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50 Fun Facts About The Golden Girls: A Celebration of Friendship and Feminine Power

Melissa Roth: Weirding Wayne Media  

Amy Englehardt [Singing]: 80s TV Ladies, So sexy and so pretty. 80s TV Ladies, Steppin’ out into the city. 80s TV Ladies, often treated kind of sh-[wolf whistle]. Working hard for the money in a man’s world. 80s TV Ladies!

Melissa Roth: Welcome to 80s TV Ladies, where we thank you for being a friend. And dear listeners, here are your hosts, Susan Lambert Hatem and Sharon Johnson. Hello, I'm Susan.

Sharon Johnson: And I'm Sharon. In order to kick off this wonderful upcoming series of episodes looking at the incredible 80s TV lady show, The Golden Girls, we want to give you a little overview.

Susan Lambert Hatem: A little primer, or primer if you will.

Sharon Johnson: There's so much to say about Golden Girls and we have so many great guests coming on. So why don't we start with a few fun facts, if you will.

Susan Lambert Hatem: How many fun facts do you think we need, Sharon?

Sharon Johnson: Well, I mean, I don't know. What do you think?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, I was thinking like 50.

Sharon Johnson: 50, that's a lot. But this show is a lot, so that works for me.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Do you think we can do it? I think we can do it because it also makes for a nice alliteration. 50 fun facts about the ‘Folden Furls.’ I mean, The Golden Girls, obviously, but that's a lot. And we can do it.

Sharon Johnson: Absolutely. Let's do it.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Let's do it. Okay, we're going to do the top 10 show facts, just like general show facts. All right, Sharon, you start.

Sharon Johnson: Well, The Golden Girls is created by Susan Harris, a mentee of Norman Lear, who started writing scripts for All in the Family, the Partridge Family and Maude.

Susan Lambert Hatem: She would go on to create 13 TV shows between 1975 and 1998, including Soap, Empty Nest, Nurses, It Takes Two, and of course The Golden Girls.

Sharon Johnson: The Golden Girls ran on NBC from September 14, 1985, which was almost exactly-- What is that,?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Forty years ago.  

Sharon Johnson: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I couldn't do the math there for a second. I know to May 9, 1982. 180 half-hour episodes.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Made four decades ago. All right, fact four. It starred Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty as four older, and by older we mean three of them were in their – gasp -- 50s who were living together in sin. Okay, that's not really true. That's not a fact. In Miami, Florida, because they were widowed and divorced and needed to save money.

Sharon Johnson: Bea Arthur played Dorothy Zbornak, the sarcastic, sharp witted divorcee and substitute teacher.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Betty White played the naive widow Rose Nyland, who told stories of her hometown of St. Olaf, Minnesota.

Sharon Johnson: Rue McClanahan played Blanche Devereaux, the provocative Southern belle.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And Estelle Getty played Sophia Petrillo. Also a widower. She was also a widower.

Sharon Johnson: Also a widow.

Susan Lambert Hatem: A widow. Not a widower?

Sharon Johnson: Correct. Men are widowers.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Men or widowers. And women are black widows. Interesting. Okay, that's interesting. Widow and widower. Oh, I've learned something. Also a widow. And Dorothy's mom. Originally, she's from Italy and then Brooklyn, New York and ended up in Miami.

Sharon Johnson: Fun fact number five. The production companies were Witt, Thomas, Harris Productions and Touchstone Television, a spinoff brand from the Walt Disney Network Television. And The Golden Girls was the first TV show under that brand.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That was something I learned.

Sharon Johnson: I actually knew that having worked at ABC. But you know.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, because you know things. Fun fact number six. Witt, Thomas, Harris was the movie and TV production company of Paul Younger Witt, Tony Thomas and Susan Harris. They also produced shows that did not involve Susan Harris, and then it would be called Witt Thomas Productions. Those shows included It's a Living, The Practice, Beauty and the Beast, Blossom and even The Office.

Sharon Johnson: And as a side note, they also produced one of Susan's. Our Susan, not Susan Harris. Susan's favorite TV movies, Brian Song from 1971.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That was like kind of the first TV movie that broke my heart.

Sharon Johnson: Oh, it broke everyone's heart. It's for those. It starred, Billy Dee Williams and from, the Godfather-- Heaven help me. What's his name? I can see his—

Melissa Roth: James Caan.

Sharon Johnson: Thank you!

Susan Lambert Hatem: As Brian Piccolo. Billy Dee Williams, Gail Sayers. Great, great book, great TV movie. That one broke my heart.  

Melissa Roth: Oh, it was a beauty.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: It was fantastic. 1971. Go look it up, kids. All right. Fun fact number seven. Witt and Thomas met each other in 1973 when Paul Younger Witt went to work for Danny Thomas Productions. And turns out that Tony Thomas was the son of actor and comedian Danny Thomas, who had his own production company.

Sharon Johnson: Number eight. When Tony Thomas and Paul Younger Witt formed their own production company, Susan Harris was their first hire and ultimately a partner.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And then guess what?

Sharon Johnson: What?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Paul Younger Witt and Susan Harris got married later. They fell in love and got married. I love a love story. Is it me? Okay, fact number nine. The idea for The Golden Girls came to Brandon Tartikoff from a TV special promotional preview show, which they did back in the 80s. They were always so fun cause they were all-star-- This was called the 1984 NBC All Star Hour. And they were used to introduce the new shows and the new casts. And Selma Diamond from Night Court and Doris Roberts from Remington Steele were introducing the stars of a new show that Selma thought was called ‘Miami Nice.’ And she's like, oh, it's about cha-cha lessons and mink coats and sitting on the beach. And then Doris Roberts has to tell her, no, no, it's not ‘Miami Nice.’ It's Miami Vice. And then she introduced the world to Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas. I thought that was great. We have a link for that little YouTube clip in there. But it sort of stuck in your head, as you do when you're, like, a head of a TV network and you coming up with things you want, that it might be a funny idea for a show.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah. You never know where a good idea is going to come from. And to their credit, NBC followed up on it. And the rest, as they say, is history. Fun fact number 10. Everybody wins. The Golden Girls is one of only four sitcoms in history where all four of the main cast members won an Emmy award. The others were All in the Family-- Carol O'Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner, and Sally Struthers all won Emmys. Will & Grace -- Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally all won Emmys. And Schitt's Creek-- Eugene Levy, Catherine O' Hara, Dan Levy, and Annie Murphy all won Emmys.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I am so glad you took all those names for me, Sharon. That's like taking a bullet for me. I really appreciate that because my words don't always work, But I didn't know that either. That was a good, fun fact to discover in research.

Sharon Johnson: Same. I had no idea that it was only just these shows where something like that had happened.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, and yet it also felt like a lot of shows.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah, actually. Yeah, it does, but, yeah, it's so very interesting. So.

Susan Lambert Hatem: All right, so that's our general. Now we got 10 cast and character facts I'm calling them. Now we gotta do 11 to 20.

Sharon Johnson: There you go.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Go.

Sharon Johnson: Bea Arthur was reluctant. Bea Arthur hesitated about taking the role of Dorothy. Her co -tar, Rue McClanahan, convinced her by saying, and I quote, why are you going to turn down the best script that's ever going to come across your desk as long as you live? That's what friends are for, people.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's what friends are for. And, and everybody talks about how great that pilot script was by Susan Harris. And, you know, she had already starred in Maude. I mean, she didn't have to do this show. So in some ways there was of like, you know, if you do another show after you've done a show like Maude, there's a chance it won't work, right? And so then you're sort of like, well, why would I just get a little egg on my face? But thank God she was willing to take that. Also, there was a role reversal. Betty White was originally cast as the lusty Southern belle Blanche, and Rue McClanahan was cast as the naive Rose. They switch roles, and I've heard both that they decided to do that, and also that Jay Sandrich was part of that conversation. So, because they were sort of. That was sort of typecast of their previous roles, where White played the man hungry Sue Ann Nivens on Mary Tyler Moore, and McClanahan had played Maude's best friend, Vivian Harmon, who was naive. So I think that ended up being a pretty spectacular switch.

Sharon Johnson: And it's one of those little, seemingly small things that happens with casting in shows that makes, you know, that ultimately makes the show work and makes it into something like a lasting hit like The Golden Girls. It's not clear. We'll never know. But it's not clear that if they had stayed in the original roles as they were cast, whether or not the show would have worked. Who knows?

Susan Lambert Hatem: It's all that chemistry and the mix of those ‘chemistals.’ I was trying not to say chemicals and people. All right, whatever. It's fine. It's fine. And then, you know, the ages were a little bit funny. We like to think that age is just a number, but it turns out that Estelle Getty, who played the oldest character, she played Sophia, who was supposed to be 80. She was a year younger in real life than Bea Arthur, who played her daughter. And the oldest actress for the show was Betty White. I thought that that always surprises me.

Sharon Johnson: Same, especially the Estelle Getty. When I learned that that was. That was. That was really a surprise.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, that does bring us to fun fact number four of the second round of ten. It took makeup artists almost three hours to transform Estelle Getty into the elderly Sophia. And between season one and two, Getty went and had a facelift because in her real life, she wanted to be like, hey, I'm cool. I can do other things, too. And so it became even harder because she looked younger when she came back to the show.

Sharon Johnson: Clearly, though, she didn't care about how much time she had to spend in the makeup chair. Our next fun fact is that Betty White and Rue McClanahan were close friends in real life, having worked together on Mama's Family previously. They would often pass the time on the set playing word games.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: Which is so cute.  

Sharon Johnson: I know. I love that.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I love that. You know, and it does feel like they were professional friends. I do think that because I don't think you can carry a show that long in a sitcom format, like in, you know, an hour drama. You can be like, I'm not going to be here for this. If you, if, if the leads are fighting, the production can force themselves to work around it if they have to. But I think that's much harder in a sitcom. But it did turn out that Bea Arthur and Betty White famously had a more strained relationship. They weren't quite the same kind of friends. They had very different working styles. And, White has been quoted as saying that Bea Arthur was not that fond of me, unquote.

Sharon Johnson: Shows the level of their talent and professionalism that you really couldn't tell in watching. And you still can't tell in watching the show.

Susan Lambert Hatem: No, you can't.

Sharon Johnson: Good on both of them. Our next fun fact, number seven in this group. Rue McClanahan loved Blanche's extravagant wardrobe so much that she had a clause in her contract that allowed her to keep all of her character’s custom-made clothing. Good for her.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I know.

Sharon Johnson: You know, I'd imagine most people don't realize it. Most of the time the actors don't get to take the clothes home at the end of the day. You know, it belongs to the production. So good for her.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yes. Fun fact number eight in this group about the cast. Despite years of being an award-winning Broadway and off-Broadway actress, Estelle Getty, when she was playing Sophia, suffered extreme stage fright. You can't really tell on the show. I think it's pretty amazing. But she would apparently freeze and panic during recordings. She often relied on cue cards. In later seasons, it did come out that Estelle Getty later suffered from dementia, which probably contributed to some of that difficulty. Even though she wasn't that old, that may have been beginning to cause issues for memorization.

Sharon Johnson: It's lovely that the production was able to find ways to work around that for her to allow her to continue in the role and continue performing as spectacularly as she did throughout the series. I didn't know about that either until, you know, we really started looking into this. And I say good on her, good on them. So, yeah. So on a little bit lighter, side, despite the frequent cheesecake eating scenes, Bea Arthur disliked cheesecake in real life.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That would be hard.

Sharon Johnson: Well, you know, maybe she was glad that the dessert that they were, the ladies were sitting around the table eating in these scenes was not something she was fond of. So she didn't have to worry about sitting there and eating lots of cheesecake because she really loved it for however long it took for them to make their way through those scenes or just having it around too much. I know for me having it nearby, something I really love. Oh, my goodness.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. You wouldn't stop. You'd be like, bring on some more cheesecakes. Yeah. And so I was, you know, as I'm relooking at this show and we're start. I'm sort of in season one right now. I was watching the evolution of the little kitchen table. And for the most part there's almost always only three chairs around the little table, even though four women lived in the house. Every once in a while there'll be a fourth. I think earlier on they tried to get all four, but it's both for camera because it's just easier to shoot. And then Bea Arthur almost always sits in the center chair. And that's I think for sort of the symmetry of she's so very tall and, and the others aren't as tall. But also, it's so you can really see all of her expressions when she's basically making some takes to camera sometimes. But it's good, it's part of the comedy.

Sharon Johnson: All right, so now we're off to 10 production facts.

Susan Lambert Hatem: We've done 20. That's 20 facts.

Sharon Johnson: That's right. So these, these will be facts 21 to 30 as we go through these. So let's start with the pilot. The pilot was called The Engagement and in it the Sofia monologue that started with her saying ‘picture it’ was a late addition to the pilot script added after the writers realized the character was a hit with the audience. They reshot and edited the pilot a lot to cut out Coco the gay housekeeper cook and bring Sophia forward.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, and I remember those ‘picture it’ monologues.

Sharon Johnson: Oh yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: ‘Picture it. Sicily.’ Those became a real staple, a real staple of the show. They really became one of her signature bits. And speaking of Coco the gay cook who acted sort of as their housekeeper, the character was dropped from the pilot really as much as they could. And then from the series because Estelle Getty’s Sophia popped so much that they were like, oh no, she's moving in with them. She's going to be the fourth. And she was intended to be a recurring character. Coco was played by the actor Charles Levin, who played a lot of 80s and, 90s, and onward.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah. And it's not something that's unusual that happened then and today where something happened during the pilot that went better or worse than they expected. And they made some adjustments and some changes. And it's just a normal part of the process.

Susan Lambert Hatem: In the Jon Cryer episode, they talked about the pilot for Two and a Half Men and how it was Blythe Danner.

Sharon Johnson: Yes.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And then they were like, it doesn't work. She's not mean enough. So they got Holland Taylor, who plays an excellent mean. And is not mean either in real life.

Sharon Johnson: That's why she's such a great actress.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I know. She's amazing. Oh, is it me?

Sharon Johnson: Yes.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Okay. Number three of this series. The iconic house used for the show exterior shots is not in Miami, Florida. It's a real house located in Brentwood, which is a neighborhood of Los Angeles. And then later, they rebuilt the house facade in what was then at the time, the Disney World MGM Studios, and became Hollywood Studios in Florida.

Sharon Johnson: I wonder if. I don't know if they ever used that for production. I would imagine not, because it was in Florida.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, you think they just built that facade for people to go, oh, look, it's The Golden Girls.

Sharon Johnson: Probably, because they really didn't shoot anything for the show outside. It was all shot on a stage.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, but they may have shot it for the exterior. Just that little exterior shot.

Sharon Johnson: Where they show you the house.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. No, you always kind of almost always see them just coming in the front door. They're always on set.

Sharon Johnson: Right. Or through the kitchen door, through the lanai or something.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And the lanai moves around.

Sharon Johnson: Well, nobody's supposed to notice that.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: I noticed that, and-- All right, your turn.

Sharon Johnson: Number four in this section where we're talking about production facts is that there's no real St. Olaf. Rose's hometown of St. Olaf, Minnesota, is entirely fictional.

Susan Lambert Hatem: But I love all those stories. And we got a great. We got a. Speaking of stories, we got a great story from when we interviewed Stan Zimmerman back a season ago. And, we're going to have him coming back and to talk about the origin of St Olaf. Cause he was there.

Sharon Johnson: Yes, he was there for the first season. So he has lots and lots of great stuff to share. So look forward to that.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So during the run of the show, both Betty White and Bea Arthur lost their mothers. In that first season, actually, but continued with filming. It didn't really interrupt filming, which is weird because you would probably interrupt filming now. That was just sort of the time. you couldn't have anything, interrupt your work, even personal tragedy.

Sharon Johnson: You don't think even now that they would?

Susan Lambert Hatem: I think now they would.

Sharon Johnson: Really? Okay. Because I don't know, I guess I'm just thinking about me in some ways. Obviously everybody's different. Having something to focus on would be helpful for me, dealing with the grief. But everybody's different and I mean, they're doing a comedy.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Right. Well, I think it's both. I think that certainly the schedules get moved around when someone dies during production. but I think sometimes there's in, in, in the industry, particularly those that come for theater, there's so much of a show must go on kind of mentality, which has, I think, rightfully lessened a little bit. And people understand like, hey, if you're sick, don't come in. Hey, if you're having an emotional time, take care of yourself first and then do the work. Because we all need to have that time.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah. I'd like to think it's an option that people have so that if somebody's like, no, no, I'm good. I don't want to. It's okay. I don't want to hold up production. And they want to go forward, you go forward. But if somebody says, yeah, I need a little bit of time. And that's also okay. You know, I'd like to think that there's some more humanity, in that way, which there isn't enough of even to this day. Even though there's a little bit more.

Susan Lambert Hatem: True that. All right, next.

Sharon Johnson: So the next fun fact in this section, there were over 100 cheesecakes consumed by the cast during the show's seven year run. Many of them were sent to the set by bakeries around the country. And I'd like to think that everyone, except for maybe Bea Arthur, enjoyed them.

Susan Lambert Hatem:Iimmensely.  

Sharon Johnson: Yes.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Now here's the interesting thing. There were 180 episodes, so they did not consume cheesecake in every episode.

Sharon Johnson: This is true. This is very true. I don't know about you, but many of the cheesecake scenes were some of my all-time favorites.

Susan Lambert Hatem: They were because they were usually the late-night conversations. Right. The like, hey, you know.

Sharon Johnson: That’s usually when we get the St. Olaf stories from--

Susan Lambert Hatem: That is true. That is true. The St. Olaf cheesecake stories. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the theme song for our seventh fact in our production facts. Thank You For Being a Friend was actually an existing song before it became the theme song for The Golden Girls. It was written and recorded in 1978 by Andrew Gold. And then the version that was used for the show was performed by Cynthia Fee. And someone who's from Golden Girls will come on and tell you about that later. Woo hoo.

Sharon Johnson: Look forward to that. Up next in production facts, the kitchen set on The Golden Girls was originally used on an earlier Witt, Thomas, Harris series called It Takes Two, which aired on ABC from 1982 to 1983.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And created by Susan Harris.

Sharon Johnson: Exactly.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Another Susan Harris show.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I just love the idea that they just sort of stored that set or maybe it was still up or something and just like, we'll do this is fine.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah. Depending on the timing. Maybe they realized that they had this set sitting there when they were making the pilot and they thought, what the heck, let's use this. Who knows? But that kind of tickles me.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. Okay, so The Golden Girls, they were a pioneer in covering controversial and serious issues including homelessness, menopause, sexual harassment, and especially LGBTQ representation, featuring episodes with gay and lesbian characters and talking about AIDS.

Sharon Johnson: Absolutely. There certainly were a lot more television shows tackling these kinds of issues, but The Golden Girls, being as popular as it was, certainly didn't have to. The fact that they chose to and put those stories out there, I think I have to give them some credit for that.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Agreed, agreed.

Sharon Johnson: So the last production fun fact for Golden Girls is about the renowned director Jay Sandrich. He was known for The Mary Tyler Moore show, The Cosby Show and Soap. And he only directed two episodes of Golden Girls, the pilot and the backdoor pilot for Empty Nest. He also directed the pilot of A Different World.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Which we talked about.

Sharon Johnson: Yes. So needless to say, he was definitely a talented and seasoned 80s comedy series director.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Legendary.

Sharon Johnson: Yes, absolutely.

Susan Lambert Hatem: All right, our next group is talking about the legacy of Golden Girls. These are facts 31 through 40. Golden Girls is beloved by critics and writers. The Writers Guild of America placed it at number 69 on its recent list of the 101 best-written TV Series of All times. Variety put it on as number 18 in their top 100 television shows of all time. That was like 2019 or something. So it still is beloved.

Sharon Johnson: Oh, absolutely. And it's just as popular, if not more popular today than it was back then. It continues to live on in syndication and now streaming as a whole new audience is finding it.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It's crazy.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. Next up, a spinoff. The show had a short-lived spinoff called The Golden Palace, which aired after the original series finale. It followed Rose, Blanche and Sophia as they bought and managed a hotel.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It's not as loved as the original.

Sharon Johnson: No. And it certainly didn't last as long as. But I was very glad they tried to continue on because it was lovely for at least a little bit longer to spend some time with Rose and Blanche and Sophia after the end of The Golden Girls.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And then there was yet another spinoff. The 1988 show Empty Nest, starring Soap's Richard Mulligan, was a show about the next-door neighbors of The Golden Girls. And that's kind of a funny way to spin off a show, I think. That show started as a backdoor pilot in the final episode of season two of The Golden Girls, they did an episode entitled Empty Nests, with an S, which guest starred Rita Moreno and Paul Dooley. It is arguably one of the least favorite episodes of The Golden Girls. And even Rita Moreno says it's not very good. She says the script wasn't right and Susan Harris was sick and it never got right.

Sharon Johnson: Oh, yeah, that's such a shame. One wonders what might have happened if Susan Harris had been able to write the script for the pilot. You just never know.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You never know. Again, it's that special chemistry. Everything has to line up.

Sharon Johnson: It's hard not to think that Rita Moreno and Paul Dooley would have made for a great pairing.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I would love that pairing.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah. Now, there were more than two spinoffs,  

Susan Lambert Hatem: Because yet another spinoff, Sharon.

Sharon Johnson: I know! We've kind of already mentioned, but it begs mentioning again. Because Empty Nest, once it did come on the air retooled, had its own network spinoff, Nurses, which launched in 1991 and ran for three seasons. And it starred Loni Anderson in the final season  

Susan Lambert Hatem: A fabulous 80s TV lady.  

Sharon Johnson: Absolutely.

Susan Lambert Hatem: May she rest in peace.

Sharon Johnson: Yes.

Susan Lambert Hatem: All right. So, yeah, that again, was news to me. I really didn't until we started looking at this. I think maybe at some point I might have known that Empty Nest was a spinoff of Golden Girls. I had no idea that Nurses was at least a spinoff of a spinoff of Golden Girls. And so I think that just is kind of cool. This show, Golden Girls, was a global phenomenon. This is fact number five in this series. There were 10 international remakes of The Golden Girls for countries like Chile, Israel, Greece, the Philippines, Spain, Russia, Turkey, and others. It sort of is a concept that got retooled and involved a lot of writers. Like Stan, I think, worked on one or two of those just to help them get started. So I think that's pretty amazing.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah, it really is. It clearly has some themes and characters that are international,  

Susan Lambert Hatem: Universal even.  

Sharon Johnson: Yes, that's the word I was desperately searching for because--

Susan Lambert Hatem: Throughout the known and unknown universe.

Sharon Johnson: Because frankly, people of all countries are all aging. And the challenges as you go from one stage of life to another, there's probably a lot of universality to that.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Universality. That's good. That's a hard one.

Sharon Johnson: So the next up in this section is Legacy. The show has inspired countless drag shows, including Golden Girls Live, an illegally produced off-Broadway show in 2003, and two puppet shows. There was also an animated pilot set in the Future. Golden Girls 3033.

Susan Lambert Hatem: How insane. I feel like I have to track that down.  

Sharon JohnsonI know.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: I had no idea of that one.

Sharon Johnson: I do hope the internet will be our friend in this case and that somewhere it can be found, at least so that we can get a glimpse of it.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And then fact seven of the Legacy. There are also countless books, including a brand-new Golden Girls murder mystery series, Murder by Cheesecake. A Golden Girl Girls cozy mystery. There's going to be a series that's insane that just came out.

Sharon Johnson: Oh, my gosh. Wow. Are they trying to take over from where Jessica Fletcher left off?

Susan Lambert Hatem: It's kind of a Jessica Fletcher kind of thing, from what I understand, This is Disney basically, churning The Golden Girls love into any aspect of the world that they can.

Sharon Johnson: Well, there's a lot of love out there, so I guess. But that's very, very interesting. Next up in this section, as discussed in one of our episodes last season, The Facts of Life was moved to Saturday night to help launch The Golden Girls. And that turned out to be a very successful move. Top ratings hit for NBC. It was a top ten show for the first six seasons. Talking about Golden Girls here. And the series finale of Golden Girls was watched by 27.2 million viewers. And as of 2016, it was the 17th most watched television finale.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Of all time.  

Sharon Johnson: Of all time. That's fantastic.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's pretty great. It is an award-winning show, which makes a lot of sense. The Golden Girls was nominated for 68 Emmys and won 11 of them.

Sharon Johnson: Well, it would have been nice to see them get a few more, but you know, you can't win them all.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It was a golden time, I would say. There's a lot going on in those, you know-- There was, Designing Women. There was Cagney and Lacey. There was a lot going on.

Sharon Johnson: Absolutely.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, I guess it wouldn't have been in the same category. Cagney and Lacey.

Sharon Johnson: So the last one, the last fun fact in this category, for the 40th anniversary of The Golden Girls, which again is September 18, 2025. It's 40 years ago that date when The Golden Girls first aired and Disney is celebrating. We'll have a link in the show notes for all of the things that Disney is planning for the 40th anniversary. But Disney also claims that The Golden Girls has had over 1 billion, that's billion with a B, hours streamed on Hulu and Disney+ of Golden Girls.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's a lot of Golden Girls.

Sharon Johnson: Absolutely.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's a lot of hours. ABC News is supposed to be doing a one-hour special this fall. Although I couldn't find anything. They announced it, but I haven't seen anything. But don't worry because there's Golden Girls themed, wine, pillows, toys and cheesecake candles coming from Disney.

Sharon Johnson: Just in time for your Christmas shopping.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's right. Golden Girls everywhere. We're down to the last ten, Sharon. And we're back.

Sharon Johnson: All, right. These are ten character facts.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yes. About the characters of The Golden Girls.

Sharon Johnson: Yes. So over the course of seven seasons, there are some discrepancies with time and the characters’ histories. But here are some character facts.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And we're saying facts with quotes.

Sharon Johnson: Correct. First up, Rose's children. Rose and her late husband Charlie had five children, daughters Kirsten, Bridget and Gunilla and sons Adam and Charlie Jr.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: And I think it's Gunilla.  

Sharon Johnson: Works for me.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: We're gonna say it is ‘til someone corrects us. All right. Blanche and her late husband George also had five children, daughters Janet and Rebecca, and sons Doug, Biff and Matthew, also nicknamed Skippy.

Sharon Johnson: Dorothy and her ex-husband Stan had two children, a daughter, Kate and a son, Michael.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Okay, now they never really nailed down a lot of ages in this show. In particular, Blanche was very secretive about her age, but a few episodes hinted that she was basically in her 50s for most of the show's run.

Sharon Johnson: I just assume they all were kind of about the same age.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I assume that too. I assume that too.

Sharon Johnson: Dorothy's ex-husband Stan was a recurring character and appeared in 26 episodes of the show. They were married for 38 years before their divorce.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So it was a long relationship. It's interesting that that's an ongoing kind of relationship because they have kids together, because he's getting remarried and there's all sorts of history between them. I thought that was kind of interesting since everyone else was a widow, not a widower. I learned a widow on the show that this was a more complex relationship. They all have sort of that one style relationship with their former husband. The other ladies. Dorothy's was an ongoing, evolving relationship, which is sort of always interesting to me as the child of divorce and someone who's married into a family, with stepkids. That's more interesting to me in some ways sometimes. And so I think that I find that interesting.

Sharon Johnson: And perhaps that was deliberate on the part of Susan Harris in creating the characters, because both Blanche and Rose had very successful, very loving marriages. Whereas because of the nature of the relationship between Dorothy and Stan, especially the fact that they got divorced after having married so long, there is more tension there. So they were able to use it in a way that they could not with Blanche and Rose's husbands.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. We're almost there. We're almost to the end. Woo hoo. Blanche's Southern accent, Rue McClanahan, apparently, like, that was not written in the script that she was that Southern and all that stuff. It sort of came out of that. It may have been a Rue McClanahan choice, it may have been a Jay Sandrich-Rue McClanahan choice, but it was not originally in the script that she was that Southern. And then, of course, over the course of the show, they really lean into it. So I thought that was interesting.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Then there's the Sicilian curse. Sophia famously put a quote unquote Sicilian curse on her neighbor, Mrs. Claxton, which led to a series of humorous missteps.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's a goofy Sophia episode in particular. But it's interesting because I know that both Sophia and Dorothy are supposed to be basically Italian American, and in real life, the actresses are Jewish. And, they both kind of felt like, why can't we just be Jewish on this show? But they were not. But I will say that one of the things I like about the show, and this is a fact, all their milkshakes brought the boys to the yard. Because during the course of the show, all of the ladies were sexually active, had romantic partners and, that included Rose and Sophia. Rose had several boyfriends, and the one that I liked the best was Miles Webber, played by Harold Gould.

Sharon Johnson: And for those of you that may not remember, he was Rhoda's father on the spinoff  Rhoda.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I had forgotten that. That's so funny. Yeah, I liked him, but I thought that was a wonderful, wonderful thing. And they didn't make a big deal about it. It was just a very natural part of their lives that they were, you know, having relationships. And I think that was great.

Sharon Johnson: Next up, clip-on earrings. Bea Arthur did not have pierced ears. So Dorothy's iconic statement earrings were all clip-ons. I did not know that, but I think it's something that my mother would have appreciated because to this day she only wears clip-on earrings.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I do not have pierced ears.  

Melissa Roth: Me either.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. Do you?  

Melissa Roth: Always clip-ons,

Susan Lambert Hatem: Sailor? Do you have pierced ears? You do? Oh yeah. Do you have pierced other things? Oh, you have a couple pierced ears. Okay. A couple pierced earrings, a couple piercings, piercings. I got there. Yeah, I, did not get my ears pierced in the 80s when it was very cool to do that because my mom said I had to wait ‘til I was 16. And by the time I was 16 I was like, I don't want to do that. That seems like a waste of time and money. And then I had a boyfriend who I dated for several years and he gave me a Christmas present that was in a little box. And I was like, oh, this is interesting. And then I opened the little box and inside was basically a jewelry box. A small jewelry box looked like the size of a ring box. And I was like, oh, no. We would have talked about this if he was gonna play this card. ‘Cause the answer would have been very unclear. And then it turns out that they were earrings, they were diamond earrings. It was not a ring, which is what I was concerned it was in the moment that he gave me a gift. And I'm like, I'm literally opening them and looking at them going, oh my gosh, this is a beautiful gift. Diamond earrings at the time, very expensive gift. But I'm also thinking I don't have pierced ears. And we have been dating for four years. A lot going on in that. So by the end of that conversation that followed, I felt so bad that I'd made him feel bad that I got my ears pierced.

Sharon Johnson: Oh.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So I could wear them. I no longer have pierced ears, nor those earrings, nor that person.

Sharon Johnson: Well, you gotta finish the story. What happened to the earrings? Did you. Why did you let the holes close up?

Susan Lambert Hatem: I think the earrings are somewhere. I think I probably kept the earrings, but I did let my ears go back to normal.

Sharon Johnson: How interesting.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah, just over time I was like, I just don't wear earrings, I don't wear jewelry. It is very unusual for me to wear jewelry. I don't like it. I don't know, it's weird. It's just like. But you know, my skin is very sensitive, very sensitive person.

Sharon Johnson: I don't like to wear rings. I, I, I just, I have a couple, but I never wear them. But I've had pierced earrings since I was 14 or 15. We were stationed in Japan. My mother took me to the dispensary where they numbed my earlobes and then put this little plastic thing, thing through the ear to make the hole. Because the idea for me, I don't remember the thing around it, but I know there was this whole thing about you get a potato and numb it with some ice and all this. I'm like, no, because I to this day hate anything needle related. And I'm still amazed that I allowed myself to be jabbed to get. But yeah, I don't remember exactly how old I was, but I was 14, 15. And as I think about it, I'm thinking that's kind of unlike my mother to have been okay with me doing that, getting my ears pierced.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It was kind of a thing. It was kind of a thing, like more so than it is now. Although again, Dashiell just went and got his ears pierced with his girlfriend. So that's kind of a thing. It was really sweet.

Sharon Johnson: Did he get both?

Susan Lambert Hatem: He got both.

Sharon Johnson: Ah, okay.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. and I was like, not sure how I was going to feel about it, but I'm like, okay. He can, he can pull off a lot of things and he can definitely pull it off. So, but yeah, and like I have any say. He's 18. But I think he likes that. I like them and I do.

Sharon Johnson: Oh good.

Susan Lambert Hatem: but it is so weird. Earrings are, earrings are weird to me. Well, all jewelry is somewhat weird. And it's interesting that we have had jewelry for forever. Right? As long as there have been humans, there has been jewelry. Now part of that is it's the thing that survives. Right? It can survive over thousands of years if it's hard. And you know, metal and diamonds. But I think about the stuff that ends up in museums.

Sharon Johnson: Oh yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And when we were at the British Museum, they had their sort of money exhibit going on and that was pretty amazing. But kind of going through the rest of the exhibits, so much of it is jewelry and crowns and you're like, wow, people really spend a lot of time with that.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah, the shiny adornment has clearly been a part of human history for a very, very, very long time. Obviously, mostly, for the wealthy.

Susan Lambert Hatem:  To show off your wealth.  

Sharon Johnson: Right, exactly. And over time has become more-- Is egalitarian the right word? I mean, more people are able to afford to adorn themselves in whatever manner they choose, with gold and all sorts of other precious metals and gems. But, yeah, I guess people,  humans to some degree or another have always wanted to, to adorn themselves with pretty things.

Susan Lambert Hatem: A little peacock in us.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah. Well, you know, you look at the birds and you go, well, they look kind of fun with their feathers. How come I can't have that?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Put some feathers on.  

Sharon Johnson: That's right.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, and then you're like, okay. And then that's the stuff. The sort of more metal and stone. And, and gem is the stuff that lasts. Right? You know, the feathers, if they didn't get fossilized, were gone.

Sharon Johnson: Right.

Susan Lambert Hatem: The other adornments aren't as prominent, but may have been at the time. Anyway, that was sort of something I was thinking about when we were talking about the earrings. Complete off-campus thought. Because we're at our last fact. This is number 50. You'll see that there are three there because I didn't know which one I wanted to use as the last fact. So I did 3.

Sharon Johnson: Okay.

Susan Lambert Hatem: The Rose character once claimed to have given 50 young men and one very confused PE teacher mono at a Founders Day fair by kissing them. Right.\? Isn't that the. Isn't that the thing? I think a kissing booth, yeah. which I just thought was a very Rose kind of thing. But she. Rose also had two teddy bears that she named Fernando and Mr. Longfellow. And those are from episodes in season one and season three. Blind Ambitions and Old Friends. I just thought that was weird. And also in the flashback of how they met, she has a cat that she gives away in a store to a little boy. So those are Rose facts.

Sharon Johnson: Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Anyway, so we did 50. 50 fun fast facts about The Golden Girls.

Sharon Johnson: We hope you enjoyed them as much as we have enjoyed looking back at all of those. That was a lot of fun.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It was super fun. All right. As we start down our path with everybody that we're about to talk to, and I was gonna see if you had any favorite episodes of season one.

Sharon Johnson: Well, first of all, I think the pilot is a really great episode. You get all four of our lead characters coming out basically fully formed. You have the little bit of information that you need to understand why they're all there. And the story itself was also, I thought, terrific. So it's a terrific pilot.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And it totally holds up. Yeah, it totally holds up. Yeah. The Engagement, Season 1 Episode 1. I also like Season 1, Episode 8, The Break In, which is that they come back and there's been a break in at the house. And so they all are responding to that and getting scared. Rose in particular gets the most scared. They talk a little bit about guns because Rose wants to get a gun and goes and gets a gun. But apparently also in the middle they also go and get a dog, but they don't talk about that. They're having a whole scene. This totally threw me, this whole scene. And then they start walking to the kitchen and a dog starts barking off camera. And it turns out that they somehow got a dog to protect them and kept it in the kitchen. And it hasn't been part of the scene until they just start walking towards the kitchen and the dog is too scary and they're all afraid of the dog. And then, they have to send the dog back to the pound, which made me sad. But also it's got this weird breakout scene. They never leave the sitcom world very much. It's all sets. It's mostly the, you know, it's mostly the house.

Sharon Johnson: Right.

Susan Lambert Hatem: But then they'll have other sets and stuff. But they have this scene where Rose is chased in a parking lot that's shot handheld in a parking lot. And it just was so out of character of the show, that it just stood out to me.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah, I don't remember that one specifically, but yeah, I guess it's probably part of the show kind of finding itself and what works and what doesn't for them. Which often happens in the first season. One of the ones that I really liked was also in season one and written by upcoming guest Stan Zimmerman, Adult Education, because of the sexual harassment theme there. And it's Blanche that's taking an adult education class and the teacher is basically saying, well, if you sleep with me without coming out, actually I think at one point he really does kind of come out and say it. Then I'll give you the grade you need. And Blanche, she was, I think on one level it was Blanche. And I was like, well, maybe Blanche would do it, but she does not.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And she tells him it's a lovely like one of those tell off moments that we want to cheer. And I also like that episode. And then I'm a fan of the. I think it's the last episode of season one, The Way We Met. It's flashback that tells the story of how the four women came together. What I love about it is it feels like, of course that's the story. By that point in the show, the show has successfully created the history of these women together in such a way that it is delightful to watch them come together. It definitely stood out for me.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah, it was done very well in terms of showing you where they started and making sense as to where they are now in the story as we know it. So, yeah, that was really well done.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Okay, so, listeners, tell us what your favorite episodes of season one are. You can start sending us the episodes you think we should give to the 90s TV Babies, because that's gonna be coming up a little down the line because we have a lot of people, awesome people to talk to. I can't wait. And, yeah, so. So it's time for audio-ography.

Sharon Johnson: Sounds like a plan. So for today's audio-ography, you can watch Golden Girls streaming online. It's currently on Hulu, Disney* or Philo, and it's available for sale on YouTube, Apple and more. And there are also some various channels, cable and otherwise, that show it regularly. But if you want to look for a particular episode, your best bet is one of the streaming, or as I always like to say, check your local library to see if they have the DVDs, because that way, if there's a specific episode that you wanted to go and rewatch or that you haven't watched before, that's a great way to try to find it.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And the DVDs are always gonna be the best quality sound and picture. I recommend the book Golden Girls, An Unauthorized look behind the Lanai by Jim Colucci. It's great.

Sharon Johnson: Well, fantastic. And, if you want to check out Maude, which we've mentioned, which Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan starred in before they work together again on The Golden Girls, you can find it currently free on Tubi and Pluto TV. Links will be in our description.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And I just want to, give a little moment for someone we lost in the podcast community on September 8th. A champion of indie podcast and an early adventurer in the space, Todd Cochran passed away suddenly. He started podcasting in 2004. Before that, he ran a web blog about tech. He was the founder of the Podcast Awards, the first award show that we submitted to and won. And he wrote, arguably, the first book on podcasting, because it came out in 2005. It was called Podcasting Do It Yourself Guide. There are several obituaries and articles out there about him, so we're linking some of them in our description. He was really great and welcoming to us. He was, I think, one of the first people who recognized us in our first time when we went to Podcast Movement Evolutions. We were at a booth and he was like, are you guys the 80s TV Ladies? And we're like, what? And he was so welcoming to us and I just want to give him a shout out.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah, he will absolutely be missed.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Okay. If you want to help us make more episodes, please go to patreon.com/80sTVladies.

Sharon Johnson: You can also support the show by hitting that follow, like, subscribe and rating wherever you listen or tell your 80s loving friends.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You know, there's a lot going on out there. If you want to get involved in your community, I highly recommend indivisible.org There are groups all over the country. Likely there's one near you. Please take a look.

Sharon Johnson: And don't forget your voice matters. It may not seem like it sometimes, but it absolutely does. You can call your representative and tell them what you think about what is happening. You can check out 5calls.org. They make it easy and fast to call your representatives even if you're not sure who they are. On our next episode. It's going to be such a delight.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I can't wait.

Sharon Johnson: When we covered The Facts of Life last season, we got to talk with the lovely Gloria Loring. That was so fun that we decided talking to the women behind some of our favorite theme songs is the way to go.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So in this next episode, we will be talking to none other than Cindy Fee, the voice of The Golden Girls. Yes, she's the singer behind the theme song, Thank You for Being a Friend.

Sharon Johnson: Travel down the road and back again.

Susan Lambert Hatem [Singing]: Your heart is true.  

Melissa Roth [Singing]: You're a pal and a confidant.

All [Singing]: And if you threw a party, invited everyone you knew. You would see the biggest gift would be from me.  

Sharon Johnson [Singing]: And the card attached would say.

All [Singing]: Thank you for being a friend.  

Susan Lambert Hatem [Singing]: Thank you for being a friend.  

Melissa Roth [Singing]: I wanna thank you.  

Susan Lambert Hatem [Singing]: Thank you for being a friend.

Sharon Johnson: As always, we hope 80s TV ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch, all of which will lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the 21st century.

Susan Lambert Hatem [Singing]: I wanna thank you, thank you for being a friend.

Amy Englehardt [Singing]: 80s TV Ladies, So sexy and so pretty. 80s TV Ladies, Steppin’ out into the city. 80s TV Ladies, often treated kind of sh-[wolf whistle]. Working hard for the money in a man’s world. 80s TV Ladies!

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