Tech Brew Ride Home - (BNS) The Golden Girls - With Christina Warren

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

Among other things, learn how Miami Vice inspired the Golden Girls, how the Golden Girls helped finance the making of the movie Reservoir Dogs, whether or not Betty White and Bea Arthur hated each other, where the Golden Girls house was, and the real ages of the actresses when they were playing Golden Girls. Special guest, Christina Warren, @film_girl! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. old were each of the actresses when they started playing Golden Girls. Did B. Arthur and Betty White actually hate each other? How did the Golden Girls finance the filming of Quentin Tarantino's movie Reservoir Dogs? Thank you for being a friend because today Rad 80s 90s history is tackling the

Golden Girls. Welcome to Rad, an 80s 90s history podcast recounting the history of the last time things were relatively normal and chill. I'm your host Brian McCullough. Today, my amazing special guest is Christina Warren. Christina, thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. Super excited to be here. Well, thank you for being a friend, Christina. So for those who may not remember, we're going to talk about the Golden Girls today, which was a beloved sitcom that aired on NBC from September 14th, 1985 to May 9th, 1992 with a total of 180-hour episodes over seven seasons. If you've never seen it before, it's about four older single women living together in a house in Miami, Florida. Christina, let's start off by, could you tell me your personal history with the show The Golden Girls?

Okay, so I, I've definitely seen every episode of the show. I wouldn't say that I know every episode and that I've seen them all multiple times, but it's one of those shows that I was a little bit young for it when it first aired. I think that I was not even one years old when it, when it first aired. But because of syndication and because I was, you know, still, I remember when it was still on TV, my grandmother loved it. It was a big hit early in, I guess, kind of like that time, like first run syndication stuff where, you know, once they hit 100 episodes would be on in the afternoons. And so I, it's hard for me to remember a time of like not watching the Golden Girls, if that makes any sense.

It's a show that just feels like it's always been there. And, you know, over the years, it's had this resurgence multiple times where people in different generations or, you know, different types of groups discover the show. And, you know, I've watched on Hulu and things like that. I've seen the spinoffs. But I, like, I don't actively remember watching it on TV when it aired, but I still can't remember it ever not existing.

Was it one of those things because it wasn't? for me, I did watch it when it aired, but also in syndication. The thing that I always pair it in my head with is Nightcourt. So like, it was a show that my parents would let us watch if they were in the room, because it was fairly adult for the time and maybe even still today. Did you have a similar sort of thing like that where it's like, this isn't, you know, the Cosby Show, which we'll mention in a second or whatever, where it was for all families. This was sort of a little more adult. Yeah, it was, although it's interesting because I think that by the time I was kind of old enough to watch it when it was still airing, I don't know if my parents cared that much about the

adultness. So I would probably classify it. I think that they probably classified it, even though it was more adult. I was so little, I wouldn't have understood any of the references that I think that they probably treated it the same way that you would have treated the other, you know, Thursday night NBC sitcoms, Family Ties, The Cosby Show and whatnot. The one that I always pair it with in my mind is, what was it was, Evening Shade, which was one of the spinoffs. Right. I think because they moved the night. And I remember, you know, that show continued for a few years after Golden Girls ended. And I think that they were paired in the same night for a time period. And so in my mind, I always have those two shows associated with, you know,

one another, but it is funny when I've gone back, like, as an adult, and even as a teenager, when I watched it on Nick at night and things like that, it did strike me. I was like, wow, you know, I now understand why my grandmother loved this show, but it was kind of, you know, raunchy and funny and had any windows that me as a five-year-old just didn't understand. But obviously, you know, I can, but I can't understand why parents might be like, yeah, well, we want to be in the room for this one, like, kind of like night court. Or Cheers. Cheers was the one that they absolutely wouldn't let us watch, which in retrospect was like way more adenine than even Golden Girl.

We'll get into the sexuality and the sort of openness about adult themes, which I think was interesting. But it is interesting that you mostly have seen it in syndication. Is it a comfort food show for you? Definitely. Definitely. I mean, and it's just kind of one of those shows you can kind of have on. in the background, you know the characters, you know their beats. And it's one of those shows that I think the older you get, the funnier and the more jokes you get, and the more you can, especially

for someone like me who was really young when it was still airing, really kind of discovered it in a way where I could go, okay, I understand why this had such a wide audience appeal, because I think when I was growing up, I did kind of associate it with like, oh, well, because of the name the Golden Girls, this is an old people show. But I can, you know, with the retrospective hindsight, I go, oh, I understand why this resonated with, like, mass audiences, you know, and very much in the, you know, 18 to 55 demographic or whatever that the networks were going after at the time. So, Christina, I've given you a list of rabbit hole research facts that I found for this pod by prepping and doing research. So hit me up with number one, if you will. I will.

All right. So in a roundabout way, another quintessentially 80 show, and I would argue this is probably the most quintessentially 80s show, Miami Vice inspired the creation of the Golden Girls. So talk to me about this. How did Michael Mann's Miami Vice inspire the Golden Girls? So the story goes like this. It's 84 to 85 season, you know, doing the upfronts or something like that. And so NBC was filming some sort of like promotional something or other. And they have a skit that is promoting Miami Vice. Doris Roberts, who I think most people know as the grandmother on Everybody Loves Raymond, but at the time was on Remington Steel, a popular show at the time.

That was Pierce Broson, right? Right, exactly. Was paired with a night court, speaking of night court, the bailiff, Selma Diamond, the 63-year-old older lady bailiff on Nightcourt. Didn't she die? Sorry, didn't mean interrupt. Go on. Oh, right. Halfway through the show. That's right. I remember that. Yeah. So they're doing, Doris Roberts and Salma Diamond are doing a skit that they keep mistaking Miami Vice for Miami Nice. And like, that's the gag.

So Miami Vice is gritty sort of cutting edge show, but since these older ladies keep thinking it's Miami nice, they're making like weird sort of adenine geriatric jokes about, I don't know, like puppies and Majan tiles or something like that. The legendary Warren Littlefield, who I guess was the head of NBC at that time or whatever, a light bulb goes off. And this is a quote from Littlefield. And I am going to bring in the Cosby show now because this was the big. biggest hit at the time and obviously, you know, things about the Cosby Show, etc., which we won't get into now. But Littlefield said, we learned a lesson in casting the Cosby show. If we could have cloned Bill Cosby, then we could have created five more road companies of that show because there was just so much talent from black actors who weren't being used on television. And the same thing happened with this show. There was a large pool of wonderful older actresses who

weren't doing feature films in television who were being ignored. And when we saw how similar that situation was to Cosby, we knew we were on the right track. So it's literally them thinking, wait, there's this talent pool that isn't being served in television. That makes a lot of sense. And we're going to talk more about the casting, which was so good. But, and obviously, you know, with any show is going to make or break it, but especially with a show like this, I think that's really telling because the actresses that they hired, for the most part, were already known entities, but hadn't been on for a while. So that's really interesting.

It's also funny that like an upfront gag could kind of spur, you know, this isn't a bad idea. That's really interesting. Right. So Paul Younger Witt and Tony Thomas are two TV producers who go to NBC and their pitching shows. And Littlefield asked if Paul Younger Witt's wife, Susan Harris, would be interested in fleshing out this Miami-N-Burie. nice idea. Again, the idea just being like, what if you had elderly ladies cracking wise? So, who is Susan Harris? As you're mentioning, you know, there's the 70s in a way, you know, everyone knows the 70s is like this great era of American movies, but the 70s era in

television was also hugely groundbreaking. And Susan Harris was a part of that. She wrote the famous abortion episode for the series Mod, which starred B. Arthur. She was also the I think so. She was on there a couple times, but we'll get to ruin a second. She was on for like 100 episodes. She was on for like, most of the run. Yeah. She played Mod's best friend. Okay. So Susan Harris also created soap, which is famous for being the, I think having the first openly gay character on primetime television played by um billy crystal i think yes billy crystal so she was married to paul younger wit who produced all of her shows she also created benson if you remember that show yeah that's a soap spin off i think right and so this is a rabbit hole

question number two she has a son from a previous marriage tell me the rabbit hole on that one yeah okay Let's talk about this. So Sam Harris, who is a neuroscientist and a prominent podcaster, please pluck our pod, Sam, is Susan Harris's son. Weird. I mean, I guess, like, it's not a nepo baby thing because it's not like he went into television. But it is weird to, that's a completely random thing that I ran across. All right, let's go right into the casting and the characters.

So number three on your rabbit hole is first golden girl, and it's a long one. so you can do as much of this as you want, but let's start with Sophia. All right, so we're going to start with Ostea. So Estelle Getty playing Sophia Petrillo. She's the oldest golden girl. She's mother to Dorothy. She was born in Sicily.

And Sophia moved to New York after fleeing an arranged marriage. And throughout the series, you hear bits and pieces of crazy stories about that. And then she married Salvador, Sal Petrillo, and she had three children with him. And for our purposes, the only one we really care about is Dorothy.

And she's initially a resident of Shady Pines' retirement home. She'd had a stroke prior to the start of the series. And then she moves in with Blanche, Rose, and Dorothy following a fire at the nursing home. So a lot of things that I read about this, writers and other people say, like, this was the key to the show, making her the matriarch. she's you always want to kind of say like well who's the Kramer on the show and we can talk about that a little bit but like she's the one to not only deliver the sharp one liners but also be sort of the straight person in the you know the concept of the comedy duo like the straight man versus the the crazy person or whatever but i feel like her being older and crustier is

kind of key right because even though she's one of the girls like she's also like i don't know, above them in a way or like trying to like keep them in line a little bit. Yeah, yeah. And she's maybe kind of trying to keep them in line. I would actually kind of argue against that. I think that the real matriarch of the show was, was Dorothy. And Sophia was much more, kind of acted more like childlike. She didn't maybe have the same sexuality as the younger cast members.

And she had, you know, would be like the, I guess like she'd earned the respect and the gravitas of being the elder and she could play that card. But, you know, she's, she's kind of an out there character. I don't know if I would call her the Kramer, but she certainly is, is willing to be just as crazy and scheme just as hard as anyone else, which is kind of addictive. I think even, like, it's alluded to, correct me if I'm wrong, because I haven't seen that the pilot in a really long time. But isn't it kind of alluded that, like, basically Sophia, like, is the one who set the nursing home on fire? Yes. Or, Even if she didn't do it on purpose, maybe that's why she's with them is because they can't rely on her anymore to be altogether with it.

The interesting thing about Estelle Getty is she was a theater actress and she was the least prominent of any of the four. But she did get cast based on her Los Angeles run in Torch Song Trilogy, which was her breakthrough role later in life. Like this was a play written by Harvey Firestein, which played on Broadway in the early 80s, maybe off Broadway. I don't know. But lots of gay and queer themes, which we'll come back to in a second. I did not know this, but also she will come into their ages in a second. But Estelle Getty had to go into three hours worth of makeup just to become Sophia because she was playing older than her actual age. Right.

Right. But that was always the interesting thing to me. I remember learning that as a kid. And I think there'd even been a rumor, which was false, but this is before, you know, we had widespread access to the internet, like, on our persons at all time where, like, you know, they said, oh, you know, the woman who played, you know, Sophia was actually younger than, you know, some of the other actresses. And that was not the case, but she was still significantly younger than the age she was playing.

I didn't realize she had to do three hours of makeup. That's really, really interesting. Also, one more thing that this is maybe neither here nor there. I think it's interesting that she is, you know, she comes from Sicily, as she always talks about. I think that's interesting that they coded her as being an immigrant, because especially for the people of the age that these actresses are representing, like, which I would think of as my grandparents. Like, my grandparents were one generation removed from people that came over on a boat, right? And so I, right, I think that that's interesting and also key to the dynamic and her character that she is coded as being an immigrant. Yeah, no, and I think that it's interesting because her background was similar to my own grandmother's background.

She was the actress of herself was younger than my grandmother, but I think the characters they played were probably around the same age. And my grandmother was born in the United States, but her parents were both Italian, well, Italian, well, Italian, but. Albanian immigrants and she lived in New York for most of her life until she moved to Florida, ironically, but that was because of the Navy, not because of retirement stuff. And so, yeah, I think you're right. Or burning down a nursing home. Yeah, exactly. I think that you're right. I think they probably coded it that way because a lot of people kind of in that target demographic could, and probably not even like that they were necessarily going after like my grandmother per se to watch, but, you know, her children who would be kind of key, that baby boomer demographic could really

very much as saying, okay, to have, you know, the immigrant, you know, one generationally removed parents, right, who still remember the old country and can talk about things like that. All right. This is the longest one for you to summarize, but hit me with rabbit hole number four. Yeah. All right. So then, we've talked about Sophia. Then we have Betty White, who is Rose Island. Now she's a Norwegian American from a small farming town of St. Olaf. Minnesota. And she's naive and it's kind of known for her, you know, very peculiar stories of life growing up that, that are always go in a direction that you don't kind of expect them to go into. She was married to Charlie. She had five children with him. And then after he died,

she moves to Miami. And Betty White, of course, was a very well-known television entity by the time she was cast. Yeah. And then Rue as Blanche. Yeah, Rue McClanahan, sorry, I didn't realize that was still there. Then Rune McClanahan was Blanche, Devereaux. She's from the South. She was employed at an art museum, and then she was born into a wealthy family. She grew up on a plantation outside of Atlanta, and then relocated to Miami where she lived with her husband and George until he died. And then they had a bunch of kids.

and she's a widow. Skippy is the one we remember, yes. Yes, Skippy's the one we remember because there was a very special episode about Skippy. And she's portrayed kind of as like a self-absorbed, you know, man hungry. She's still mourning her husband, but she's, you know, she's the slut of the group. She's the fun one. It's her house that they all are living in. And, you know, I think, and what's interesting is that both Betty White and Rue McClan had worked together previously right before the Golden Girl.

on Mama's family before it endured syndication when it was originally airing. I think it was on NBC. They'd been in that show together, which was a spinoff of a Carol Burnett sketch. And here's the thing about that. So Betty White had portrayed sort of, forgive us for using this term, a man-hungry character, Sue Ann Nivens. Sue Ellen, on Mary Tyler Moore. Yeah.

Mary Tyler Moore show. And McClannahan was. Her character's name was Vivian Harmon in Maud, and she was sort of scatterbrained. So in a way, they were inverse characters. Basically, McClannahan had already played Scatterbrained, Betty White had already played promiscuous. So they didn't want to do the same roles when they were offered to them, and they wanted to switch, and the producers allowed them to switch,

and that's why they signed on. As you mentioned, they had both been on Mama's Family, which I think had been canceled the season before. Let's do Blanche first because she's named after Blanche Dubois from a streetcar named Desire. The idea of a cad, a promiscuous character, is more of a male role. You know, like, you even, again, to bring in cheers a contemporary show, like you have Sam Malone is a cad, John Laracette in Nightcourt. But like, you know, going back to May West and things like that, it's not. this is not an unusual role or it's not it's not groundbreaking in the sense that no one had ever done it

but it's interesting that if this is a show that is the whole thing that makes it interesting not the whole thing but is that this is the sexuality of people that of a segment of the population that doesn't explore their sexuality very much right we don't talk about right it's not represented Right. Like, like we've never, at least, to my knowledge, like up until this show, you didn't think about it. They've been written off, especially women, right? Like men could get away with things much longer. But like women, you're like, okay, well, once you've turned a certain age, we don't even pretend to acknowledge that you even have sexuality anymore. And I mean, to a certain degree, all four of the women, I guess, Delgettys, Sophia, to a lesser degree. But it's all, they're all single, which is. also something that if you think about like sitcom stuff, it's to a certain degree a lot of family and nuclear family sort of stuff. So the idea that you're doing a show, number one, about four single folk. And then number two, that it is people beyond AARP age. We'll get into that again,

as I say. But, and then that they are open about their sex lives and their romantic lives. is what's sort of groundbreaking here. Yeah, no, totally. And I think the fact that, like, from the very beginning, you know, they kind of don't hide around it. And what I always liked about the Blanche character, that character was always my favorite, even as a little kid, and I didn't always understand why, you know, until I was older, was that she was part of the joke, too, right?

Which is also, I think, interesting because it's not as if you hadn't had promiscuous female characters before. Of course you had. But very rarely did you have them, especially, you know, at, at the age that Rue McClanahan is portraying for that character to be kind of unapologetic about it and to kind of be in on the joke as well, right? It's not only unapologetic, it's also like just, it doesn't occur to her to be, like, this is who I am and actually I love it.

And I'm like it's, it's that openness that I think is what makes. the character, it's not shameless, it's, it's openness. It's just like, who are you to tell me, you know? Absolutely. Well, and then you also have this very interesting dichotomy with not only some of the other characters, you know, like, like Rose will talk about in a second, but you also have the dichotomy of like, they've made her like this very southern, like, Italian, you know, upper crust woman who, I'm from the South, I'm from Atlanta. And I can say even, you know, it's really not the case now, but I mean, even in, you know, the 80s and 90s, there was especially like women, you know, probably that age range. There's like a polite way to act and this is going against that type, right? And so she has all these things. She's wealthy, you know, she had the wealthy husband. She's done all the things. She's in the junior league and all that stuff. But she's also, you know, just open about her sexuality. And as you said, doesn't even occur to her to apologize for it. It's just like this is just,

this is who I am, why should you care? And that's such an interesting combination because you could see that that might be more traditionally paired with like an actress who might be, oh, the New Yorker, right, or somebody from Hollywood and give it a different type, you know. But no, this is the most genteel, you know, southern character who is also, you know,

the one who has, frankly, the most fun. That's interesting because we'll get to it in a second, but like it's Dorothy that's, the New Yorker, but let's hit Rose Nyland real quick. Yeah. Because she is the comic relief. She is the inverse. She's from Upper Midwest.

She's from St. Olaf. She's the naive. Doesn't get the jokes. Is the butt of the jokes. But also kind of, in a way, the heart because she isn't, it's not that she's unsophisticated. It's just that she's not. not, she's always a step behind all the other women. Right, right.

And I think, I think, I would, it's funny you said heart because I was having the exact same thought. Like she is sort of the heart of the show because, yes, she's the sweet one. And yes, she is a little bit behind. They're all sharper, wittier. But they love her and she loves them. And, you know, she does have her moments where she can still, like, they're, you know, like a lot of sitcoms, you have these characters where they do things that can defy

sometimes their stupidity defies actuality. And so there are moments with Rose where you're just like, how can anyone this dumb exist? But then there are moments where she'll pull something on and go, okay, she is a little bit sharper than she was given credit for. But it's her sweetness, I think, that kind of is able to pull in kind of the harder edges of the other three that really makes, you know, this found family show work.

Found family, we got to come back to that. I'm actually going to read number, five for you real quick, because let's just get B. Arthur done. Dorothy Zbornak, a substitute teacher born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Sophia, as we said. She became pregnant while still in high school, married Stan Zbornak to legitimize the baby, Stan and Dorothy divorced 38 years of marriage when Stan left the marriage for a young flight attendant. Look, this is, this is B. Arthur, You know, we can we can talk about the degree to which Betty White was a national treasure or whatever. Like I would make the argument that this is B. Arthur's show.

Oh, yeah. If you want to hit number six real quick, we can we can go into talking about Dorothy. Yeah. Well, no, as you say, this was her show. And in fact, B. Arthur was not the original choice for Dorothy because they thought that she thought that it would be below her. because you mentioned earlier, you know, she was on the sitcom mod for many years that Susan Harris won the Emmy-winning groundbreaking episode of, and she herself, you know, won a number of awards for that show and was very, you know, famous because of it. So that is interesting that they didn't even think about her for the part because they thought that she would think that it was beneath her, which is... Do you know who they originally auditioned? No, I don't, because I can't even imagine anybody else for this role. Who did they initially audition?

Elaine Stritch, famous Broadway actress, and I'm going to be gentle about this, but reading between the lines, let's just say the audition did not go well. Maybe she was not in a good personal space at that point. And they assumed, as you say, that the Arthur wouldn't be interested in doing the role, but this is a quote I found from an oral history and entertainment weekly from 90s. I flipped when I read the script after all of the crap. that I'd been sent, here was something so bright and adult and fabulously funny. And, you know, just putting the word crap in there. Like, you, like, that's, that's what B. Arthur brought to the role. Yeah. Is, is sort of just that, like, you could get a 20-second laugh line from Dorothy saying something crazy and B. Arthur just raising her eyebrow. Yes. You know?

yes no that's the thing right is that and and you know uh be arthur had already had that success you know um they created mod for her i think that this is true uh basically she'd been a get it's been a guest star on all in the family and the reaction of that character was so good that norman lear created a whole show based on that which then had a spinoff and then a spinoff of a spin off and um but her her her dry wit and just kind of her facial expressions that's always been part of her humor. And you're right. I think it really, it was great on mod, which was a show that I discovered through like TV land or something, you know, many, many years later. But really is one of the the best parts of Golden Girls. And it's her playing off of Rose very oftentimes that elicits,

I think, some of like her best eye rolls and eyebrow raises and moments, you know. Okay. Let's let's play the crazy Golden Girls parlor game, which is about. the ages of the Golden Girls versus the ages of the actresses when they were playing them. So, Rose Nylen was supposed to be 55 when the show began. Betty White was actually 63 when the show began, so almost a decade older. Blanche Devereaux was supposed to be 53. Rue McClanahan was actually 52 when the show started. So she, the one that lines up the closest.

The closest. I mean, it's insane that people in their early 50s were supposed to be. coded as being as old as the show does. We can talk about that too, but the thing that blows people's minds is, so Sophia, the old mother, was supposed to be 79 when the show started, and 86 by the show's end. But Estelle Getty was only 62 when the show started, thus all the old lady makeup she had to put on. And the kicker is that B. Arthur's real age when she started the show, so B. Arthur's playing Estelle Getty's daughter was 63. three, right? So she's older by one year than Estelle Getty.

Okay, so the playground rumors were correct. Okay, which is, which is funny. That's... Right. The daughter is one year older than the mother, but she's supposed to be playing Dorothy as 53. So she was playing a decade younger, and Estelle Getty is playing almost two decades older. Right. Yeah. You know, 80s 90s. Yeah. It's great. I mean, you still see that.

I mean, in one way, I kind of actually find this really refreshing. Not that they were treating, you know, early 50s as, you know, basically your life is over and you should act like elderly people, right? Because that's insane and ridiculous. And even in the 80s, I think it was. And they definitely coded the characters, at least as a viewer, if you didn't look into that thing, I feel like they were coded to be all in their 60s, right? If not older than that. They felt older than 50s for sure. Like with the hair, you know, we can talk about like the styles and the clothing and stuff like that.

But that is, but that's, but one hand, like that part is ridiculous. But I am actually like impressed that, you know, Betty White and B. Arthur, they were allowed them to play characters, you know, a decade younger than themselves, right? Like, no matter how it was coded on screen. Because now I don't think that that would happen. Like, I think you'd have a hard, I think that actresses would have a hard time. Like you have, you know, women who are. you know, in their 20s who, or 30s who can't, you know, get cast in parts because they, oh, okay, we don't think that you look 21. So that means you're going to have to basically

wait until you're like 65 before we'll cast you in something again, right? Like I don't think that you would have a situation now or you would have somebody who, you know, was, you know, even 40, playing 30, even if they look 30. I don't, I don't think you would see that. So I am sort of impressed by that aspect. But it is, it is crazy that, yeah, that Estellegeti is younger than B. Arthur. That's not. We're going to, we're going to come back to the ages for better or worse before we end here. But so, okay, they have the cast. They shoot the pilot in the spring of 1985. A pilot episode was called the engagement where Blanche nearly marries a man who turns out to be a bigamist six times over. There was actually another character in that episode. It was a male

cook slash butler named Coco played by Charles Levin who had just been on Hill Street Blues and the character of Sophia again Dorothy's mother was originally planned as like an occasional guest star but Getty tested so positively with preview audiences

that the producers decided to get rid of Coco and make Castell Getty a regular character hit me with Rabbit Hole fact number seven All right so the show is an instant smash premiered at number with an estimated 44 million viewers, which in our non-monocultural times is impossible to fathom.

But 44 million viewers tuned in. That's for a new show. That's not like the end of a show. That's not like the, what was the, I don't know the number. I should have looked that up. When Lost ended, what was that? You know, when a Game of Thrones ended, it was, I promise you it was a fraction. So much lower.

It's not even close. Like, like, Game of Thrones, if you add in all the international views and whatnot, they, they might have been high. But, like, lost, I would be shocked at the lost series finale had more than 10 million viewers, honestly, because by the time it ended, you know, television viewership was already on the decline. But even for the peak 80s and at this time, like must-see TV NBC era, 44 million viewers for a debut is really incredible. And, yeah.

Yeah. You mentioned must-see TV. I should state that it debuted September 14th, 1985. And so by that point, you have the Thursday night lineup that some of us remember very well. The Cosby Show, Cheers, a different world. I can't remember what was not facts of life. Crap. I'm going to have to edit this now. Family ties? Family ties. Family ties, right.

Cosby Show, different world, family ties, cheers, all that stuff. That was the Thursday night. So Golden Girls airs on Saturday, which actually it paired with Facts of Life, then 227, then Golden Girls at 9, then Amen, and then Hunter. But again, the things that people might not remember is that the networks program things for, well, Saturday nights and Friday nights, young people go out and do things. Right. And so on a Saturday night, you program for people that are older that might not be going

up and doing things. And so, like, this is almost like perfectly, you know, themed. No, totally. But the fact that it was on Saturday, because I remember watching it, the little bit I remember seeing it, it was a Saturday night show. And I'd assumed that it had debuted on a different night and they'd moved it to that time. The fact that it debuted that highly on a Saturday in the 80s. I think is really telling.

Now, in the 70s, we were talking about, you know, earlier, kind of how important that was to kind of television. I believe all in the family was a Saturday night show. And there were some other ones then. Like, it was actually a very big night for TV. And then Thursday nights, that was kind of NBC's big revolution, Grant Tinkers big thing in the, and Brandon Turnicoff in the 80s,

making Thursday night one of their anchors. But still, to get that many viewers in the 80s on Saturday night, is incredible. Like, it can't even, now, you know, Saturday, I don't even,

they don't even air original programming on Saturday nights and they haven't for quite some time, you know? Yeah, and I think it moved to Tuesdays eventually, but, you know, things moved around all the time in those days.

Let me, let me hit the theme song real quick. Thank you for being a friend. Everyone kind of knows it, even if you've never watched an episode. I didn't know this. It was an original song. It wasn't written for the show. It was recorded by Andrew Gold in 1978. It was a single from his third album, All This in Heaven Two. It actually hit number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in February of 1978. Gold said it was just this

little throwaway thing that took him about an hour to write. But what you hear on the show was re-recorded by Cynthia Fee when it was picked up as the theme song for the show. Cynthia Fee is a songwriter who is also a prominent backup singer recorded with Kenny Rogers, Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie, but she's obviously mostly known for thank you for being a friend. Let's get into some anecdotes. Can you give me rabbit hole number eight?

All right. Now, this one has been rumored for many years, and I think it's probably true. sadly the whole cast is gone now, but Betty White and B. Arthur didn't like each other very much or might not have liked each other very much. What were you able to learn about that? So the quotes that I found that were the most relevant to this were from B. Arthur's son Matthew. The way he describes it is that the main source of the tension between B and Betty was basically like their personalities and like the way they behaved on the set. Like B liked to stay in character the entire time. It's that stupid. I'm a method actor sort of thing. And Betty would break character to chat with the audience and stuff like that. And Matthew Arthur said, it would make my mom unhappy that in between takes, Betty would go and talk to the audience.

It wasn't jealousy. It was a focus thing. My mom unknowingly carried the attitude that it was fun to have somebody to be angry at. It was almost like Betty became her nemesis, someone she could always roll her eyes at about at work. there was no fighting at all, he said. They were friends, and at one point they lived close enough that they would drive each other to work. But apparently it was just like a weird sort of personality conflict thing. And I think that kind of makes sense, right? Like, I mean, Betty White, obviously we talked before she was on the Mary Taylor-Mor show, and then she had like kind of her own show, the Betty White show.

And I know this because I'm a huge fan of 70s game shows. She was a massive, like, you know, stronghold bear on things like match game. and stuff like that. And so she definitely wasn't going to seem like the type who would stay method and do that sort of thing, whereas B. Arthur did seem to be probably a more serious type of actress. We might talk about this later, but the reason the show ended when it ended was that, from what I understand it, B. Arthur didn't want to continue. And so they did get a spin-off the Golden Palace for another year.

But B. Arthur was just kind of done at that point. You know, she was like, look, I've given 16 years of my life to, you know, network television shows, I'm done. Yes, we will come to that in a second as well. Hit me with number nine. Estelle Getty had horrible stage fright? That, I have read various suggestions that. The suggestion is, is that why were they always at the kitchen table? because she had a hard time remembering her lines and reading her notes or whatever.

That doesn't make sense to me because where else are you going to have, you have to have, like friends had the coffee shop. You have to have a place for your characters to come together and commiserate. But I'm going to quote Rue McClanahan here about the severity of Stelgetty's stage fright. She'd panic. She would start getting under a dark cloud the day before tape day. could see a big difference in her that day. She'd be walking around like pig pen under a black cloud. By tape day, she was unreachable. She was just as uptight as a human being could get.

When your brain is frozen like that, you can't remember lines. The other thing, and again, I'm not going to speculate too far into this, but she, Estelle Getty did apparently die of dementia. Right. And there is some suggestion that I've seen that there were signs of that even in the show that she wasn't able to remember lines. And so they would tape lines up and things like that so that she could perform. Interesting. Interesting. But I did to agree with you.

Like I don't know how much any of that had to do with why they staged so many things in the kitchen. I think that just, you know, when you have a sitcom set, you have kind of those core things. And that in the living room are going to be the best places, right? Like the rest of the sets are swing sets that you go into. occasionally, but the ones that are consistent where that camera, you know, in a four camera setup is moving, is going to be the living room in the kitchen. Like, those are going to be kind of your central places. Uh, hit me with rabbit hole number 10. All right. So this is an interesting one. So there are a number of lots of famous writers came out of the Golden Girls, including

a Rust Development creator Mitch Hurwitz, who, Rust development, in my opinion, is one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, certainly the greatest single camera, you know, comedy, I think, of all time. And he was a writer on Golden Girls. And all of the writers were in their 30s or 40s. They were definitely younger. I found an oral history of the writer's room. And Morton, Nathan, who's one of the writers said, we took the job knowing it would be writing for characters in their 60s. And the actresses were extremely skeptical. I remember that when we met B. Arthur, she looked at us and said, you've got to be kidding. How can these children write for us? And I told her, B, give us a month. We'll figure it out. And she said a month was fair, but then Betty White said, not one more day, darling.

No, like, these were, these were actresses who had done Maude, Mary Tyler Moore, Estellegeti had been on Broadway. Like, they'd work with Norman Lear. And so I can understand the skepticism that they had. But the sense that I got from the oral history was, like, they got the show even maybe before the actresses did. This is quoting another writer, Stan Zimmerman. If it was a line for B. Arthur, you could just have Rose say something dumb, and then all Dorothy would need to do is give us a look. We discovered all of that in the first season. We discovered Rose telling her long stories. We started writing these St. Olaf stories that became a runner.

I can't put Rose's line in Dorothy's mouth if you were given lines from the show. blind, you could easily say that's Sophia, that's Rose. Now so much of TV isn't written that way. It's very bland. Here's Winifred Hervey. B was always my favorite. I left after the third season, and that's the year she won her Emmy for Best Actress. I was at the ceremony. And after she gave her speech, she came over and she said, Winifred, did I hear I, did you hear that I mentioned your name, you little twat? She was mad at me because I left the show. I love that. That's fantastic. To that end, let me give you one more. This is coming back to Rue McClanahan playing Blanche.

This is Mortonathan. Rue hadn't been a sex object for a while before the show started, and all of a sudden, she was playing the Femphitaligan. It was in the first few weeks of the show, and she said the most amazing, strange thing happened. I was walking down the street, and these construction workers started screaming at me. They were screaming, hey, Blanche,

and they were saying these filthy things and grabbing their personal part suggestively, And I said, no kidding. And she leaned into me and she said, to be honest, I loved it. I love that so much. I believe Mark Sherry, who created Desperate Housewives, he was also a writer. Yes. Yes.

And which kind of makes sense that, like, you can kind of see when you see Desperate Housewives, which those characters weren't that much younger than the ages that the Golden Girls cast was supposed to be. We're going to get there. We're going to get there. We're going to get there. We're going to get there. you can see that that through line. And also, we're going to get to this in a second.

A lot of the writers were gay, but at the time we're not openly out. But as I said, we're going to get to that in a second. Let me do one more real quick rabbit hole fact number 11. All right. So if you want to go on a pilgrimage to the Golden Girls House, unfortunately you're going to need to go to a galaxy far, far away. Now, why is that? All right, go with me on this.

So the Golden Girls address, as mentioned on the show, is being 61, 51, Richmond Street in Miami. The model used for the exterior shots of the house from the third season to the end, it gets a little murky, was part of the backstage studio tour ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida. this facade along with the empty nest house sequel show or the spinoff show sustained hurricane damage in 2003 and so Disney decided to bulldoze that backstage lot, houses of what they called residential street and they replace it with a stunt show or whatever. Today it is the location of Galaxy's Edge, the Star Wars sort of fantasy land that you can go to. So when I I say you go to a galaxy far, far away.

If you go to Galaxy's Edge, you're standing where the house was. Now, it also was based on a real house at 245 North Salt Air Avenue in the Westgate Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The producers used that for the exterior shots for the first two seasons. So it depends on what you want to count the real house as, by the way, that house in Los Angeles in 2020 sold for four million dollars so nice good good for them I think I remember seeing when it was MGM studios a Disney MGM studios before it became Hollywood studios I think I remember as a little kid seeing probably the golden girls house before it became you know part of like the the

landing place for for galaxies that's that's very funny it's very funny well if you have four million dollars you can also buy the other one that was kind of the the other one maybe yeah No, I don't. I mean, four million seems like actually a pretty good price for a house in Los Angeles, to be honest. I'm like, oh, I'm surprised to put that cheap. Depending on the neighborhood, yeah. So the Golden Girls won the primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series twice over the course of its run. Each of the four stars received an Emmy Award for acting, making it one of the only four sitcoms in the history of the Emmy Awards to achieve this. We're all four leads won an Emmy at least once. The series ranked among Nielsen's ratings top 10 for six of its seven seasons. As we alluded to, towards the end, it was dipping. In terms of ratings, B. Arthur was done.

The hour-long series finale aired in May of 1992. The plot was Dorothy met and married Blanche's Uncle Lucas, played by Leslie Nielsen of naked gun fame and other things. and she moved to Hollingsworth Manor in Atlanta, going back to Atlanta. And Sophia is supposed to join her, but in the end she stays behind with the other women in Miami. And this is where people, I think, know that Empty Nest with Richard Mulligan was a spin-off series. But what you knew that I don't think a lot of people know is Rabbit Hole Fact Number 12, which is that the Golden Girls actually had a legitimate sequel series called... Right. It was called Golden Palace.

Starring Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty, but not B. Arthur. Did you watch it? I did, actually. I watched it when it came on Hulu a few years ago. I think I'd only seen the pilot before that, that TV landed aired. They would do packages of, you know, random, oh, you know, you didn't know this show had a, you know, spin-off or whatever. Don Sheetle was in it as well. Yes. One of one of his early roles. And there was, it was an uneven show. It wasn't great.

It's a very understandable why I didn't get like a renewal for a second season. But, you know, it was, it's an interesting thing to watch because in some ways you could kind of call it. Like, okay, and I think maybe this is how they do it on the DVDs or whatever. Certainly how Hulu packages it. They package it alongside Golden Girls. and I think maybe in later syndication things, they might have done that too. But it is interesting how you take out

one of the characters and it just doesn't work. And I think you could have said that if it had been any of them, right? Like the Sophia character went on to be on Empty Nest after Golden Palace ended. So Getty continued that character. And I was incorrect. I said Evening Shade at the beginning of our podcast

and I was thinking empty nest. But, you know, although I think that you could do something like that, especially with that sort of character where they might be able to live in another. shows universe. I think that this was an example, at least for me, where you take one of the core four members out and this show just doesn't work. Yeah, and B. Arthur did come back for a two episode arc. We should say that the plot of the Golden Palace is that three of the girls sell the house and they invest in a hotel on, I guess, South Beach or something. And so, like,

Don Cheadle was like one of their employees. Also, Cheech Merrin. was regular on that one as well. One of the producers of that show later said, every time I see Don Sheetle, I apologize for that show. But hey, he went on to great things. Look, I'm sure that Don Sheetle at the time was just happy that he had like a series regular gig

on like a network sitcom, you know? And looking for him, it didn't go on very long. The last rabbit hole, factoid that you can give me is number 13. All right. So tell me about this one. How did Golden Girls help fund the making of Reservoir Dogs?

Why should we be thanking the Golden Girls for inadvertently giving us Pulp Fiction? Tell us. So Quinn Tarantino went on Jimmy Fallon a few years ago to talk about his early acting career. I mean, there was a lot of famous people. Back in these days, like, you know, George Clooney was famously on Golden Girls, I think, And, you know, people did facts of life and guests starring roles and things like that. So in the fourth season episode called Sophia's Wedding Part 1, Quentin Tarantino is an Elvis impersonator. And he told Jimmy Fallon, quote, one of the few jobs I did get, and not because I did a wonderful audition,

but simply because they sent my picture in and they said, he's got it, was for an Elvis impersonator on the Golden Girls. It became a two-part golden girls. So I got paid residuals for both parts. And it was so popular that they put it on the best of the Golden Girls releases. I got residuals every time that showed. So I got paid maybe, I don't know, $650 for the episode. But by the time the residuals were over three years later, I made like $3,000. And that kept me going during our pre-production time trying to get Reservoir Dogs going.

So kind of like how Miami Vice inspired the Golden Girls. Grittiness seems to stick to this show. ways. It does. And it's also kind of reinforces like why it's good to have residual contracts for actors and for syndication things. Because, you know, which doesn't really exist now in the era of streaming, rip. But yeah, that's very cool. So before we go, let's touch on the fact while acknowledging probably that we are not necessarily qualified to touch on this too deeply, the degree to which the Golden Girls has always had a huge gay and queer following, played in gay bars. As I mentioned, a lot of the original writers in the writer room were gay even if they weren't out at the time.

Not to put this on you, but the degree to which that makes sense as being a dead. adopted by gay culture. It is, to a degree, kind of like, just that it is, it is sort of like a sexuality and a lifestyle that wasn't sort of mainstreamed and in the open before this show. No, it definitely wasn't. And I think that, you know, I mentioned before, you know, it was kind of a show about found family. And I think that's, I have to imagine, that's why that probably could appeal to, to gay men

especially. And especially if you look at in the 80s when there were, you know, because of the AIDS crisis and the Reagan administration's utter refusals to acknowledge it and, you know, all the things that were happening around that, I could see that having some sort of outlet and some sort of, you know, other, I guess, like characterization of things that are similar to the things that you and your friends are going through, even if they don't look exactly like you could could be really great. And I think that it's interesting, you know, it's continued to, you know, play really well with gay culture, you know, well past generations who weren't even alive when the show was originally airing. And obviously, I think that's because, as you mentioned,

even if they weren't out at the time, many of the writers for the show, which, you know, were, other than Susan Harris, I think many of them were men, were gay men. And, um, That's pretty cool. So here's what I found on this. All of the actresses were very big in terms of their giving to LGBTQ plus causes from Estelle Getty to B Arthur to Rue McClanahan. I found this from Out Magazine in 2014, quote, I happen to know the real reason why gay guys have always responded so feverishly to the show that Golden Girls are basically gay men

and dresses. Dorothy is the bitchy queen who's armed with. sarcasm and slow burns, but who can give you a shoulder pad to cry on when need be. Blanche is the slutty gay who validates himself via how many men want him and what they'll do to get him, though deep down she's just longing to be loved. Rose is the ditsy twink, not dumb exactly, just endlessly naive and literal-minded and rather sweet on top of it, especially useful on those occasions when sincerity is called for. And Sophia is the old gay in the corner, the one telling stories of the golden days in between saying devastating

things that are often spot on truths based on experience. One more, quoting again, many years ago, Rue McClanahan asked a gay man why they loved her character so much, and he answered, Are you kidding? We all want to be her. And I think that's certainly true, not just in terms of libido, but in terms of having a chosen family that's loving and supportive. And I had not thought of the term found family. And so that backs that up. I love that. Yeah. No, and it's, think that makes a lot of sense. I remember seeing like even on like live journal and and Tumblr and things like that, like people doing kind of like, you know, juxtaposition between the golden girls and queer as folk, right? Because, you know,

that the characterization does work in, in many of those regards as the description you found out. But yeah, but I do think, I think that found family aspect because other than Dorothy and, you know, Sophia, like the rest of them didn't know one another. And yet they, despite having all these children and some living ex-husband, some of them widows and whatnot, despite having those things, their real family isn't there. Their real family are one another. And I think that's something that can resonate with a lot of people, but especially people in the queer community. All right. Last sort of parlor game, we're kind of alluding to this multiple times, but, you know, it's a quartet. And there's been a lot of talk about the ages and how, like, you know, the ages of the

characters on and just like that. The Sex and the City sequel are the same ages now as the golden girls were supposed to be then. But here's the thing. Like this is, this is a template. Like, forget just sex in the city. Like, you could go to girls. You could go, like, this idea of a quartet of women, like, can we, like, map the Golden Girls to, like, sex in the city characters? Like, Rose is obviously Charlotte. Yeah. Blanche is obviously Samantha. I don't know how you would do Dorothy and Sophia versus Carrie Miranda. I mean, yeah, I was going to say, well, yeah, that's the hard one because I would say Dorothy is definitely the Miranda.

Sophia is the hard one there, right? And then Carrie, right, yeah, yeah. It doesn't quite fit. And then even like to, yeah, but it's hard. And you could do the same thing for girls or the quartet or whatever. But like, I was trying hard to think of quartets, not even like just of female characters, like thinking of quartets, like, of even like stand by me or something like that. But like is there some sort of like golden mean of the idea of the the straight person in terms of like the raising the eyebrow, the straight man in comedy, the the St. Olaf goofy person. Like, is there some sort of like golden sort of balance here in terms of characters that they,

they hit on that people have done for years now? Yeah, no, I think I think there definitely is. And I don't know. I wouldn't say it originated with Golden Girls because I think you could probably make similar things with the Mary Taylor-Mor show and maybe even going back to like, I Love Lucy, right, which was also four characters. But, you know, and you definitely did have obviously kind of, you know, the straight man there was was a little bit different of a role they were all kind of you know

cartoons to a certain extent um desi i guess was probably the the closest but um i do think that something especially about you know women like particularly like people have made the sexma city comparisons many times hot in cleveland which betty white was on was very much a kind of a you know idea taking the the golden girls motif but applying it to actresses who had been on TV and then the 80s and 90s and, and, you know, updating that kind of concept. But I think that girls, I mean, that's a really interesting one because I think you're exactly right, right? Like it, it's just having kind of these, these four, you know, personalities that can fit these other ways. But even to your point, like, like, Seinfeld, you mentioned, like, who's the Kramer,

right? Like, Seinfeld in many ways, like, isn't that different of a show. Sensibility-wise, it's very different. But it's, it's not that different of a show in terms of how the characters kind of interact with one another than the Golden Girls, you know? It's funny that for at least this format of entertainment, like four is better than a three in a lot of ways. But so to wrap up, at least at the time of this recording, the Golden Girls is on Disney Plus and Hulu. Christina, do you have any plugs for us? What would you like to tell us about or where could we find you? Yeah, so you can find me online at a film underscore girl on my.

most social networks, although on blue sky, I think I'm film girl, because they don't allow underscores. I have a podcast that I do with my friend Brett Terpstra called Overtired. So overtiredpod.com. If you want to listen to that, excuse me, Brett and my friend Jeff, they're three of us now. But yeah, just follow me online if you like people who like to talk about tech and pop culture, because those are my two favorite things. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Rad.

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