by Jim Colucci
But Mrs. Claxton isn’t inside the box at all; she has been accidentally cremated, her ashes given to the Girls. Rose spreads Mrs. Claxton’s cremains around the base of the oak, thus ensuring that the tree is protected after all as a final resting place.
Rose commands meanie neighbor Frieda Claxton (Nan Martin) to drop dead—and she does.
Photo by ALICE S. HALL/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK via GETTY IMAGES.
COMMENTARY: Guest star Nan Martin was only fifty-nine years old at the time of this episode, but with the help of some silver hair spray, played a crotchety eighty-three. She would return at the end of the Girls’ fourth season, in the episode “Foreign Exchange,” as Philomena Bosco, the woman who, courtesy of a hospital mix-up, might possibly be Dorothy’s real birth mother. She is perhaps best known for a role later in her career, as department store owner Mrs. Louder on The Drew Carey Show.
BETTY WHITE: The first time I read this script, I thought the mean neighbor’s death was a rather shocking surprise! But then again, with all those funny people sitting around in our writers’ room, who knows what could happen. It just fascinates me the things they came up with.
BEA ARTHUR: One of my favorite jokes was in this episode. The funeral director pronounces his name without the silent P: “P-feiffer.” And I have to say things like “Well, Mr. P-feiffer . . .” “Look, Mr. P-feiffer . . .” “Mr. P-feiffer, we have already told you . . . !” It just kept going. And I remember thinking, “Oh God, who dreamed this up!”
KATHY SPEER: I want to say that this is pretty much a standard sitcom plot. The idea is to show how it affects your characters to see that when the meanest person dies, there is nobody there for him or her at the end. But in this case, the story is based not only on a previous sitcom episode we’d done, but also somewhat on real life. On Benson, we actually had an actor playing the meanest person die on the set. It was awful.
“Now if you don’t like it, Mrs. Claxton, you just sit there and shut up while we have our say. And if you don’t like it, just drop dead!”
—ROSE
It was August 24, 1983, and I was pregnant with my daughter, Nora. The story of the episode was that a plumber recommended by Kraus comes to Benson’s apartment, and then dies there. The problem is he was a crotchety, nasty guy, and nobody wants to throw the funeral.
We hired the actor Jack Somack, whose claim to fame had been the “Spicy Meatballs” Alka-Seltzer commercials. We rehearsed his first scene, and noticed that he was going up on his lines a little bit. But it was only Wednesday at this point, so who cares. Then for the next scene, he’s supposed to be under the sink, which is where Benson finds him dead. But tragically, right before the actor went under the sink, he actually did die. He had a heart attack, right there on set. And the eeriest part is that the way it was written Benson talks to the guy under the sink, not realizing he’s dead. And had Mr. Somack gone under the sink thirty seconds earlier, he really would have been dead under the sink, and nobody would have known.
It was a terrible moment. That day had actually been my due date, but I didn’t actually have the baby until September first. I know some people had been hoping that the baby would be born that day, as kind of “a life for a life.” It shows how people deal with a sudden passing of a virtual stranger in their midst, which is ironically what we were trying to do in the Benson and Golden Girls episodes.
Miami-Dade County Commission Chambers and the funeral home, where Mr. P-feiffer wants to sell the Girls the top-of-the-line model.
Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD.
EPISODE 35
BIG DADDY’S LITTLE LADY
Written by: RUSSELL MARCUS Directed by: DAVID STEINBERG Original airdate: NOVEMBER 15, 1986
Blanche’s father, Big Daddy (David Wayne, 1914–95), visits Miami to announce a surprise—the arrival the next day of his brand-new fiancée, the widow Spencer. Thrilled, Blanche insists on throwing the couple a wedding right there in the Girls’ living room. But her joy turns to jealousy when she gets a glimpse of the bride. Assuming Margaret (Sondra Currie) to be a gold digger, Blanche makes her typical embarrassing scene, only to relent and offer her blessing when she hears Big Daddy talk about finally finding hope and love again in the aftermath of his beloved wife’s death.
Meanwhile, Rose and Dorothy team up to compete in the Miami Retailers’ Association’s contest for writing the best song about the city. Their first two efforts, a ditty called “Miami Is Nice,” and an outright melodic steal called “M-I-A-another M-I,” are disappointments. But on their third try, the duo comes up with a winner in “Miami, You’ve Got Style”—well, a second-place winner that is. They don’t take home the grand prize, but they do get the joy of gathering with Blanche and Sophia around the piano for a sing-along that has become one of the series’ most beloved moments.
COMMENTARY: This episode featured the return of Big Daddy—but not the return of the actor who first played him. Murray Hamilton, who had appeared just five months earlier in the series’ first season, died just as this episode was conceived, and was replaced by another veteran actor, David Wayne.
This episode is noteworthy for its director as well; comedian David Steinberg had been a staple on The Tonight Show, and was known for his hit comedy records and TV specials of the late 1960s and early ’70s. The Golden Girls came at the beginning of his segue into directing, although he would go on to work on such classic shows as Designing Women, Newhart, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Most recently, he has been the host of the Showtime series Inside Comedy, on which he interviews today’s top comedic actors.
RUSSELL MARCUS: In a sitcom, once you start to get over the first-season hump of introducing and establishing the personalities of your lead characters, the next natural thing to do is to start bringing in their immediate family members. So here, the producers had the idea to bring back Big Daddy, who had already been introduced in season one. The twist here was that he’d not only have a new bride, but she’d be young and beautiful, so as to put her in competition with the vain Blanche. I thought that Blanche’s scene with her new stepmother had a great electricity to it.
For the B plot, with Dorothy and Rose writing their ode to Miami, the show’s musical director, Scott Gale, wrote the melody, and I have to fully admit that it was really Mort Nathan and Barry Fanaro who wrote the lyrics to “Miami, You’ve Got Style.” The scene and the song may have had a touch of my thoughts, courtesy of my first draft going in, but Mort and Barry are really the ones who made it funny.
Blanche is unsettled by a visit from her father, Big Daddy (David Wayne), and his new fiancée, Margaret (Sondra Currie).
Photo by ALICE S. HALL/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK via GETTY IMAGES.
DAVID STEINBERG: The hardest part of directing the show turned out to be Estelle Getty’s mental block about the live audience. She dropped all of her punch lines in front of the audience, never getting her lines out right. So all the air went out of the comedy. At first, no one had told me about it, but then the other women clued me in. Estelle was talented beyond belief, and really could give an incredible performance. So what we did was steal her performance during rehearsal earlier that afternoon. I worried that if we waited to pick up her lines after the rest of the taping, she’d be demoralized about not having gotten it right. So we taped the afternoon, without the audience and when she was feeling confident, and edited it all together later.
Bea Arthur just nailed everything. Not necessarily easy to work with, in that she didn’t take one single note I gave her in all the time I was there. But it’s not like a director really needed to ask for changes to her performance. All of the women were at such a high level of comedy that as a director, all you needed to do was listen to the rhythm and hope that you got it right.
SONDRA CURRIE: I had auditioned for the show two or three times, at which point they told me to hang loose, because a part would be coming soon. And I was thrilled when I got this role as Margaret. Especially because it starte
d out as a great role that was supposed to continue on in the series.
But that’s not how things worked out. When I saw the script for the first time at the Monday table read, I was thrilled. Margaret had scenes and lines all the way through the episode. But the next day, when I got the revised script, I was heartbroken. Most of what had been my dialogue was now coming out of Big Daddy’s mouth. I had had long scenes with Rue, and those were gone, too.
My role became so much smaller, and it was clear the character wouldn’t recur. In the episode as it aired, there are so many shots of the back of my head that my friends joked that I should have at least gotten a shampoo commercial out of the whole thing. Still, I look at it as a gift just to have been part of the show. There’s an old saying that as an actor, you should always steal from the best. And with their expert timing, those quintessential comediennes would take even a line that wasn’t written funny and add their double takes to make it great. So I knew to watch them and take in everything that I could. And so even though the experience was so disappointing, I wouldn’t trade it.
EPISODE 38
’TWAS THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
Written by: BARRY FANARO & MORT NATHAN Directed by: TERRY HUGHES Original airdate: DECEMBER 20, 1986
Rose, Blanche, and Dorothy are held captive by a psycho Santa (Terry Kiser).
After exchanging Christmas gifts, the Girls plan on heading back to their respective hometowns for the holiday. But en route to the airport, as they arrive to pick up Rose at work, they are held hostage by a gun-wielding psycho Santa (Terry Kiser). Eventually Sophia comes to the rescue, with her innate Sicilian ability to discern Santa’s toy gun “from a real piece.” They arrive at the airport with only minutes to spare, only to learn that all flights departing from Miami are canceled due to the weather. The Girls take shelter from a freak Miami snowstorm at a diner, whose wise proprietor Albert (Teddy Wilson, 1943–91) helps them realize that despite everything that went wrong, they do get to spend Christmas with their true family after all.
A freak Miami snowstorm (!) puts the Girls in a Christmas mood.
Photos by RON TOM/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK via GETTY IMAGES.
A cozy booth at Albert’s diner.
Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD.
COMMENTARY: This episode underscores the theme of the Girls as surrogate family, which is so appealing to viewers who find that their friends are, in fact, their closest loved ones. And although it requires a suspension of disbelief that Miami could experience a snowstorm, the episode will also be forever a fan favorite for featuring perhaps the most famous prop of the series other than Sophia’s purse—the naughty “Men of Blanche’s Boudoir” calendar—and behind the scenes, the series’ most beloved prank. Because it turned out that thanks to the men of the Golden Girls crew, that calendar ended up being more of a lurid page-turner than even Blanche had counted on.
MORT NATHAN: In so many of the best sitcoms, the true family is the group inhabiting the screen, not necessarily the family they’re related to. And that’s what The Golden Girls was about. They went through a journey each week to discover what America already knew: they wanted to be with each other, and were each other’s family. They were who they would really want to be with at Christmas. That’s why this episode works so well.
LEX PASSARIS (associate director): I got the heads-up that something fun was going to happen, and that I should come over to the stage. It was a Thursday afternoon, when we would tape the camera run-through. And what happened next had been well planned. The camera guys were in on it, so they even knew enough, when it came time to rehearse the scene where Blanche gives out her Christmas gifts, to turn off the time code window that blocks part of the screen.
They rehearsed Blanche giving wrapped boxes to the other Girls containing the calendar. But unbeknownst to them, a whole group of the production guys—stage, lighting, props, cameramen—had stayed late the night before and made up a new prop calendar, having taken some of the most provocative pictures. You could sell these in West Hollywood. They were all in just their shorts. For one shot, the prop guys got a saddle, and one lighting grip who was a huge black man bent over with the saddle on his back, and Jimmy the prop guy, who wasn’t a big guy, sat on his back with a cowboy hat. And there was whipped cream.
ROBERT SPINA (production associate): There are lines of dialogue as each of the ladies opens her present, so it doesn’t happen all at once. They are all supposed to open it and say something like: “Oh, that’s lovely.” I think Betty was the one to go first, and she keeps talking as she’s flipping the pages, but the look on her face is “oh my God!” And then Bea got hers, and they all just dissolved into laughter. Bea laughed so hard that she cried for nearly five minutes.
THE MEN OF
BLANCHE’S BOUDOIR
Blanche’s homemade Christmas gift to the Girls: a calendar of all her boudoir conquests. Watch out for September!
Photo courtesy of the ESTATE OF RUE McCLANAHAN, estateofrue.com.
During rehearsal, the Girls react to the crew’s prank photos in the “Men of Blanche’s Boudoir” calendar.
Photos courtesy of LEX PASSARIS, with permission from DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC.
Rose is awed, and Blanche skeptical, at the talents of Count Bessie, the piano-playing chicken.
Photo by RON TOM/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK via GETTY IMAGES.
EPISODES 39 & 46
THE SISTERS & LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO MARINARA
Episode 39, written by: CHRISTOPHER LLOYD Episode 46, written by: BARRY FANARO & MORT NATHAN Directed by: TERRY HUGHES Original airdates: JANUARY 3, 1987 & FEBRUARY 2, 1987
In “The Sisters,” Dorothy has planned a big surprise for her mother’s birthday party: she’s flown Sophia’s sister in from Sicily. But it turns out there’s a reason why the two women haven’t spoken since widowed Angela (Nancy Walker, 1922–92) returned to Europe. With some coaxing, the sisters tell their separate sides of the same story, all taking place during a Brooklyn Christmas party in 1955: Angela says Sophia kissed her husband, Carmine, under the mistletoe, and Sophia thinks Angela blabbed to the party that a drunken neighbor had grabbed her for a similar smooch. In the end, it’s all revealed to be a misunderstanding—but only after a frustrated Dorothy reveals how much the estrangement between her mother and favorite aunt is tearing her apart.
In “Long Day’s Journey Into Marinara,” Angela’s decision to move to Miami permanently sparks a sibling rivalry with Sophia. Meanwhile, Rose accepts a pet-sitting gig—to take care of Count Bessie, the piano-playing chicken.
COMMENTARY: Whether you know her best as Rosie, the simple counterwoman obsessed with Bounty paper towels; as Mildred, the secretary on McMillan and Wife; or as Ida Morgenstern, Rhoda’s meddling mother, Nancy Walker was a TV icon. As they went nose to nose in “The Sisters” in their matching white wigs and even matching wicker purses, Sophia and Angela looked so perfectly and hilariously like long-lost sisters that the character returned only seven episodes later for a second visit, in “Long Day’s Journey Into Marinara” (where the Girls famously suspect she may have plucked and fried the piano-playing poultry). As a result, Nancy competed against two fellow Golden Girls guests, Lois Nettleton and Herb Edelman, for 1987’s Outstanding Guest Performer in a Comedy Series Emmy; they all lost.
Sophia back-to-back with her sister and nemesis, Angela (Nancy Walker).
Photo by RON TOM/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK via GETTY IMAGES.
Appearing alongside Nancy Walker was a particular treat for Estelle Getty, although for her own reasons. Estelle’s friend Michael Orland remembers her eagerly looking forward to taping the first Aunt Angela episode. “Estelle told me how for years when she lived in New York, she was Nancy Walker’s stand-in for those Bounty commercials,” Michael remembers. “And Nancy never gave her the time of day. She wasn’t mean, but she never went out of her way to talk to Estelle. So when Nancy got booked on The Golden Girls, Estelle was excited,
and started plotting how she was going to go up and say something to her. But then the moment Nancy walked on to the set, and now it was Nancy coming on to Estelle’s show, Estelle said she no longer felt the need to bring it up. So she never did.”
MORT NATHAN: Sophia is such a hilarious, larger-than-life character, and we loved the idea that she could have a sister who would be her diminutive alter ego. We checked to make sure Nancy Walker was available, and we wrote it specifically for her, because she was the only person we could think of who was such a perfect fit.
BETTY WHITE: Of all things, I still have moments where someone will stop me in the market or on the street and say, “Remember the chicken who played piano?” That chicken was so dear and so cute, and played the piano just the way she was supposed to. And actually, Bea was very upset about that. First of all, birds frighten her a little bit. Plus, she was concerned about the chicken working and being exploited.
EPISODE 40
THE ACTOR
Written by: BARRY FANARO & MORT NATHAN Directed by: TERRY HUGHES Original airdate: JANUARY 17, 1987
As Dorothy argues with Sophia over her new job at the pirate-themed fast-food joint Captain Jack’s Seafood Shanty, Blanche and Rose come home with the Miami Community Players’ most exciting news ever. Accustomed to putting up with “Miami’s answer to Meryl Streep,” Phyllis Hammerow (Janet Carroll, 1940–2012)—who Dorothy points out was so bad in The Diary of Anne Frank that the audience continually cried out through the second act: “She’s in the attic!”—the local troupe will now have the pleasure of working with handsome TV actor Patrick Vaughn (Lloyd Bochner, 1924–2005).