What would the world do without Betty White? The famous actress perhaps originally became that way for her role in The Golden Girls, though these days she might be better known for that meme about Captain America finally dating someone his own age — and I’m here for it all.
White turns 100 next month, and in celebration of her centennial birthday, let’s delve into the show that made White, Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty household names as Rose, Dorothy, Blanche, and Sophia, respectively.
The hit NBC sitcom aired for seven seasons between 1985 and 1992, and centered around four “older” women sharing a Miami home after being widowed or divorced and for Sophia (Getty), after her retirement home burned down. Even nowadays, the age bracket of the show's stars is unique. And they were also damn funny.
The Golden Girls ensemble cast had amazing chemistry that helped that comedy land. One of the show's writers, Marc Cherry (Desperate Housewives, ironically enough), told Vulture back in 2013 of their cast read-throughs: “Generally, if the joke was a good one, the women found a way to make it work the very first time they read it. You have a lot of table reads where the actors will mess it up because they don't understand what the characters are doing, or they misinterpret. But the women were so uniformly brilliant at nailing it the first time ... we basically knew that if the women didn't get it right the first time, the joke needed to be replaced.”
The show’s 177 episodes were all shot in front of a live studio audience and similarly structured: one of the women would be faced with a problem — usually of the male, family, or ethical variety — and then they would all eventually end up around the kitchen table figuring it out together. Usually at night. Usually over cheesecake. Who remembers Rose’s completely unrelated stories of growing up in Minnesota? Or Sophia’s wild tales of her younger days? While through one lens, this whole tableau is of a female stereotype, through another it’s a beautiful example of how people from different backgrounds can come together and help each other. It’s about the best friendship has to offer — with a comedic twist.
But The Golden Girls wasn’t all fun and games. Aside from its age-skewed, female-focused premise — which already set it apart and therefore spawned storylines around elder care, ageism, sexism, and death — the comedy also tackled everything from coming out to discrimination against interracial marriage; assisted suicide to addiction, poverty, immigration, and teen pregnancy, among other topical subjects. Controversial then, while some of those topics still sadly are, more than three decades later.
The relationship between Rose, Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia is what anchored those real-world topics in a way that made them dramatic, sometimes funny, and always heartening in the end.
The Golden Girls wouldn’t have happened without Miami Vice. In a promotional skit for NBC advertisers, actresses Doris Roberts and Selma Diamond, respectively of Remington Steele and Night Court, performed as a couple of “Miami Nice” retirees playing cards. NBC execs, including the network’s then-VP, Warren Littlefield, were inspired by the positive audience response and dreamed up a show featuring “geriatrics.”
That out-of-the-box thinking earned The Golden Girls 68 Primetime Emmy® Award nominations and 11 wins, including one for each of the lead actresses, making it one of only four shows to receive that distinction along with Schitt’s Creek, Will & Grace and All in the Family.
The show received 11 Primetime Emmys total — twice for Outstanding Comedy Series — and four Golden Globe® Awards, three of those for Best Musical/Comedy Series. The Golden Girls was also number 69 on the Writers Guild of America, West’s "101 Best Written TV Series of All Time” 2013 list, and six of its seven seasons ranked among Nielsen ratings’ Top 10.
Basically, it was a hit with audiences and critics. And there’s gold there: that thinking different while still serving up well-loved dynamics and tropes within that completely fresh concept is well worth the shot. You just never know what’s going to land — the same as any joke.
The gals played host to many onscreen and behind-the-scenes stars long before we knew their names: George Clooney once played a police officer before gracing the halls of Chicago’s County General Hospital on ER and Quentin Tarantino used his $3,000 from playing an Elvis Presley impersonator on the show to help fund Reservoir Dogs (or so he told Jimmy Fallon).
Writer Marc Cherry went on to create Desperate Housewives while producer Mitchell Hurwitz brought us Arrested Development down the line. Am I the only one seeing parallels there?!
The Golden Girls also produced two spin-offs: The Golden Palace where Rose, Blanche and Sophia run a Miami-based hotel. The one-season wonder featured Cheech Marin and Don Cheadle. Empty Nest was a direct descendant of The Golden Girls as well, featuring the gals’ neighbors with Getty reprising her role as Sophia on the show. All of the leads performed their roles for a special live performance for the queen herself at 1988’s Royal Variety Performance in London.
And the true sign of a show with die-hard fans and subculture? Golden Con: Thank You For Being a Fan (riffing off the show’s “Thank You for Being a Friend” theme song), a fan conference coming to Chicago in April 2022.
Thank you for being in our lives, Rose, Dorothy, Blanche, and Sophia.