by Jim Colucci
Meanwhile, bored with her job as a TV consumer advocate’s assistant, Rose applies for an open slot at the station as a weekend news reporter. As her audition, she’s assigned to cover the Thirteenth Annual Miami Pet Dog Expo. But on the big day, just as Rose goes on camera, armed robbers burst into the convention hall, demanding wallets and jewelry. Still, courageous Rose keeps rolling—but misses the opportunity to impress when she remains focused solely on the adorable doggies, ignoring the robbery completely.
COMMENTARY: “Bushman awaits!”—and for quite a while, we’d waited to see him. Blanche’s long-standing standby date had often been mentioned throughout the series; now, in season six, the man Blanche has described as “Fred Flintstone with a better car” finally appears in the flesh.
Alan King began his career performing in the “Borscht Belt” club circuit of New York’s Catskill Mountains. From television’s earliest days, the comedian appeared on myriad variety and game shows, filling in last-minute for cancelled guests on The Ed Sullivan Show and eventually becoming a regular guest host on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He hosted the Oscars telecast in 1972, and as part of his position as the Abbot of the New York Friars’ Club, he would go on to preside over that organization’s series of televised celebrity roasts throughout the 1990s. Prior to this role on The Golden Girls, Alan had appeared on TV almost exclusively as himself; but after this turn as Mel Bushman, he took on several additional small-screen acting roles—always as seemingly Jewish characters, a few of them rabbis, and on Murphy Brown, as God.
Worrisome newspapers accumulate on Mel’s front porch.
Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD.
ROBERT SPINA: As the show’s script coordinator, I eventually got the chance to pitch stories to the producers, thanks largely to Terry Hughes, and I started by picking up on some of the show’s loose threads, which can make for really satisfying episodes. For the first episode I got to write, “If At Last You Do Succeed,” earlier in season six, I had picked up the Stan storyline again and given it a new beat by having him become a financial success at last in the novelty business. For this episode, I remembered the name of Blanche’s long-standing date, Mel Bushman. He was seemingly always there for her—but what would happen if he didn’t show?
A number of people were very generous to me in saying that I had captured Alan King’s rhythm. But there’s something about a comic who writes his own material; he believes his voice is unique, and doesn’t like when someone else tries to capture it. It scares him, almost like how some native peoples don’t like to have their photographs taken because they say it captures a piece of their souls. Alan fought the material for a bit during rehearsal. But just as had happened when, before this, I’d worked with Jackie Mason on the pilot for [short-lived sitcom] Chicken Soup, he would change two words, and then feel like he’d made things right. And I was proud that Mel’s speech—“Bushman awaits!”—ended up surviving almost intact from my very first draft.
RUE McCLANAHAN: I thought casting Alan King as Mel Bushman was a stroke of genius. That was hilarious. Mel had always been her standby when she didn’t have a man. There could never be anything serious there, but I think Blanche was in desperation here, panicking about not having a man in her life. If she just could have seen Mel Bushman a little more clearly, she would have realized that not having a man in her life would be better than having him in any serious way.
EPISODE 148
WITNESS
Written by: MITCHELL HURWITZ Directed by: ZANE BUZBY Original airdate: MARCH 9, 1991
The banquet hall for the Daughters of the Old South.
Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD.
In Miles’s absence, Rose begins getting serious with her new boyfriend, Karl (Barney Martin, 1923–2005). Seemingly sizing up his competition, Karl has questions about Miles that Rose is unable to answer. And it turns out, Miles is not completely out of the picture after all; one night, just after Rose bids good night to her new beau, Miles (Harold Gould) bursts through the door from the lanai, dressed in his new Witness Protection Program disguise as Amish farmer Samuel Plankmaker.
But far from being happy about her boyfriend’s return, Rose is now more confused than ever. A jealous Miles realizes that Rose is seeing someone new; but his bigger problem is that Rose has unknowingly blabbed his whereabouts to Karl, a.k.a. mob hit man Mickey “the Cheeseman” Moran.
“Karl” returns to the Girls’ living room with his gun, and as he debates how to dispose of not only Miles but also the Girls as witnesses, blind old Sophia, missing her glasses, ignores his warning and answers the door. It’s next-door neighbor and police officer Barbara Weston (Kristy McNichol), who has tracked down the glasses, their thief being her own dog, Dreyfuss. Barbara pulls out her own gun and apprehends the Cheeseman, thus freeing Miles from his life of fear and enabling his reunion with Rose.
Meanwhile, as Blanche prepares to present her family tree at the banquet celebrating her initiation into the Daughters of the Old South, she’s dismayed at what Dorothy finds among her paperwork. It turns out that in 1860, Blanche’s great-granddaddy Walter Roquet married a woman from just a ways outside Georgia—namely, Buffalo, New York. Dorothy enjoys teasing Blanche about her fractional Yankee heritage, adding, “Did I mention her last name was Feldman?”
Blanche sets out simply to lie to the club’s membership committee about her one-eighth Northern roots. But at the ceremony, she opts for a new strategy instead, sounding a call for tolerance and acceptance. Blackballed nonetheless, the newly Jewish Blanche makes a last-ditch entreaty, launching into her own rendition of Shylock’s speech from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: “Hath not a Yankee eyes? Hath not a Yankee hands?” But even as she makes her plea, Blanche realizes that perhaps it’s the many diverse elements within her heritage that make her special, and uniquely American, more than would membership in any antiquated society.
COMMENTARY: In this episode, Kristy McNichol appears as Barbara Weston, her character from Golden Girls spinoff Empty Nest. (Two later Golden Girls episodes also feature Dinah Manoff—Marty from the movie Grease—playing her Nest role of Barbara’s sister, Carol.)
This episode is noteworthy for two additional reasons. First, along with earlier season 6 episode "Zborn Again," it marks the first solo episodic writing assignment for Mitchell Hurwitz, who was originally being groomed by Witt/Thomas as an executive before proving his true talent lay more on the creative side. Mitch went on to write for a variety of sitcoms before creating the cult hit Arrested Development, for which he has won three Emmy Awards to date.
The episode also was the first installment of The Golden Girls to be directed by a woman. Zane Buzby had appeared in the film comedies Oh, God!, Up in Smoke, Americathon, and This Is Spinal Tap, and had written for the sitcom Fernwood 2 Night before moving behind the camera. She helmed the 1986 feature film Last Resort and episodes of eighties series like Married with Children, Newhart, and My Two Dads before landing a regular directing gig on Witt/Thomas’s sitcom Blossom. At this point in The Golden Girls’ sixth season, the show’s producers had begun auditioning new directors to replace the departing Terry Hughes, and were able to bring Zane on board during a fortuitously timed Blossom hiatus. Afterward, unfortunately, with her commitment to the Mayim Bialik comedy, Zane was unable ever to schedule a return to the Girls. But her presence on the set was still a welcomed change, and something for which Bea Arthur expressed her appreciation.
MITCHELL HURWITZ: Typically, crossovers between the Witt/Thomas shows meant that the Golden Girls actors would go to support Empty Nest or Nurses but not the reverse, because it’s not like The Golden Girls needed the cachet of having an Empty Nest actor show up. But here, this crossover really arose from a need in the story. We had painted ourselves into a corner: now the guy’s got a gun, and how do we end this? Well, if you believe the logic of the shows, the Girls have a cop next door. So we had
Barbara, the Empty Nest neighbor, pulling her own gun on the Cheeseman. It solved the problem, but I was really afraid it was never going to look good on a three-walled sitcom set. Luckily, the show was very forgiving of moments like that.
ZANE BUZBY: Tony Thomas came to me and asked me if I’d like to do The Golden Girls. Well of course I’d like to do The Golden Girls! I remember that he told me, speaking about the cast, “Zane, you’re going to love this, because these are four horses who can really run the race.” And boy was he right. Usually, when you direct a show that’s been on forever, it’s already such a well-oiled machine that you just get it done in the way that they’re used to. But with this cast, once they could see that I was funny, directing the episode became a wonderful creative experience as well.
The women were amazing, Bea Arthur in particular. She was a talent from another solar system, so fast and facile with comedy that you could literally just shoot her performance at the table read. Even though it was the first time she had ever read the script aloud, it was as if she had rehearsed it all week. And the cast had a great dynamic between them. True, Bea was a bit impatient if everyone else wasn’t at performance level in the first five minutes, because she was so fast. And Betty White was right there with her. Estelle Getty was fabulous but liked to work things through and to run her lines. So Rue McClanahan took her under her wing, and gently reviewed her blocking with her. The ladies were always so supportive of each other.
The banner for the organization Blanche is dying to join, the Daughters of the Old South.
Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD.
Many years after The Golden Girls, I went to see Bea Arthur’s one-woman show in Hollywood, and afterward I went backstage. Bea told me she wished I had done more episodes of the show, because “it was great having a dame at the helm.” I loved that she used that word.
EPISODE 150
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DATE MAKES
Written by: MARC CHERRY & JAMIE WOOTEN Directed by: LEX PASSARIS Original airdate: MARCH 23, 1991
When Dorothy gets a call from John Neretti (Hal Linden), the guy who humiliated her by standing her up for her senior prom, she agrees to see him in order to give him a piece of her mind. But not only is Dorothy unable to follow through on her planned revenge, but she soon finds herself falling for him.
John asks Dorothy for a second date during his visit, but that Friday happens to be prom night at the school where Dorothy teaches. Committed to chaperoning the dance, Dorothy agrees to invite John as her date, but reminds him that this time, he’d better show up. That’s when John reveals that he did actually show up that night forty years ago, but, objecting to his attire, Sophia slammed the door in his face.
Later, at home, Dorothy confronts her mother, who admits that that fateful night, she had indeed told John to come back when he was suitably dressed—but the boy never did. Furious, Dorothy accuses her mother of sabotaging her young life, robbing her of self-esteem, and ultimately leading her into an unhappy marriage with Stan. But as she and John come home from their long-delayed prom date, he reveals that he’s always wanted to thank Mrs. Petrillo, whose dressing down ended up turning his own life around. Sophia, he points out, had merely been trying to protect her daughter, as she lectured him that her little girl deserved better than a hoodlum with attitude. And so Dorothy forgives Sophia, the two of them settling into the couch to dish the details of this prom night—because at any age, it’s still comforting to confide in one’s mother.
Meanwhile, Blanche diets in preparation for her annual anniversary ritual of fitting into her wedding dress. After a rough few days of shakes and “sensible” five-ounce meals, she struts into the living room, triumphantly wearing her wedding ensemble. As requested, Rose snaps a shot of Blanche in the bright-red number—and then takes another one as Blanche walks away, unaware that she’s burst through the gown’s back zipper.
Blanche, triumphant in her red wedding dress.
After Cheers did its karaoke episode, John Neretti brought Dorothy to this medieval-themed restaurant.
COMMENTARY: Never mind her mother’s meddling—doesn’t Dorothy notice that now her father is interloping on her date? If the medieval restaurant waiter Don the Fool looks familiar, it’s because he’s played by Sid Melton, who had already been established as Sal Petrillo, Dorothy’s dad. As the show’s then-script coordinator Robert Spina explains, “Witt/Thomas was very much like a family. Everyone on the show used to call Sid Melton ‘Uncle Sid,’ because Tony Thomas did. So The Golden Girls producers went out of their way, at least once a season, to work Sid into an episode.”
MARC CHERRY: Jamie and I had come up with the idea that it would turn out to have been Sophia’s fault that Dorothy got stood up for the prom. But the script had some problems. First, we’d written that for their first date, John would take Dorothy to a place with a karaoke machine. It would be while they were onstage together that Dorothy would find out that Sophia had been the cause of her heartbreak regarding the prom—and so she would end up being really pissed off while she and John were singing. But right after we handed in our script, Cheers did a karaoke episode. And as I suspected might happen, Marc Sotkin said we’d have to change ours.
MARC SOTKIN: One of the thrills of working on The Golden Girls was getting to work with people you grew up watching. Cesar Romero. Debbie Reynolds. George Burns on Golden Palace. I was a big Barney Miller fan, and so it was great getting to work with Hal Linden. He was a great guest star, and just as importantly, it was a relatively easy week on the set because Bea was happy; she was kissing Hal Linden.
Dorothy and John Neretti (Hal Linden) deal with an overzealous and yet strangely familiar waiter (Sid Melton).
Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD. Photos by ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/ABC via GETTY IMAGES.
EPISODE 152
HENNY PENNY—STRAIGHT, NO CHASER
Written by: TOM WHEDON Directed by: JUDY PIOLI Original airdate: MAY 4, 1991
As Dorothy stages a grade school production of Henny Penny as part of a program to encourage kids to read, the Girls become last-minute replacements for kiddie cast members quarantined with measles. Where can we find an adult, Dorothy’s director Frank Nann (George Hearn) wonders, with the childlike innocence to play the title role? Enter Rose Nylund; and soon Blanche is (type)cast as Goosey Loosey, Dorothy becomes Turkey Lurkey, and Nann himself essays the villainous role of Foxy Loxy. Perhaps a public appearance like this is just what Blanche needs—because, due to a malicious ex who works for the newspaper, an erroneous obit has convinced Miami that she died—at the advanced age of sixty-eight, no less.
COMMENTARY: Theater lovers take notice: Foxy Loxy’s meat-eating grin might look familiar—and so might all the feathery costumes. George Hearn played the butchering barber Sweeney Todd on Broadway in 1979–80, and originated the role of Albin in the original 1983 production of La Cage aux Folles.
This episode is also notable for a behind-the-scenes fact: for this series about four females this episode was one of only two to have been directed by a woman. Multihyphenate Judy Pioli had started her career as an improv performer and actress, and then became a writer/producer for such comedies as Laverne & Shirley and Charles in Charge before moving on to directing. Judy’s former Laverne & Shirley colleague Marc Sotkin, now the Golden Girls showrunner, recommended her for the job of helming this 1991 episode—a noteworthy gig, considering that even now, nearly thirty years later, female sitcom directors are still rare birds.
TOM WHEDON: I had worked on another Witt/Thomas show, It’s a Living, and in 1987 I’d written an episode where one of the waitresses on the show, Dot, was directing a production of Little Red Riding Hood—and when her cast of kids got sick, all her adult coworkers had to step in and perform. The Golden Girls producers wanted a musical episode. Because I’d done the musical episode on It’s a Living, they asked me to do it.
The difficulty in doing tha
t is that you don’t want to repeat yourself, and so I had to figure out how to do the Golden Girls musical in a new way. I chose Henny Penny as the theme for the musical within the episode because I figured out that you could tell that whole story as songs. And the songs in the Henny Penny show that the Girls perform are original, for which I wrote the lyrics.
PHILIP JAYSON LASKER: I thought it was wonderful that we could do something like this. The Golden Girls was really flexible in terms of what it could hold. You could get serious and deal with real issues, or you could have Rue McClanahan in a chicken suit. Not many comedies could accommodate all of that. That’s one of the things that made the show fun for the writers.
The Girls put on a play, with Dorothy’s director friend Frank Nann (George Hearn) as Foxy Loxy.
Photo by ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/ABC via GETTY IMAGES.
JUDY PIOLI ASKINS: When I give notes to an actor, I typically walk up and whisper in his or her ear, “Why don’t we try this?” On my first day, I noticed there was a little bit of business that Bea did one way in rehearsal, and then differently later in the run-through. I walked up to her and said softly, “Bea, I think the reason it didn’t work as well that time was . . .” Well, as soon as I’d gotten three words out, Bea said, “You’ve got to speak up. I can’t hear you!” I learned there didn’t need to be any whispering on that set, which made things so much easier. And Bea and I really connected, because I’m six feet tall. We admired each other’s clothing, and compared notes: where did you get those shoes?