by Jim Colucci
As a sort of security blanket, Estelle would hide copies of her lines somewhere on the set. My first taping was of this episode—I had just joined the show as a production coordinator—and we were doing one of the scenes in the supermarket. The producers and I weren’t down on the floor with the actors, but upstairs in a booth, watching a feed. I remember saying to Mort Nathan, “Should Estelle really be staring at a banana? Is that odd?” And he said, “Oh my God, she’s written her lines on the fruit.” He sent me down to the stage to take the banana away.
And that’s how I met Estelle for the first time: I went down and said, “Hello, Estelle. I’m Nina, and I need to move your banana.” Well, Estelle took my arm and said, “You may not move my banana!” So I said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what. You tell me where I can move the banana, and I’ll move it an inch in that direction, and you can pick your head up a little bit when you’re delivering the line.” So we negotiated where to move it—a little bit more here, a little bit higher over there—and found a place more comfortable for her.
MICHAEL HYNES (associate designer): Everything in the vicinity of the kitchen table was graffitied by Estelle. Her writing was everywhere. We’d clean off what we could, but a lot of it we couldn’t. And the thing I could never understand was, if she can remember where she scribbled them this week, why can’t she just remember the lines? But she just couldn’t.
The produce section where Sophia picked out nectarines—and Estelle picked out her lines.
Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD.
EPISODE 78
YES, WE HAVE NO HAVANAS
Written by: BARRY FANARO & MORT NATHAN Directed by: TERRY HUGHES Original airdate: OCTOBER 8, 1988
After five dates with Blanche, Fidel Santiago (Henry Darrow) finally meets the rest of the Girls. But soon, Blanche is concerned that her new beau may be seeing someone else. And that night, after dinner, Dorothy, Rose, and Blanche do indeed catch Fidel canoodling on the boardwalk with another woman: Sophia.
Fidel avows his attraction to both women, and leaves it to them to decide how to proceed. And although Blanche swears she’ll never share a man, soon she and Sophia are doing just that. But the custody arrangement does not go down smoothly, and eventually breaks down all together when the Latin lover double-books the Girls for a date to see Ruth Buzzi at the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre. But before either of them can call him to straighten things out, the phone rings with news. Cut to Fidel’s wake, populated entirely by middle-aged women in black. There, Sophia interrupts the priest to deliver her own form of eulogy, wherein she faults Fidel for his philandering, and yet thanks him for reawakening her appreciation for physical affection.
Meanwhile, when Dorothy begins teaching an adult education night class, she’s quite surprised at the sight of one of her students: Rose. It turns out, having contracted mononucleosis during a stint at the kissing booth at St. Olaf’s Founders’ Day fair, teenage Rose slept day and night for the next six months, right through her class’s graduation. Now, Rose is excelling in all subjects except history, a failing she blames on her high school teacher Mr. Fritz Shtickelmayer, who was part of a Nazi plot to misinform America’s youth. After Rose indeed flunks her history exam, Dorothy breaks the news that she won’t be able to get her diploma. That is, until Rose cracks open the textbook, and points out both old Mr. Shtickelmayer, a.k.a. Adolf Hitler, and Eva Braun, the St. Olaf PE teacher who it was rumored was once his main squeeze.
Blanche finds out her Latin lover, Fidel (Henry Darrow), has been two-timing her with Sophia.
Photo by ALICE S. HALL/NBCU PHOTO BANK via GETTY IMAGES.
Fidel’s funeral chapel.
Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD.
COMMENTARY: When The Golden Girls’ producers first conceived the role of Fidel Santiago, their first choice to play him was Cesar Romero. At the time eighty-one years old, Romero had built a career out of playing the romantic Latin lover, and his casting would be considered a coup. When Romero turned out to be unavailable (although he would later turn up in season six, as Sophia’s boyfriend Tony in “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun . . . Before They Die”), producers turned to much younger actor Henry Darrow, outfitting the then fifty-five-year-old with a white wig. And as the show’s director, Terry Hughes, explains below, Henry—at that point best known as heroic Manolito Montoya from his four seasons on NBC’s Western The High Chaparral—turned out to be just the right man to fit into Fidel’s white linen suit.
MORT NATHAN: My writing partner, Barry, and I were talking about funny permutations we could come up within romantic storylines for the Girls. And we came upon the idea: what if the eighty-year-old woman and the fifty-year-old woman were after the same guy? Cary Grant was still alive, and there were then, as there are today, older, dashing men like him who were with younger women. So we thought our storyline, with an older man being interested in both a younger woman and a woman his own age, was the perfect combination of preposterous and believable at the same time.
It was Barry who liked the idea of it being a Latin lover at the center of the love triangle. Barry and I were members of the Grand Havana Room, a cigar club in Beverly Hills. At the time, we were both very into Cuban cigars. So we made the guy Cuban just because it was in our heads at the time.
TERRY HUGHES: When I was living in England, we got our first color television in about 1965, and at that time High Chaparral was airing. Henry Darrow was one of the leads, and I remember he was really good. When his name came up during our Golden Girls casting meeting, everyone remembered him. And I realized he had the exact kind of urbane air and suave Latin charm that we wanted.
RICK COPP (writer): I remember Estelle having real trouble with the lines in this episode. Because often when that happened, or a scene wasn’t playing as well as they wanted, the producers would send me down into the audience to laugh, because my laugh is somewhat loud and obnoxious.
HENRY DARROW: My experience on The Golden Girls was really enjoyable. I had fun doing my scenes with Rue and with Estelle, and the episode has such a funny moment with Dorothy at the end, as she announces at Fidel’s funeral that she’s the only woman there who hadn’t slept with him. And one of the other women says, “I guess even he had his standards.” Poor Dorothy always got slammed.
On my first day on the set, I met all the ladies. Rue and I knew people in common from the Pasadena Playhouse (where one of my classmates was the fabulous Ruth Buzzi, who’s mentioned in an in-joke in this episode). Betty was blonde and had an uplifting personality, and in that way reminded me of my mother. Bea Arthur had just had a facial peel a few days before, and as she was recovering her face was still reddish, and I noticed her keeping more to herself.
With Estelle Getty, I was amazed how she could be so cranky in scenes as Sophia, but then would be so warm with me between takes. But as I first met her, the first thing she did was blurt out, “By the way, did you know they tried to get Cesar Romero for your part?” I wasn’t offended, because it’s the nature of this business that often you’re second or third choice. But Bea Arthur overheard, and came over to apologize for the remark.
On that first morning, Bea actually hadn’t really acknowledged me, even when, at the craft services table as we were getting coffee, I said, “Good morning.” Her apology about Estelle’s comment was the only thing she said to me that day. On the second day again, I said “Good morning,” and still, nothing. Then, later that second day, Bea was watching a rehearsal of a scene with Estelle, Rue, and me. At one point, I ad-libbed something, and it broke Bea up with laughter. So then, on the third day, when I came in in the morning, Bea was the one who came over to me. She said, “Good morning. Would you like some coffee or something?” We hit it off after that. And of course Bea, like all the other ladies, was really wonderful and professional to work with.
BLANCHE:
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go take a long, hot steam
y bath, with just enough water to barely cover my perky bosoms.”
SOPHIA
“You’re only gonna sit in an inch of water?”
Newlyweds Sophia and Max Weinstock (Jack Gilford) come home to Richmond Street.
Photo by CHRIS HASTON/NBCU PHOTO BANK via GETTY IMAGES.
EPISODES 82 & 83
SOPHIA’S WEDDING
(PARTS 1 & 2)
Written by: BARRY FANARO & MORT NATHAN Directed by: TERRY HUGHES Original airdate: NOVEMBER 19 & 26, 1988
When Sophia’s lifelong friend Esther Weinstock (Fritzi Burr, 1924–2003) passes away, Sophia refuses to attend the funeral out of resentment for Esther’s husband, Max (Jack Gilford, 1908–90). As the story goes, Max ruined the pizza-and-knish business he and Sophia’s late husband, Salvadore, had founded by gambling away a week’s receipts. But after Dorothy nudges Sophia into going to the funeral, they learn that it was Sal who was the gambler, and Max who bravely covered for him to save Sophia’s marriage. Sophia sees Max in a new light—and later, even gets caught in bed with him. The two decide to marry.
Meanwhile, Rose’s application to start an unauthorized chapter of the Elvis Presley Hunka-Hunka-Burnin’-Love Fan Club has been approved. But as membership begins to sag, Blanche realizes that what the club really needs is an Elvis impersonator.
When Dorothy refuses to give her blessing to Sophia and Max’s union, Sophia locks herself in the bathroom on her wedding day. It is only Dorothy’s subsequent change of heart, after realizing that she is selfishly guarding the memory of her late father, that convinces her mother to proceed. But there’s just one problem: Rose has confused her mailing lists, and now all of Sophia and Max’s wedding guests are Elvis impersonators.
In part two, Dorothy has secretly resumed smoking, while Sophia and Max realize they have no place to live together. The newlyweds move back into Sophia’s old room, but after three weeks with a man in the house, the living arrangements are getting too close for comfort. After a day of apartment hunting, Sophia and Max stop by the boardwalk, where they’re inspired to sink their savings into renting a concession stand where they can re-create their old pizza-and-knish business. But right after their grand opening, Sophia and Max catch cold, and are unable to man the stand for the weekend’s big beach festival. And so, guilted into filling in, the Girls spend a long afternoon making pizzas and luring in customers.
That night, as everyone sits at home celebrating the day’s boost in sales, Dorothy answers a disturbing phone call, informing her that the stand has burned to the ground. As they stand in front of the smoldering remains, Dorothy confesses to having sneaked a cigarette, which she must not have properly extinguished. But just as she pleads for Sophia’s forgiveness, a fireman stops by to explain the true cause: a faulty coil in the pizza oven.
Blanche happily proclaims that with their insurance payout Sophia and Max can rebuild, but neither member of the couple is excited to do so. It turns out neither had enjoyed re-creating the past venture in the absence of their departed former spouses. So they sit down for a heart-to-heart, in which each admits that their love, although real, will never measure up to their feelings from their former marriages. They decide to separate—Catholic Sophia doesn’t want to divorce—with Max returning to Brooklyn, and Sophia staying in Miami with the women she has come to consider family.
COMMENTARY: This episode introduces Raye Birk’s gay caterer character, who proved popular enough to be brought back two seasons later as Dorothy nearly remarries Stan in “There Goes the Bride,” and then once again on Golden Palace. The actor may otherwise be most recognizable to fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation as Wrenn.
These two particular half hours are also remembered for the scene where Dorothy comes across the disturbing visual of her mother and Max postcoitally in bed together—and for Sophia’s response about what’s going on in her bedroom: “Afterglow.”
And notably only in retrospect, “Sophia’s Wedding: Part 1” features an early and rare acting appearance by one of today’s hippest writer/directors. No, you’re not seeing things. Yes, that is Quentin Tarantino as an Elvis impersonator—back row, center—just before the takeoff of his big-screen career.
JAMIE WOOTEN (writer): One of my top three favorite jokes in all of The Golden Girls was in “Sophia’s Wedding”—when Dorothy attempts to regain her composure after finding Sophia and Max in bed together. She says to him, “When did you get in?” And then there’s a beat before he says, “Oh, into Miami!”
Max and Sophia’s re-created pizza-and-knish stand on the boardwalk, before the fire.
Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD.
MORT NATHAN: In the eighties, wedding episodes were very popular. The network always wanted weddings, and we loved the simultaneous absurdity and reality of an eighty-two-year-old woman in a white wedding gown. We liked getting to explore the emotional area of a daughter having to give a blessing to her mother, for a man replacing her father. As far as Quentin Tarantino goes, I read an article about him when he first became a phenomenon as the director of Pulp Fiction. He was talking about how he got started in the business and broke in as an actor, and he said that one of the early things he did was The Golden Girls. So I went back and took out some stills of this episode, and there he was. I had no idea he was one of the Elvises.
LEX PASSARIS (associate director): Typically, we’d have extras, like all the guys who played the Elvises, on the stage only on Friday, which was our tape day. But because of the complexity of this two-part episode, and the “Blue Hawaii” number at the end, we decided to have them in on Thursday as well. I had no idea who Quentin Tarantino was back then, but the funny thing is I remember him because he never broke character from being Elvis on set for the whole two days.
QUENTIN TARANTINO: This was the first acting gig I ever got paid for—and I didn’t even have to audition for it. All these Elvis impersonators, and actors who could play Elvis, just sent in their head shots.
I was nobody at this time, and this was a huge gig for me—because the whole Elvis bit ended up on one of the best-of Golden Girls episodes, and the show continued to play all the time. So I ended up making a lot of money over the course of about five years, from being in constant rotation.
My Golden Girls gig has become a thing to talk about on talk shows—and actually, I would be embarrassed by it more often if the rights to the clips weren’t so expensive. All these talk shows always want to show the scene, but it’s too costly for them. So whenever they do show it on something, I have respect. I think, “Ooh, you actually spent some money to dig this out!”
Max and Esther Weinstock’s home in Brooklyn.
Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD.
BARRY FANARO: I remember the bit about the mix-up between the Elvis fan club membership and the wedding guests tickling Bea to no end. I can hear her laugh in my ear to this day, from the first time we read it at the table read. That was pure Bea, just enjoying the hell out of something. As a writer, I lived for that. Bea wasn’t an easy laugh, and we writers worked hard to please the ladies, because we respected them so much. We knew that working with them, we were going to comedy college.
RAYE BIRK: When I first heard about the role of the caterer from my agents, they passed along the breakdown they had received, which said something like “forty-two-year-old caterer, gay, in four scenes.” I didn’t have any problem with that, because I’d played lots of gay characters in the theater. I got the sides, and I liked the character and thought he was funny, because he had another dimension to him. I thought he was sweet and sentimental, and that made me feel better that his hallmark wasn’t just that he was gay. They were trying to do something with the character.
Certainly there were laugh lines about the fact that he’s gay. In one scene, Blanche turns to me and has a line: “You’re ready to fly right outta here, aren’t you?” It had been in the script from the beginning, and w
as very successful all throughout the process. The writers loved it, and it ended up paying off big with the audience—a huge laugh.
The show went through a lot of changes and rewrites in the course of five days, and at one point we lost some of the elements of the character that I really liked. He originally had a lot of lines where he talked about 1940s movie stars, and I thought those had been terrific because they showed an emotional side to the character. I was upset, and went to the producers and writers and said, “I don’t think I want to do this role, because you’re reducing it to something that’s just a stereotype. I have gay friends, and I’d feel bad doing this clichéd version of a character. No judgment about you guys, but maybe you need to have another actor to do this.” And to their credit, they had a conference and restored most of the dialogue.
EPISODE 86
SCARED STRAIGHT
Written by: CHRISTOPHER LLOYD Directed by: TERRY HUGHES Original airdate: DECEMBER 10, 1988
When Blanche’s baby brother, Clayton Hollingsworth (Monte Markham), arrives for a visit, the Girls find themselves face-to-face with a male version of the Southern belle: charming, good-looking, and on the prowl—for men. Yes, Clayton is gay—a fact he confesses to Rose after he ditches the woman with whom his sister had set him up on an uncomfortable blind date. Rose encourages Clayton to come out to his sister, and he initially agrees. But when he comes home to a querulous Blanche, he instead blurts out that he and Rose slept together. Blanche hates the thought of her brother dating Rose, and harasses Rose until Clayton finally is forced to reveal the truth. Blanche initially refuses to believe it, but eventually comes around to accepting that she and her brother may just have the same excellent taste in men.