It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since our favorite senior ladies went off the air in 1992. Here are a few fun facts about Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia that you probably missed (like did you notice how only three could sit at the table at one time?).
1
The “girls” consumed more than 100 cheesecakes on air during the show’s run…
2
… but Bea Arthur hated cheesecake in real life.
3
Betty White, 95, was the oldest cast member, yet she has outlived all three of her co-stars.
4
Blanche’s Southern accent was Rue McClanahan‘s idea—it wasn’t originally in the script.
5
The ladies’ kitchen table only had three seats. This was to avoid the awkwardness of one actress having her back to the camera.
6
The makeup team was not happy when Estelle Getty got a facelift between seasons one and two—they already had a tough time “aging” the then 63-year-old actress.
7
Getty wanted the characters to be Jewish. “She would have felt so much more comfortable than trying to be Italian, although it worked,” McClanahan revealed in an archived interview.
8
Before Golden Girls, Betty White was known for playing promiscuous roles (like Sue Ann on The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and producers originally cast her as Blanche. Not wanting to be typecast, she and McClanahan asked to switch roles.
9
Bea Arthur didn’t want to be on the show at first, claiming it was redundant for her and McClanahan to basically revive their roles from Maude.
10
McClanahan convinced Arthur to do the show by asking, “Why are you going to turn down the best script that’s ever going to come across your desk as long as you live?” (It also helped that McClanahan and White traded roles in the end.)
Although Bea Arthur’s character was the most straight-laced of the four women, Arthur was actually very eccentric, witty, and funny, McClanahan revealed in an interview with the Archive of American Television.
All of Dorothy’s dramatic earrings were clip-ons. Arthur, whose ears were not pierced, complained that they made her ears numb by the end of the day.
Estelle Getty was actually a year younger than her TV daughter.
Queen Elizabeth II loves The Golden Girls. The cast performed live for her at the Queen Mother’s request on Nov. 21, 1988.
Estelle Getty suffered from extreme stage fright, often freezing and forgetting her lines on camera. She saw herself as the least experienced of her co-stars and felt intimidated by that.
The actresses were nothing like their characters, according to McClanahan. “People ask me if I am like Blanche and my standard answer is: ‘Get serious! Look at the facts, Blanche is a man-crazy, glamorous, extremely sexy, successful-with-men Southern belle from Atlanta, Georgia—and I’m not from Atlanta!'”
McClanahan once said Bea Arthur wouldn’t go to lunch with her unless Betty White joined them.
Blanche was introduced as “Blanche Hollingsworth” in the pilot episode, but later says her full name is “Blanche Elizabeth Deveraux.” Writers corrected the issue by making Hollingsworth her maiden name.
The Girls were popular with actual teen girls, who would write fan letters asking if they could come live with them.
Rose’s Scandinavian dialect was a comedic device. Not one thing she says in “Norwegian” is authentic, though subtitles added to the humor of the gibberish.
White and McClanahan would kill time between takes by choosing a category and naming a word within that category for each letter of the alphabet.
