In a television landscape that’s now mostly crime procedurals and reality, it’s hard to imagine someone greenlighting a show about four (mostly) gray-haired women sharing a house in Miami, where conflict revolved around things like bowling teams and dance contests — but that’s what happened when NBC said yes to The Golden Girls. Created by Soap mastermind Susan Harris, the series was an instant hit when it debuted September 14, 1985, earning all four of its stars Emmys and reaching millions of viewers throughout its seven seasons.
Who Was Involved
The leads are arguably best known now for their Golden Girls characters, but most of them were major stars from the start. Bea Arthur (no-nonsense Dorothy) and Rue McClanahan (man-hungry Blanche) had shared the small screen on Maude, while Betty White (ditzy Rose) had appeared on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (among about a million other things). Estelle Getty (sharp Sophia), meanwhile, was mainly a theater actress who’d just made a Broadway splash in Torch Song Trilogy. The show also hosted superstars such as Burt Reynolds and Alex Trebek, playing themselves.
Why We Remember It
Its 180 episodes were and still are hilarious, but the stars became our no-holds-barred friends. “There were not people on television that looked like those ladies, and definitely not talking about what those four women talked about,” season 1 writer Stan Zimmerman exclusively tells Us Weekly. Even in the culturally conservative 1980s, the Girls spoke frankly about sexuality, HIV/AIDS, partner abuse and more. “[We] wanted the stories to come out of the characters and actually be subjects these women would be dealing with in their real life,” he explains.
Jim Colucci, author of Golden Girls Forever, credits the show’s success in part to that aforementioned hilarity. “There had seldom been a show on TV with such sharp comedic writing and performances,” he explains to Us. “It didn’t matter that it was about old ladies, and I was a teenage boy; it was way funnier than anything else on the air!”
Key Details
After 40 years, the sitcom’s behind-the-scenes lore is as well-known as its cheesecake worship. Getty was actually a year younger than TV daughter Arthur, and Arthur didn’t get along with White — so much so that she would often call White the c-word, Harris claimed recently. Colucci and Zimmerman attribute the friction to their working styles. “Bea liked to stay ‘on book’ [with her script] until the very last minute and stay focused throughout an episode’s taping,” Colucci tells Us. “Betty liked to memorize her lines in the beginning of the week and still have enough bandwidth to clown around with the audience between scenes.”
The Aftermath
In 1992, four months after the finale, everyone save Arthur returned for the sequel The Golden Palace, in which Blanche, Rose and Sophia became hoteliers. It checked out after 24 episodes — but the original is a syndication and streaming success. (Catch it on Hulu.) And over the years, the ladies have inspired just about everything: animation, theater, a restaurant, board games, international TV versions, cozy mysteries (Death on the Lanai is out in 2026), countless Etsy creators and even, uh, porn.
Neither Colucci nor Zimmerman think a modern reboot is in the cards, though. “Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty are iconic in those roles, too perfect to replace — and I’ll bet there’s barely an actress out there who would even dare try,” says Colucci. “Nor can I imagine most fans accepting anything with the Golden title with four new Girls, no matter how talented and preeminent they may be in today’s comedy world. The original show was just too perfect, a moment of magic that can never be recaptured.”
Adds Zimmerman: “We don’t need that! Let’s keep it the way it is.”
A New Perspective
Not everything Golden has remained so (the episode where the mud-masked ladies are mistaken as wearing Blackface, for one), but the classic has a particularly vocal fandom in the LGBTQIA+ community. Colucci credits its loving portrayal of a chosen family: “The prime ingredient in the recipe for the Girls’ success is simply love. Almost everyone can relate to the idea that oftentimes, we have a best friend or two or three who feels more like a sister than our actual biological relations, so we build surrogate families and hold them tight.”
Where Are They Now?
All gone, sadly. White, Arthur and McClanahan last reunited publicly in 2008 to accept TV Land’s Pop Culture Award; the ailing Getty would pass away five weeks later. White made it to age 99 in 2021! When her personal memorabilia was auctioned off soon after, the No. 1 item was her Golden Girls director’s chair, snapped up for $76,800. But who can put a price on the magic that they made?
