by Jim Colucci
BOSTON/SALEM, MA
A FEW YEARS after their first turn playing the Girls in New York, John Schaefer and Peter Mac moved west and attended Heklina’s show on a weekend in San Francisco. Soon after the couple, now known as John and Peter Mac since their 2014 wedding, “decided to give Golden Girls fans the reunion they never really got,” John remembers. And so, running for 194 performances at the Los Angeles gay bar Oil Can Harry’s in 2012–13, their “Lost Reunion Episode” took place at the funeral of Blanche’s uncle and Dorothy’s husband, Lucas Hollingsworth, bringing all four Girls back together—and sidestepping the debacle of Golden Palace.
In the fall of 2014, while performing another show at the Opus Theater in Salem, Massachusetts, John and Peter were inspired by the witchy environs to write and perform a “lost” Golden Girls Halloween “episode,” in which English teacher Dorothy visited town to research her teaching of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, with the other three Girls in tow. The couple followed with a second show, “The Golden Girls Lost Christmas Episode,” before premiering yet another original hour, “The Lost ‘Shady Pines, Ma’ Episode” at Boston’s Jacques Cabaret the following spring. Each show, Peter explains, contained “eighty percent new material, and twenty percent classic lines fans remember.”
The Golden Gals at Provincetown’s Art House theater in 2014 (clockwise from top): Varla Jean Merman, Brooklyn Shaffer, Olive Another, Ryan Landry.
Photo by MICHAEL VON REDLICH.
Back in 2003, Golden Girls . . . Live was visited by two of the show’s early writers, Stan Zimmerman and James Berg; later, producer Marsha Posner Williams caught John and Peter’s L.A. show. But there were still a certain four older ladies the guys always wished would pop by. As the 2003 Entertainment Weekly article covering the show had noted, Rue McClanahan herself once tried to attend at Rose’s Turn, but couldn’t secure a seat.
John and Peter still hope to this day they’ll look out one night and see Betty White in the crowd. After all, they do know for sure that Betty is aware of their act. Back in September 2003, Betty appeared on one of the earliest episodes of Ellen DeGeneres’s daytime talk show, in which the host asked her if she knew about this new show in New York where four gay men played the beloved Golden Girls.
“Yes,” Betty replied with enthusiasm. “And I hear they play them better than we did!”
SHARING CHEESECAKE WITH
HARVEY FIERSTEIN
the Legendary Actor and Playwright on
ESTELLE GETTY
(1923 - 2008)
YOU CAN’T BELIEVE everything Estelle said in that autobiography she wrote, If I Knew Then What I Know Now . . . So What? The book presented what Estelle wanted to show the world, her public persona. But I would love to have read Estelle’s real story. As I used to say to her, if the world had known where Estelle really came from, and what magic had happened to her, they would have loved her ten times more.
Whatever stand-up Estelle had done early in her life, whatever community theater, when I met her, she was a housewife in Bayside, Queens. Named Estelle Gettleman. Later on, I would hear her telling people she was from Long Island, and I’d tease her and yell, “You’re from Queens!” And she’d yell, “Long Island!” Her husband, Arthur, had a business changing automobile glass, and they were a very funny, curmudgeonly couple. Estelle was friends with Ann and Jules Weiss, who were supporters of the La MaMa theater, where I was at the time. And so Estelle used to come to see all my shows. When I wrote Flatbush Tosca, I cast Helen Hanft in it, but then for whatever reason, she decided not to do it. The Weisses recommended Estelle, and she came in and auditioned—but then an actress named Suzanne Smith, with whom I had done Andy Warhol’s Pork, said she would play the role. Estelle was mad at me, but when I wrote my next play, International Stud, which was the beginning of Torch Song Trilogy, Estelle came to see it, and loved it. Same thing with the next part, Fugue in a Nursery. Estelle kept saying to me, “Why don’t you write a mother, and I’ll play her?”
So for the third part of the trilogy, Widows and Children First!, I did write a mother, and gave the part to Estelle. We did a reading, and she was hysterical. Estelle was ready to go legit, and to be an actress. In fact, you can tell you have a first edition of the book of Torch Song Trilogy by the cast list for the third act. Because just as the play was being published, Estelle called me up and said, “I want to be listed as Estelle Getty.” They had to reset the print, and in doing so, her name ended up not lining up with all the other actors’.
Harvey Fierstein and Estelle Getty in Torch Song Trilogy, 1982.
Estelle had strong opinions, and was the expert on everything. When we were rehearsing the big fight scene in Torch Song Trilogy, Estelle objected to the speech her character gives to mine about what it’s like to be widowed. She told us, “I don’t want to say that, because that’s not the way it is. My sister lost her husband, and that’s not the way she felt.” And I said, “Estelle, just shut up and do it.” The director broke up the fight between us, and gave Estelle specific instructions on what to do: “Stand here, turn, count to three, walk three steps forward, put down the bag, say the line, pick up the bag, turn, walk out the door.”
She agreed to do it, but warned us: “I’m telling you it’s terrible, and nobody’s going to like it.” At the first preview, just to prove it wouldn’t work, Estelle did just as the director had instructed. As she exited, she said to the stage manager in the wings, “Did you see how badly that went? The whole audience was shuffling, and coughing. They were all bored by that speech, that’s how bad it was!” Well the truth was the audience had collapsed in tears, and that noise was people getting out their handkerchiefs. Later, one of Estelle’s friends came backstage and raved about how moved she was. “Oh, I know,” said Estelle. “I told Harvey that speech was a winner.” That was Estelle.
When we transferred the show in 1981 to the Richard Allen Theatre off-off-Broadway, the cast included Joel Crothers, who was on The Edge of Night. Estelle used to tease him: “Mr. Handsome! Mr. Soap Opera! Mr. Rich Guy!” Those started out as great times. Then suddenly Joel got a stomach bug that we all thought was due to a parasite he’d picked up on his last vacation to South America. When the show moved to off Broadway, Joel said he wasn’t well enough to come with us. So another actor, Court Miller, came in. Court would come in to work every day with a new ailment, and we’d all laugh, thinking this man is the biggest hypochondriac of all time. One day it was cold sweats, then stomach problems, then this, then that. Shortly after that our pianist, Ned Levy, brought in this article from a San Francisco newspaper about this newly discovered gay cancer.
We had had no idea. They didn’t even know yet that it was sexually transmitted, and Court had never been to California. But very slowly, it began to dawn on us that Court was sick. It still didn’t dawn on us that Joel had already been sick, one of the earliest cases before it was even an epidemic. So already, in those early days, two people whom Estelle loved had already been stricken with what we would learn was called AIDS.
When we moved to Broadway, our stage manager, Herb Vogler, was sick. We hired an actor to understudy the boyfriend in act two and the son in act three, a young man named Christopher Stryker. And again, another young man Estelle came to adore. Christopher started getting sick, and then people at my other show, La Cage aux Folles, started getting sick.
Torch Song had really become Estelle’s family—and not in that clichéd way that most actors talk about; Estelle yelled at me the way only a mother would yell. I’d have to remind her all the time that she was merely acting as my mother. By the time the show closed on Broadway in 1985, Estelle was out in California, about to begin work on The Golden Girls, and was doing whatever she could to fight the disease. She had been heartbroken not to be cast in the movie version of Torch Song Trilogy, but she was there at its premiere, which became the first AIDS benefit ever held in LA.
Estelle backstage on tour with her Torch Song family, including Jonathan Del Arco (
right).
Photo by GERRY GOODSTEIN, Photo courtesy of JONATHAN DEL ARCO.
So Estelle ended up being in the middle of the AIDS epidemic from day one. We were fighting that war very early on. Because this was Estelle’s family. These were her kids. She loved them, and seeing them die, one by one, just destroyed her.
When she got to LA, Estelle settled into a new life as a single woman. She hadn’t let Arthur come to California with her, nor were her two sons there. She lived in an apartment, and hung out with her gay entourage, her “five-fag minimum.”
In 1994, I did a very short-lived series for Witt/Thomas called Daddy’s Girls, which was shot on the same lot, so I got to see Estelle all the time; she was next door doing Empty Nest. I know I found acting in a sitcom very difficult, because during the dinner break between the night’s two tapings, the writers could rewrite possibly the entire script. When you go back out there, you might be doing a whole new scene you’d never rehearsed. They say doing that, it’s like with any other muscle; if you do it long enough, it gets easier. And certainly the other three Golden Girls, Bea, Rue, and Betty, were all veterans.
But Estelle had a different style. Doing a sitcom versus a movie versus appearing onstage is all called “acting,” but they’re all such different disciplines. For an actress like Estelle, in the theater, you would learn your lines, and then have them under your belt so that you don’t ever have to think about them; then you can really act. But unfortunately, that’s not how sitcoms are. And on top of that, Estelle was beginning to have memory issues, and for such an independent woman, that frightened the hell out of her. And then the fear only made the issue worse.
Estelle (center) joins Jenna von Oÿ (left) and Mayim Bialik on crossover episode “I Ain’t Got Nobody” of Witt/Thomas/Harris’s NBC series Blossom, aired February 11, 1991.
Photo by CHRIS HASTON/NBCU PHOTO BANK, via GETTY IMAGES.
Estelle and Rue join Betty on her CBS sitcom Ladies Man, in an episode airing May 19, 2000.
Photo courtesy of CBS via GETTY IMAGES.
Nobody’s ever going to be Estelle to me. With all our fighting and all the other dynamics that went on between us, that was a relationship that was singular in my life. I created Torch Song for her; I created that character for her. I owe her a large piece of my success. When I turn on The Golden Girls now, it’s not for the guest stars. I prefer the episodes where it’s just the four women. I don’t care about the stories either; they’re just bullshit. What you want when you turn on The Golden Girls is to spend thirty minutes with your friends. For me, I turn it on, and get to spend a little more time with Estelle.
AUTHOR’S UPDATE:
After appearing for a year in the Golden Girls sequel series Golden Palace, Estelle proved there was still life in the nearly nonagenarian Sophia Petrillo, bringing the character back to appear in nearly fifty episodes of Golden Girls spinoff Empty Nest. After that show’s demise in 1995, Estelle continued to make sporadic TV guest appearances on such shows as Touched by an Angel and Mad About You. As her issues with remembering lines progressed, Estelle was drawn particularly to voice-over roles, where she could perform with a script; so she voiced a character in an episode of the animated series Duckman, and played a role in HBO’s 1999 animated adaptation of The Sissy Duckling, written by her longtime friend Harvey Fierstein.
Having made a few movies, including Mannequin and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, during the run of The Golden Girls, Estelle landed a few more roles on the big screen, in The Million Dollar Kid in 2000, and, belovedly, as the voice of the grandmother of the title mouse in 1999’s Stuart Little.
Photo courtesy of ESTATE OF RUE McCLANAHAN, estateofrue.com.
In 1996, Estelle reunited with Betty White and Rue McClanahan, as they played themselves in a hilarious and surreal episode of NBC’s The John Larroquette Show, written by former Golden Girls scribe Mitch Hurwitz, titled “Here We Go Again.” A parody of Sunset Boulevard, in which Betty wants to stage a demented, hours-long Golden Girls musical in Larroquette’s St. Louis busstation, Estelle was Max the butler to Betty’s Norma Desmond. In 2000, Estelle was reunited again with two of her Girls when, visibly frail, she was led through the door by fellow guest star Rue to make a brief appearance in the tag of an episode (“Romance”) of Betty’s CBS sitcom Ladies Man.
By the early 2000s, Estelle had faded from public view, as she battled what came to be diagnosed as Lewy body dementia. Bea, Betty, and Rue all tried to stay in touch, but it wasn’t easy, as the disease took its toll. On July 22, 2008, Estelle Getty, née Scher, died at age eighty-four. The self-described “little girl from the Lower East Side” had moved west late in life, and then made it bigger than she had ever dreamed she could. She is buried in a Los Angeles cemetery, open to the public and fittingly called Hollywood Forever.
5
GOLDEN EPISODES
From its very start, The Golden Girls broke new ground. Over seven seasons, the ladies brought their maturity and humor to landmark episodes about homelessness, ageism, gay rights, and the AIDS epidemic. But then, as these multitalented matrons of the small screen were also wont to do, the Girls could just as easily turn a silly subplot about a piano-playing chicken into a juicy comedic nugget to last for generations. In this chapter, the show’s stars, writers, producers, crew, and guest stars reminisce about the Girls’ most memorable moments, both on and off the screen.
SEASON 1
EPISODE 1
THE ENGAGEMENT
(A.K.A THE PILOT)
Written by: SUSAN HARRIS Directed by: JAY SANDRICH Original airdate: SEPTEMBER 14, 1985
Blanche comes home from a date with Harry (Frank Aletter, 1926–2009) all aflutter with marriage plans. Rose and Dorothy realize that Blanche’s forthcoming union will mean a change of address for them—and worse yet, Rose is struck with a sinking feeling about Harry, which Dorothy won’t allow her to share. After a policeman arrives at the house to tell Blanche that she has become involved with a bigamist, the other women attempt, but fail, to cheer Blanche up. Eventually, Blanche does emerge from her bedroom, with the realization that she would be hard-pressed to find the love and support from someone else that she has found with her friends.
COMMENTARY: This episode marks the sole appearance of the Girls’ gay houseboy, Coco. But after heavy editing, not much remains of Charles Levin’s original performance. His presence remains the strongest in the show’s opening scene, which introduces Dorothy Zbornak as she comes home from a hard day of substitute teaching, complaining about the hoodlums in her class. With her roommates Blanche and Rose not having yet been introduced, and Shady Pines not yet having burned down, who else would Dorothy have to communicate to if not Coco?
The decision to eliminate the extraneous houseboy had not been an easy one to make—and then, it turned out, not an easy one to execute. The original tape night for the Golden Girls pilot had been magical; now, the show’s editors had to make sure the laughs in any newly shot scenes matched that elevated level of audience energy. Even the prop guys had their work cut out for them. Sometime after the original pilot shoot night, the perforated soda cracker that Sophia fetches from the kitchen had ceased to be available. So to ensure that the new footage would match, the crew glued several smaller crackers together, and fed the Frankencracker to poor Estelle, who, like a trouper, nibbled on it anyway.
Shortly after filming this pilot episode, NBC censors tested The Golden Girls with viewers, paying particular attention to public reaction to the portrayal of Sophia. Although some senior viewers objected to the depiction of the effects of a stroke, ultimately, the line remained.
One more noteworthy bit of trivia: this pilot episode features future Designing Women regular Meshach Taylor (1947–2014) as the policeman.
SUSAN HARRIS: In a pilot, you have so many problems to solve in such a short amount of time there’s just so much you can do. You just hope to establish characters, their back stories, and the story that you’re about to tell. That’s all you’
ve got room for in your twenty-three minutes and change.
PAUL WITT: When you’re hoping that all the right talent comes together at just the right time, there’s always an element of luck when you make a pilot. But we knew we had a great piece of material. Susan’s script is widely considered one of the best pilots ever written. And thanks to our amazing cast, it turned out to be one of the best pilots made.
BARRY FANARO: My writing partner, Mort Nathan, and I had worked on Benson for Witt/Thomas, and then the company’s new show Hail to the Chief, starring Patty Duke as the first female president. Hail to the Chief was irreverent like Soap had been, and we loved it. While we were waiting anxiously to hear if it was going to be picked up for more episodes, Paul and Tony invited us, as well as our fellow writers Kathy Speer and Terry Grossman, to the taping of the Golden Girls pilot—which turned out to be one of the best pilot tapings I’ve ever seen. Right out of the gate, the audience knew who these ladies were, and embraced the show’s central idea. Here were three beloved TV all-star personalities, and a new discovery in Estelle, and they had the audience screaming with laughter. The four of us looked at each other and said, “I hope Hail to the Chief gets canceled, because I want to do this!” And that’s exactly what ended up happening.