The Golden Girls had each other’s backs.
TV writer Stan Zimmerman — who talks about his time on historic sets in his new book, The Girls: From Golden to Gilmore — shares a look back at the environment behind-the-scenes of The Golden Girls, which aired from 1985 to 1992.
The show followed three over-50 women — Rose Nylund (Betty White), Blanche Devereaux (Rue McClanahan) and Dorothy Zbornak (Bea Arthur) — living in a Miami home with Dorothy’s mother Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty).
Zimmerman explained that behind the scenes, there were concerns about Getty struggling to remember her lines on filming days. Only a few people were aware that Getty was quietly living with early-onset dementia.
“It was thought that, ‘She’s going out every night to parties. If she would just stay home and learn her lines…’,” said Zimmerman, but the reality was much different.
“She was going to AIDS benefits, in a time when actors did not,” Zimmerman explains.
As far as filming, “You will see her mess up her lines, and obviously they’ll yell, ‘Cut!’ and then Betty White will start making jokes and go up to the audience, in the bleachers.”
The disruption was irritating to some, Zimmerman noted. “Bea Arthur didn’t like that, because she felt like you stayed in character… and I would get mad thinking that [Betty] was making fun of Estelle. I was very protective, like, ‘You don’t.’ So for years, I didn’t like them laughing at her.”
Getty retired from acting in 2001 due to her health, and she died in 2008 at 84 years old from Lewy body dementia.
Zimmerman admits that time has allowed him to see the situation differently. “Now, I kind of look at it like, ‘What if Betty was going up there to draw attention to herself to give Estelle the time to work on the lines and get through it?’ And it was the beginning of the relationship. I mean, I could see how years later, where it could get kind of annoying, but at that point, they were saying every word we wrote.”
Getty became a fierce advocate for people living with HIV/AIDS after her nephew’s AIDS diagnosis in the mid-80s. She cared for him until his death in 1992.
“I’ve been in show business all my life, and the majority of my friends are gay. I don’t deny that. A lot of my friends have died from AIDS,” she told the Ludington Daily News in 1989.