by Jim Colucci
Then, when I showed up for the audition, I asked the casting director if we could do something different. Rather than her escorting me into the audition room, I asked her to go in ahead of me, and just tell the producers that I would knock at the door. Then, when they shouted out to come in, I would walk in in character, and start out with my line, “I’m-a Gina!” It worked. They all laughed. Then, I did something I’d watched Estelle do and loved: I turned and stared at them like they were crazy. I really think making that entrance was why I ended up getting the part.
Once I was on the set, though, I thought I should dress like a fancy actress, so I showed up the first day in slacks and high heels. Estelle was so sweet to me, taking me under her wing from that moment on. She told me she’d put her best friend up for my part—but she didn’t have any animosity that I was the one who had gotten it. Instead, she advised me to go back to the look that the producers had liked. In heels, I was too much taller than she was. So from the next day on, I went back to a cardigan and flats. “You don’t want to rattle them,” I remember Estelle telling me. “You want to remind them what it was they liked about you.”
SANDY and HARRIET HELBERG: When we were first starting out as writers we were able to get in to the door at The Golden Girls through one of the four showrunners, Barry Fanaro, who was a friend from performing in the Groundlings in Los Angeles. And so our meeting at The Golden Girls became the first one we ever had.
At that time, there was a big breaking story that had happened somewhere in California, about babies having been switched. It had even made the cover of the L.A. Times. We were watching the coverage one night on Maury Povich’s show, A Current Affair, and we thought, “What if this happened to Dorothy and Sophia?” That became the A plot we used.
A second one of our A story pitches, about Blanche and Rose trying dirty dancing, would become our B plot. We were relieved that everything worked really well together—especially when we learned that the episode we were writing would be the show’s one hundredth.
The ladies celebrate the show’s 100th episode milestone.
Photo by CHRIS HASTON/NBCU PHOTO BANK via GETTY IMAGES.
The MAKING of the 100TH EPISODE
1
At the script’s table read early in the week, producers first hear the script read aloud by the Girls and their guest stars, including Vito Scotti and Nan Martin (back left).
2
The Girls in their places at the table read.
3
Later in the week, Estelle rehearses with Bea, who preferred to remain on book until the very end.
4
Multiple monitors keep track of each camera during the Girls’ taping.
5 & 6
Betty and Rue, pictured here with director Terry Hughes (left) and assistant director Lex Passaris, preferred to be off book during rehearsals.
7
On tape night, producers Tony Thomas and Paul Witt look on as Bea and Rue consult the script between takes.
8
Producer Tony Thomas and creator/producer Susan Harris consult with the Girls.
9
Director Terry Hughes (left) onstage between scenes.
10
Blanche and Rose about to dirty dance across the living room, while script supervisor Robert Spina (right) follows along on the page.
11 & 12
Dance practice.
13, 14 & 15
In between the night’s two tapings, the Girls, in their white bathrobes to keep their costumes clean, play with the producers’ daughter, Nora Grossman, during their dinner break.
16
After the two tapings are complete, a cake to celebrate the 100th episode occasion.
Photos by KARI HENDLER PHOTOGRAPHY.
EPISODE 101
VALENTINE’S DAY
Written by: KATHY SPEER, TERRY GROSSMAN, BARRY FANARO, & MORT NATHAN Directed by: TERRY HUGHES Original airdate: FEBRUARY 11, 1989
When Dorothy, Rose, and then Blanche’s dates cancel on Valentine’s Day, they join Sophia—whom they don’t believe when she claims to have a date with Julio Iglesias—around the table, eating chocolates and reminiscing about Valentines past. Sophia claims to have witnessed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre while stopped in a Chicago auto garage with her father, Angelo (Bill Dana), and husband, Sal (Sid Melton), on a cross-country trip. Rose takes the heat for the time she mistakenly booked the three Girls at a mountaintop nudist resort. Blanche reminisces about the time she inadvertently coached a gay man (Tom Isbell) on how to propose to his boyfriend. And Dorothy blushes even remembering the time the Girls made a spectacle of themselves buying condoms to bring on a cruise, enduring an embarrassing PA-system price check by the store’s clerk (Pat McCormick, 1927–2005). Finally, the doorbell rings: it’s dates Edgar, Raymond, and Steve (Michael J. London, Joe Faust, and John Rice), who with Sophia’s help were just pulling a romantic Valentine’s Day surprise. Dinner and dancing await all but Sophia, who holds out for Julio and his private serenade of “Begin the Beguine.”
COMMENTARY: In Golden Girls parlance, a “wraparound” show is made up of four independent vignettes, tied together by a frame story that usually involves someone saying, “Remember the time when . . . ?” They are a standard writer’s trick; the vignettes can be divided among the staff and cranked out more quickly than a more involved single storyline. But for viewers . . . they sometimes stink.
But not this one. “Valentine’s Day,” written by the show’s four executive producers, is a comedy treasure trove, containing not one but two of the most beloved moments in the entire series. In the first, the Girls accidentally book a package at a clothing-optional resort. But just when they steel up their nerve to join the natives au naturel, they arrive in the dining room, only to notice that they’re the only ones who are naked. “Ladies,” a waiter says derisively. “We always dress for dinner.”
In the second famous moment, The Golden Girls became one of the first sitcoms to promote safe sex, with an infamous and hilarious vignette in which the Girls somewhat embarrassedly purchase condoms. True to form, it is Blanche who reminds the Girls as they pick up sundries for an upcoming romantic cruise to the Bahamas that to be safe and socially responsible, they ought to buy some “protection.”
The nudist resort’s dining room, where “we always dress for dinner.”
Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD.
In yet a third fun vignette, Blanche makes her annual visit to the bar where George proposed to her over champagne, still following the tradition now that he’s gone. As she explains her request for two glasses to the waiter, a man at the bar overhears and remarks on the romance of it all. When he mentions that he is at the bar because he himself is about to pop the question, Blanche realizes that they two were meant to meet, so that she could coach him to propose the same beautiful way that George had with her. It may have been meant merely as a punch line, but this small moment depicting a same-sex proposal, sandwiched among other stories in the episode, presaged the current gay marriage issue by decades.
Meanwhile, Sophia’s somewhat fabricated tale of witnessing the St. Valentine’s Massacre in 1929 leaves viewers with plenty to ponder. First, there’s the way that looks tend to run in Sophia’s family; the previous season, in the episode titled “Mother’s Day,” Bea Arthur also played her mother, and here, Bill Dana, who has a recurring role as Sophia’s brother, Angelo, now plays father to them both. And then there is the age issue. Continuity was never The Golden Girls’ forte, but as the episodes unfurl in the late eighties, it is often said that Sophia is an octogenarian. In season-two episode “A Piece of Cake,” we even learn that she turned fifty in April of 1956. Maybe we viewers might be able to buy that Sophia could have crossed paths with Capone’s crew in Chicago. But we’re also expected to believe that at the time of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Sophia, as played by sixty-something Estelle Getty, is not yet twenty-three.
As if
all that weren’t enough, this episode contains one of the show’s most beloved guest star cameos. From the very beginning we’ve known that the Girls are heavy into Julio Iglesias; in the show’s pilot, Dorothy uses tickets to his concert in an attempt to lure a depressed Blanche out of her bedroom. Now, three and a half years later, it’s Sophia who lands him, as a Valentine’s Day date no less. Having lunched with Burt Reynolds and now about to dine with Julio at Wolfie’s, that old lady definitely gets the hottest dates.
The Chicago auto garage where Sophia claims she and her family witnessed the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
The drugstore where the Girls shop for “Condoms! Condoms! Condoms!”
Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD.
RUE McCLANAHAN: The nudist camp part of this episode was so much fun, figuring out how we were going to come downstairs nude—so we each came down behind a great big cardboard heart. When we shot it, you could see us bare from the shoulders up—but of course we were all really wearing something that went from the underarms down.
MORT NATHAN: We flat-out stole the idea for the condom scene from Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run, a movie that I saw as a kid and thought was hilarious. I remember the joke I loved—Woody Allen asking for a “price check on an orgasm.” Ours had different situations and joke constructions, but it was an homage to that specifically. The reason we went down that road is because we thought we could really top it, like with the line about Rose accidentally picking up the extra-sensitive condoms in black.
KATHY SPEER: The network often would ask us to write in some guest stars, and to do some stunt casting during sweeps months. In this case, they called and asked me, “How about Clint Eastwood?” I asked them, “Do you know Clint Eastwood?” No. I asked, “Can you get Clint Eastwood?” No again. “So why are you calling and asking me?!”
The ladies had met Julio Iglesias at the Royal Variety Performance for the Queen and Queen Mother the year before, and struck up a friendship that resulted in him coming on the show. And he was a great choice for the end, to be Sophia’s date.
Sophia joins Julio Iglesias for a round of “Begin the Beguine.”
Photo courtesy of PHOTOFEST with permission from DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC.
NINA FEINBERG WASS (producer): Julio Iglesias was supposed to come in at the tag and serenade Sophia. But when he arrived, he said he didn’t want to sing. I assumed he didn’t feel like he was in good voice. I was concerned that Paul and Tony would be upset, but Estelle bailed me out. She said, “Honey, I’ll take care of it.” Estelle had always had her own issues with stage fright, and so she was so compassionate for someone feeling apprehensive that she was able to take care of him in that moment. And so she took his arm, and she sings to him—and that’s the way you see it in the episode.
The producers and cast of The Golden Girls’ first four seasons, by which point the show had already won two Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series, and acting awards for each of its four leading ladies. Back row (left to right): Director Terry Hughes, executive producers Paul Witt, Barry Fanaro, Susan Harris, Tony Thomas, Terry Grossman, Mort Nathan, and Kathy Speer.
Photo by ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/ABC via GETTY IMAGES.
SEASON 5
EPISODES 103 & 104
SICK AND TIRED
(PARTS 1 & 2
Written by: SUSAN HARRIS Directed by: TERRY HUGHES Original airdate: SEPTEMBER 23 & 30, 1989
For five months Dorothy has assumed she had the flu. With her lethargy getting continually worse, she doesn’t know which doctor to turn to next.
After being assured she’s fine by Drs. Raymond and Schlesinger, Dorothy sees Dr. Stevens (Jeffrey Tambor), who dismisses her symptoms as signs of loneliness and depression. Still, he recommends that if Dorothy really wants to pursue the diagnosis of a physical illness, she should consult his mentor, a neurologist in New York.
So Dorothy heads north, with Rose. Dorothy views Dr. Budd (Michael McGuire) as her last chance at treatment, but sadly, during her appointment, the man is even more blunt in his opinion that she is not truly sick. He advises his wearied patient to “take a cruise, go to a hypnotist [or] change your hair color.” Back at their hotel later that evening, frustrated Dorothy cries on Rose’s shoulder. And Sophia, too, worries at the prospect of outliving her daughter.
Meanwhile, inspired after reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Blanche decides to fulfill the destiny of greatness her mother once foresaw for her by becoming a romance novelist. But unfortunately, the moment she sets out to begin work on her masterpiece, she comes down with a case of writer’s block.
In part two, Dorothy consults her friend and neighbor, Empty Nest’s friendly pediatrician, Dr. Harry Weston (Richard Mulligan, 1932–2000). The first doctor to believe Dorothy’s assertions of sickness, Harry refers her to his hospital’s virologist Dr. Michael Chang (Keone Young). And when Dr. Chang diagnoses Dorothy with an actual disease, an emerging and perhaps viral illness called chronic fatigue syndrome, a thrilled Sophia can’t help but exude compliments about Chinese food and culture. But unfortunately, with the syndrome so newly identified, the doctor can’t offer Dorothy any conclusive prognosis; for now, she’ll just have to live with her symptoms.
In celebration of having an actual diagnosis, Dorothy takes the Girls to dinner, ordering expensive champagne. When she spies Dr. Budd, she pulls up a chair to his table and eloquently confronts the man who had refused to acknowledge her illness and dismissed her due to her gender; at that point, even the man’s wife (Bibi Besch, 1940–96) is on her side as she has the last word.
Meanwhile, still trying to join the pantheon of great Southern writers, Blanche stays up for seventy-two straight hours, becoming crazy eyed and delirious. And sadly, it wasn’t worth it; as Rose soon discovers when she’s given a sneak peek, sleep-deprived Blanche’s “masterpiece” is actually a work of total gibberish.
Someday, Dr. Budd, you’re going to be on the other side of the table. And as angry as I am, and as angry as I always will be, I still wish you a better doctor than you were to me.
—DOROTHY
Between scenes, actor Michael McGuire studies his lines for his scene with Bea, as useless Dr. Budd.
COMMENTARY: Season five brought a new regime to power in the Golden Girls writers’ room; gone were “the Beatles” as showrunners, and in were Marc Sotkin, a head writer with experience on such shows as Laverne & Shirley and It’s a Living, and a whole cadre of his new hires. With these two installments, the show’s creator, Susan Harris, also returned temporarily, to pen episodes shedding light on a disease with which she herself had been suffering: chronic fatigue syndrome. As Dorothy voices Susan’s own real-life frustrations with physicians’ reluctance to recognize the ailment, the storyline is intended as a challenge to the medical community.
Meanwhile, the episode sets up what will become yet another inconsistency in the Girls’ backstories. Here, Sophia is horrified to hear how Blanche had opted to go out for a pedicure while her husband lay comatose and dying. But a year later, in season-six episode “Mrs. George Devereaux,” Blanche would recount to her late husband, in a dream, how she was at home when she received the phone call informing her that he’d been killed instantly in a car accident.
At the time of this appearance, Jeffrey Tambor was already an established TV character actor, and had played a regular role as the title characters’ nemesis on the 1979 Three’s Company spinoff The Ropers. In 1992, he was cast in the career-making role of sidekick Hank Kingsley on Garry Shandling’s landmark HBO comedy The Larry Sanders Show. In 2003, he began another defining role in Arrested Development, playing the patriarch of the screwed-up Bluth clan. Jeffrey debuted in the fall of 2014 in his latest series, Amazon Prime’s Transparent, as transgender dad Maura Pfefferman, a role for which he won the 2015 Golden Globe and Emmy Best Actor awards.
BEA ARTHUR: I didn’t particularly think of this episode as being controversial at all—and don’t forget, I h
ad gone through the abortion thing with Maude. So after that, everything else seemed low-key. I remember I wasn’t so concerned with making this episode funny as much as I was in making it real for myself.
SUSAN HARRIS: I really wanted to write this story, because it was my story. I was sick. I had chronic fatigue syndrome, which is probably viral, although they still don’t know a whole lot about it. That’s probably the reason why I didn’t write so many Golden Girls episodes, because my life at that time had been consumed with going from doctor to doctor, all over the country. My experience with the medical profession during those years was something I know many people had faced, especially women. And if I, with my resources, was having the trouble I was having with doctors, I could only imagine what women without those resources or without that strength were going through.
BLANCHE:
“Oh, Girls, I have writers’ block! It is the worst feeling in the world!”
SOPHIA:
“Try ten days without a bowel movement sometime.”
Dorothy was the character who spoke the most like I felt, so it was natural for the story to be centered on her. She was the strongest, and could articulate what was going on with her, and at the end, articulate to the doctor how let down she felt. Of course, you have to take license with the show; we couldn’t have Dorothy chronically tired and sick for the rest of the series. So these two episodes were just a statement we made, and you have to just assume Dorothy gradually got better and is okay. And in a lot of cases, people did get better and were okay. After all, there are people who have chronic fatigue syndrome who climb mountains. There are all kinds of levels, and Dorothy was apparently at the mountain-climbing one.