we're saying facts with quotes correct.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
First up, Rose's children, Rose and her late husband Charlie
had five children, daughters Kirsten, Bridget and Good and sons
Adam and Charlie Junior.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
And I think it's gonna works for me. We're going
to say it is till someone corrects us. Right. Blanche
and her late husband George also had five children, daughters
Janet and Rebecca and sons Doug, Bith and Matthew, also
nicknamed Skippy. Dorothy and her ex husband Stan had two children,
(33:25):
a daughter Kate and a son Michael. Okay, now, they
never really nailed down a lot of ages in this show.
In particular, Blanche was very secretive about her age, but
a few episodes hinted that she was basically in her
fifties for most of the show's run.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
I just assume they all were kind of about the
same age.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I assume that too. I assume that too.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Dorothy's ex husband, Stan was a recurring character and appeared
in twenty six episodes of the show. They were married
for thirty eight years before their divorce, so.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
It was a long relationship. It's interesting that that's an
ongoing kind of relationship because they have kids together. Because
he's getting remarried, and there's all sorts of history between them.
I thought that was kind of interesting since everyone else
was a widow, not a widower I learned a widow
(34:19):
on the show that this was a more complex relationship.
They all have sort of that one style relationship with
their former husband. The other ladies, Dorothy's was an ongoing,
evolving relationship, which is sort of always interesting to me
as the child of divorce and someone who's married into
a family with step kids. That's more interesting to me
(34:44):
in some ways sometimes, And so I think that I
find that interesting.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
And perhaps that was delivered on the part of Susan
Harrison creating the characters, because both Blanche and Rose had
very successful, very loving marriages, whereas because because of the
nature of the relationship between Dorothy and Stan, especially the
fact that they got divorced after having been married so long,
(35:08):
there is more tension there. So they were able to
use it in a way that they could not with
Blanche and Rose's husbands.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, we're almost there were almost at the end. Lanche's
southern accent Rue McLanahan apparently like that was not written
in the script that she was that southern and all
that stuff. It sort of came out of that It
may have been a Room McClanahan choice, it may have
been a Jay Sandridge Rum McClanahan choice, but it was
(35:38):
not originally in the script that she was that Southern,
and then of course, over the course of the show
they really lean into it. So I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Then there's the Sicilian curse. Sophia famously
put a quote unquote Sicilian curse on her neighbor, Missus Claxton,
which led to aes of humorous missteps.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
That's a goofy Sophia episode in particular, But it's interesting
because I know that both Sophia and Dorothy are supposed
to be basically Italian American, and in real life the
actresses are Jewish, and they both kind of felt like,
why can't we just be Jewish on this show? But
they were not. But I will say that one of
(36:22):
the things I like about the show, and this is
a fact all their milkshakes brought the boys to the yard.
Because during the course of the show, all of the
ladies were sexually active had romantic partners, and that included
Rose and Sophia. Rose had several boyfriends, and the one
that I liked the best was Miles Weber played by Harold.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Gould, and for those of you that may not remember,
he was Rhoda's father on this jof Rhoda.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
I had forgotten that. That's so funny. Yeah, I liked him,
but I thought that was a wonderful, wonderful thing, and
they didn't make a big deal about it. It was
just a very natural part of their lives that they were,
you know, having relationships, and I think that was great.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Next up, clip on earrings. B Arthur did not have
pierced deers, so Dorothy's iconic statement earrings were all clip ons.
I did not know that, but I think it's something
that my mother would have appreciated, because to this day
she only wears clip on earrings.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
I do not have pierced ears either. Yeah. Do you
always clip on sailor do you have pier steers?
Speaker 1 (37:32):
You do? Oh?
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Yeah? Do you have pierced other things? Oh, you have
a couple pierce deers, Okay, a couple pierced earrings, a
couple piercings, piercings, I got there. Yeah. I did not
get my ears pierced in the eighties when it was
very cool to do that, because my mom said I
(37:54):
had to wait till I was sixteen, and by the
time I was sixteen, I was like, I don't do that.
That seems like a waste time of money. And then
I had a boyfriend who I dated for several years,
and he gave me a Christmas present that was in
a little box, and I was like, oh, this is interesting.
(38:16):
And then I opened the little box and inside was
basically a jewelry box, a small jewelry box. It looked
like the size of a ring box. And I was like, oh, no,
we would have talked about this if he was going
to play this card, because the answer would have been
very unclear. And then it turns out that they were earrings.
They were diamond earrings. It was not a ring, which
(38:37):
is what I was concerned. It was in the moment
that he gave me a gift and I'm like, I'm
literally opening them and looking them and going, oh, my gosh,
this is a beautiful gift. Diamond earrings at the time
very expensive gifts. But I'm also thinking I don't have
pierced ears. And we have been dating for four years
(39:00):
going on in that so by the end of that
conversation that followed, I felt so bad that I'd made
him feel bad that I got my ears pierced. Oh
so I could wear them. I no longer have pierced ears,
nor those earrings, nor that person. We got to finish
(39:25):
the story. What happened to the earrings? Did you? Why
did you let the whole two are? I think the
earrings are somewhere. I think I probably kept the earrings,
but I did let my ears go back to normal.
How interesting. Yeah, just over time, I was like, I
just don't wear earrings. I don't wear jewelry. It is
very unusual for me to wear a jewelry. I don't
(39:46):
like it. It was weird. It was just like, but
you know, my skin's are sensitive, very sensitive person.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
I don't like to wear rings. I just I have
a couple, but I never wear them. But I've had
pierced earrings since I was fourteen or fifteen. We were
stationed in Japan. My mother took me to the dispensary
where they numbed my ear lobes and then put this
little plastic thing through the ear to make the hole.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Because the idea for me.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
I don't remember any of the thing around it, but
I know there was this whole thing about you get
a potato and numb it with some.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Ice and all this.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
I'm like, no, because I to this day hate anything
needle related. And I'm still amazed that I allowed myself
to be jabbed to get But yeah, I don't remember
exactly how old I was, but I was fourteen fifteen,
And as I think about it, I'm thinking, that's kind
of unlike my mother to have been okay with me
(40:47):
doing that. Getting my ears pierced.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
It was kind of a thing, I know, but it's
kind of a thing, like more than so than it
is now. Although again, Dashel just went and got his
ears pierced and with his girlfriend, so that's kind of
a thing. It was really sweet you get both. He
got both. Ah, okay, yeah, And I was like not
(41:10):
sure how I was going to feel about it, but
I'm like, okay, he can. He can pull off a
lot of things and he can definitely pull it off.
So but yeah, and like I have any say, he's eighteen,
but I think he likes it. I like them, and
I do good, but it is so weird earrings. Ear
rings are weird to me. Well, all all jewelry is
(41:32):
somewhat weird. And it's interesting that we have had jewelry
for forever, right, as long as there have been humans,
there has been jewelry. Now, part of that is it's
the it's the thing that survives, right, it can survive
over thousands of years. It was hard and you know,
metal and diamonds. But I think about the stuff that
(41:55):
that you know ends up in museums. Oh yeah, you know.
And and when we were at the British Museum, they
had their sort of money exhibit going on and that
was pretty amazing, but kind of going through the rest
of the exhibits, it's so much of it is jewelry
and crowns, and you're like, wow, people really spend a
(42:20):
lot of time with that.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
Yeah, that the shiny adornment was clear has clearly been
a part of human history for a very very very
long time, obviously mostly for the for the wealthy to
show off your wealth, right exactly, and over time has
become more it's a galitarian the right word. I mean,
(42:44):
more people are able to afford to adorn themselves and
whatever manner they choose with gold and all sorts of
other precious metals and gems. But yeah, I guess people
just humans to some degree or another. I've always wanted
to to adorn themselves with pretty things, little peacock and uh, well,
(43:08):
you know you look at the birds and you go, well,
they look kind of fun with their feathers.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
How come I can't have that feathers on? Well, and
then you're like, okay, and then that's the stuff, the
sort of more metal and stone and gem is the
stuff that last. Right, you know, the feathers. If they
didn't get fossilized, we're gone, right. The other adornments aren't
(43:32):
as prominent, but may have been at the time. Anyway.
That was sort of something I was thinking about when
we were talking about the earrings complete off campus, because
we're at our last fact. This is number fifty. Oh okay,
see that there are three there, because I didn't know
which one I wanted to use, Okay, so I did three. Okay.
(43:56):
The Rose character once claimed to have given fifty young
men and one very confused pe teacher Mono at a
Founder's Day fair by kissing them, right, isn't that the
isn't that the thing? I think the kissing booth, yeah,
which I just thought was a very Rose kind of thing.
But she Rose also had two teddy bears that she
(44:18):
named Fernando and mister Longfellow, and those are from episodes
in season one and season three blind Ambitions and Old Friends.
I just thought that was weird. And also in the
flashback of how they met, she has a cat that
she gives away in a store to a little boy.
So those are rose facts. Oh that's right. Yeah. Anyway,
(44:43):
so we did fifty fifty fun fast facts about the
Golden Girls.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
We hope you enjoyed them as much as we have
enjoyed looking back at all of those.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
That was a lot of fun. It was super fun,
all right. As we start down our path with everybody
that were about to talk to and I was going
to see if you had any favorite episodes of season one.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Well, first of all, I think the pilot is a
really great episode. You get all four of our lead
characters coming out basically fully formed, You have the little
bit of information that you need to understand why they're
all there, and the story itself was also I thought terrific.
So it's a terrific pilot.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
And it totally holds up. Yeah, it totally holds up. Yeah,
the engagement Season one episode one. I also like Season one,
episode eight, the break in, which is that they come
back and there's been a break in at the house
and so they all are responding to that and getting scared.
Rose in particular gets the most scared. They talk a
(45:44):
little bit about guns because Rose wants to get a
gun and goes and gets a gun, but apparently also
in the middle they also go and get a dog,
but they don't talk about that. They're having a whole scene.
This totally threw me, this whole scene. And then they
start walking to the kitchen and a dog starts barking
off camera, and it turns out that they somehow got
(46:06):
a dog to protect them and kept it in the
kitchen and it hasn't been part of the scene until
they just start walking towards the kitchen and the dog
is too scary and they're all afraid of the dog,
and then they have to send the dog back to
the pound, which made me sad, but also it's got
this weird breakout scene. They'd never leave the sitcom world
(46:27):
very much. It's all sets. It's mostly the you know,
it's mostly the house, right, but then they'll have other
sets and stuff. But they have this scene where Rose
is chased in a parking lot, that's shot handheld in
a parking lot, and it just was so out of
character of the show that it just stood out to me.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
Yeah, I don't remember that one specifically, but yeah, that
I guess it's probably part of the show kind of
finding itself and what works and what doesn't for them,
you know, which often happens in the first season. One
of the ones that I really liked was also in
season one and written by upcoming guests Stan Zimmerman, Adult
(47:14):
Education because of the sexual harassment theme there, and it's
Blanche that's taking an adult education class, and the teacher
is basically saying, well, if you sleep with me, you know,
without coming in Actually I actually I think at one
point he really does kind of come out and say it,
then I'll give you the grade you need.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
And she Blanche, she would I think.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
On one level it was Blanche, and I was like, well,
maybe Blanche would do.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
It, but she does not, and she tells him. I
was lovely, like, yeah, those telloff moments exactly. You want
to cheer. And I also liked that episode and then
I'm a fan of the I think it's the last
episode of season one the way we met, and it's
a flashback that tells the story of how the fore
women came together. What I love about it is it
(47:59):
feels like, of course that's the story by that point
in the show. The show has successfully created the history
of these women together in such a way that it
is delightful to watch them come together. It definitely stood
(48:20):
out for me.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
Yeah, it was done very well in terms of showing
you where they started and making sense as to where
they are now in the story as we know it. So, yeah,
that was really well done.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Okay, so listeners, you know, tell us what your favorite
episodes of season one are. You did start sending us
the episodes you think we should get to the nineties
TV babies because that's going to be coming up a
little down the line because we have a lot of people,
awesome people to talk to. I can't wait. And yeah,
so it's time for audioography. Sounds like a plan.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
So for today's audiography. You can watch Golden Girls streaming online.
It's currently on Hulu, Disney Plus, or Filo, and it's
available for sale on YouTube, Apple and more. And there
are also some various channels cable and otherwise. That show
it regularly, but if you want to look for a
(49:22):
particular episode, your best bet is one of the streaming
or as I always like to say, check your local
library to see if they have the DVDs, because that way,
if there's a specific episode that you wanted to go
and rewatch or that you haven't watched before, that's a
great way to try to find it, and the.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
DVDs are always going to be the best quality sound
and picture. I recommend the book Golden Girls Forever, an
unauthorized look behind the Lunai by Jim Calucci.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
It's great, fantastic and if you want to check out
maud Wave mentioned which be Arthur and Rubyn Clanahan start
in before they work together again on The Golden Girls.
You can find it currently free on TV and Pluto TV.
Links will be in our description.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
And I just want to give a little moment for
someone we lost in the podcast community. On September eighth,
a champion of indie podcast and an early adventurer in
the space, Todd Cochrane passed away suddenly. He started podcasting
in two thousand and four. Before that, he ran a
(50:33):
weblog about tech. He was the founder of the podcast Awards,
the first award show that we submitted to and won.
And he wrote arguably the first book on podcasting because
it came out in two thousand and five. It was
called Podcasting Do It Yourself Guide. There are several obituaries
(50:55):
and articles out there about him, so we're linking some
of them in our description. He was really great and
welcoming to us. He was I think one of the
first people who recognized us in our first time when
we went to podcast Movement Evolutions. We were at a
booth and he was like, are you guys the Eighties
TV Ladies? And We're like what, And he was so
(51:18):
welcoming to us, and then I just want to give
him a shout out. Yeah, he will absolutely be missed. Okay,
if you want to help us make more episodes, please
go to patreon dot com slash Eighties tv Ladies.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
You can also support the show by hitting that follow
like subscribe and rating wherever you listen, or tell your
eighties loving friends.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
You know there's a lot going on out there. If
you want to get involved in your community, I highly
recommend indivisible dot org. There are groups all over the country,
likely there's one near you. Please take a look and.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
Don't forget your voice matters. It may not seem like
it sometimes, but it absolutely does. You can call you
representative and tell them what you think about what is happening.
You can check out five calls dot org. They make
it easy and fast to call your representatives, even if
you're not sure who they are. On our next episode,
(52:14):
it's going to be such a delight.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
I can't wait.
Speaker 3 (52:18):
When we covered the facts of life last season, we
got to talk with the lovely Gloria Loring. That was
so fun that we decided talking to the women behind
some of our favorite theme songs is the way to go.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
So in this next episode, we will be talking to
none other than Cindy Fe, the voice of the Golden Girls.
Yes she's the singer behind the theme song, thank you
for being a friend. Travel down the road and back again.
Your heart is true. You're a pal and a comfee.
Speaker 3 (52:51):
Done and if you're threw a party, invited everyone you knew.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
You.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
Let's see, the biggest gift would be from me and
the car attached would say.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
Thank you for being a friend. Thank you for being
a friend. I want to thank you, thank you for
being a friend.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
As always we hope Eighties TV Ladies brings you joy
and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows
to watch, all of which will lead us forward toward
being amazing ladies of the twenty first century.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
I wanna thank you, thank you for being a friend some.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
San sol pretty into the city.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
And gunning good Man World
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