Learn who didn’t like cheesecake and who kept their costumes from the show!
The Golden Girls is one of the most beloved sitcoms of the ’80s. Starring Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty as a quartet of senior single women sharing a house in Miami, the popular show racked up 11 Emmys (including one for each of its four stars!). Running from 1985 to 1992, the beloved show was lauded for portraying mature women as funny and feisty, and its decision to center on female friendship rather than romantic relationships was highly influential.
Over the course of seven seasons, we came to feel like Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia were family. While the main cast has sadly all passed on (with Betty White, who died at age 99 in 2021, being the last to go) The Golden Girls has lived on in reruns and internet memes.
While it’s been almost 30 years since the show went off the air, we’re always game to spend some time reminiscing about our favorite Floridian crew. So let’s say “Thank you for being a friend,” and take a look back at some of the most fascinating and fun behind-the-scenes stories and facts about The Golden Girls.
Elaine Stritch auditioned for the show
Brash actress and Broadway legend Elaine Stritch was up for the part of Dorothy, but she lost out after she kept rewriting her own lines — and dropping F-bombs — during her rowdy audition. She hilariously recounted the story in one of her stage shows.
Bea Arthur was older than Estelle Getty
Bea Arthur, who who stood a statuesque 5′ 10″, wasn’t just taller than her onscreen mom, the 4’11” Estelle Getty; she was also older than her by three months. Yep, you read that right! While Bea Arthur was born on May 13, 1922, Estelle Getty was born on July 25, 1923.
The show’s makeup artists had to age Estelle Getty
To play her 80-year-old character, 63-year-old Getty wore a white wig and prosthetic wrinkles. In an interview with Joy Behar, Betty White revealed that Getty had a facelift between seasons one and two, which made her grandmother look even more difficult to pull off!
Rue McClanahan got to keep all her costumes
As the glamorous Southern belle Blanche Devereaux, Rue McClanahan had a truly fabulous ’80s wardrobe. The actress loved her costumes so much that she even had a clause in her contract that allowed her to keep all of Blanche’s custom-designed clothing, from the sequined dresses to the shoulder-padded blazers to the silk lingerie! McClanahan also had her own fashion line, called “A Touch of Rue,” in the ’90s.
Estelle Getty had stage fright
It’s hard to imagine any members of the Golden Girls cast getting stage fright, given how dynamic the four actresses were, but Estelle Getty admitted that she frequently struggled with jitters. Getty started out as a stage actress, and unlike her three co-stars, she wasn’t a TV veteran. As she recounted in an interview, “Every Friday night, when it was over I would say, ‘that wasn’t so bad’ and then the next Friday would come along and I’d be struck with terror. I fight everything.”
Bea Arthur and Betty White didn’t get along
While Dorothy frequently made fun of Rose on the show, it may not have been all for the cameras. Betty White and Bea Arthur were known to have a tense offscreen relationship. As Bea’s son, Matthew Saks, said in a Closer Weekly article, “My mom unknowingly carried the attitude that it was fun to have somebody to be angry at. It was almost like Betty became her nemesis, someone she could always roll her eyes about at work.” In an interview, Betty said, “She found me a pain in the neck sometimes.” It seems Bea couldn’t put up with Betty’s sunny disposition. As Betty noted, “Sometimes if I was happy, she’d be furious!”
The kitchen table had only three chairs
Although the four characters were roommates, there were always only three chairs at the kitchen table. Seems a bit inconvenient, doesn’t it? While having four chairs for four people makes sense in real life, it wouldn’t work for TV — the setup was an intentional choice meant to keep any of the actresses from having their back to the camera. The show’s assistant art director also said that having the fourth person pull up a stool or stand by the kitchen island was meant to draw viewers into the scene, creating the feeling of watching a play.
Betty White and Rue McClanahan were originally supposed to play each other’s characters
The Golden Girls is perfectly cast, but there was almost a very different version of the show. Initially, Betty White auditioned for the part of Blanche while Rue McClanahan auditioned for the part of Rose. Director Jay Sandrich felt that something was off and switched things around, having Betty audition for Rose and Rue audition for Blanche, and the rest is history.
They ate even more cheesecake than you thought
The four feisty ladies often unwound by eating some tasty cheesecake. Chef George Geary, who made all the cheesecakes for the show (and had to make seven cakes per episode in case of reshoots), says that nearly 100 episodes featured his sweet creations. He designed the cakes thoughtfully, recalling “we always wanted the cakes to look like something one of the girls had picked up from a local bakery.” Surprisingly, Bea Arthur was not a cheesecake fan and never took a bite. Want to make your own cheesecake to enjoy while you watch the show? Try whipping up cheesecake on a stick!
The show taught us a new word for a porch
Though it was already a popular term in Florida, The Golden Girls is known for introducing the word “lanai” — which means an enclosed sun porch — to a bigger audience. “Lanai” has its origins in Hawaiian culture, and while there are technically some differences between a lanai and other types of outdoor space, The Golden Girls made the term “lanai” popular enough to be interchangeable with “porches” and “decks.”
Blanche’s Southern accent was Rue McClanahan’s idea
It’s impossible to picture Blanche without her alluring Southern accent, but initially she wasn’t supposed to have one! While the character was always written as a Southern woman, McClanahan was told to tone down the accent she put on in her audition. In the first few episodes, she didn’t use as much of an accent, as she knew the director didn’t want it. When a new director came in, she was encouraged to use the accent, and so Blanche’s distinctive style of speaking became a staple of the show.
Queen Elizabeth was a big fan
It’s hard to picture the Queen of England kicking back and watching a sitcom, but she was actually a huge fan of The Golden Girls! She had the cast of the show perform live at the 1988 Royal Variety Performance in London (you can watch it here!). As Betty White recalled, “It was very exciting. The Queen was lovely. We were told not to address her unless we were addressed.”
