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MEMORIES:
Tasha remembers...This was like the classic, older version of the show Girlfriends that come on now. The Golden Girls was my ... More »
Posted on 03/03/08
PHOTOS:
CATCH PHRASE:
Cast:
Rose Nylund...Betty White
Blanche Devereaux...Rue McClanahan
Sophia Petrillo...Estelle Getty
Stanley Zbornak...Herb Edelman
Miles Webber (1989-92)...Harold Gould
Network:
Release History:
Some would like us to believe that life after fifty is lackluster. They obviously have not spent an evening with ‘The Golden Girls’.
Every Saturday night, ‘The Golden Girls’ took us to the Miami home of widowed southern belle Blanche Devereaux. To assist in her mortgage payments, she decides to open her doors to two boarders: Rose Nylund and Dorothy Zbornak. Dorothy’s mother, Sophia Petrillo, makes four when her retirement home, Shady Pines, mysteriously burns to the ground.
‘The Golden Girls’, which debuted on NBC in 1985, featured a cast of comedy queen legends. Years before coming together as TV roommates, Beatrice Arthur (Dorothy), Rue McClanahan (Blanche), Betty White (Rose) and Estelle Getty (Sophia) already had a number of sitcoms, film roles and theatre performances under their belts.
‘The Golden Girls’ revolved around these four single women who share a home while trying to harmonize their distinct personalities. Dorothy, a substitute teacher and mother of two, is the more straight-laced of the bunch that not only has to deal with living once again with her own mother, but is plagued by reoccurring and unwelcome visits from her ex-husband, Stanley. Blanche Devereaux is a widow who grew up privileged on a plantation in Georgia. Each episode featured a different man on Blanche’s arm, most bringing with them a host of problems for our southern belle. Rose Nylund is also recently widowed. Rose means well, but is often slowest of the quartet to pick up on just about everything. She often graces the girls with a story or two from her home town of St. Olaf, which we find is like no other place on earth. Last, but certainly not least in her eyes, is Sophia Petrillo. When Sophia’s retirement home mysteriously burns to the ground, Sophia checks herself out and into the Devereaux household. Although Sophia had suffered a stroke that leaves her unable to restrain herself from saying things one shouldn’t, she often shares her experiences with her housemates about growing up in Sicily. Sometimes, the stories were actually true.
During its seven year, 180 episode run, ‘The Golden Girls’ achieved consistently high ratings. The show also produced two spin offs, ‘Golden Palace’ which featured three of the four original cast members and “Empty Nest” which later cast Getty as a supporting character after “Golden Palace” went off the air after only one season.
‘The Golden Girls’ invited us to be a fifth member of this family of women dealing with the day to day issues we could all relate to. Whether it was dealing with a death of a loved one, the thrill of falling in love or a listening to Rose tell the story of St. Olaf’s Herring Circus, ‘The Golden Girls’ was a defining sitcom for its time and its success continues on the Lifetime Channel with reruns showing daily.
“The Golden Girls” theme song is a fond reminder for us that every episode contained the message that we should always be grateful for close friends. Traveling down the road and back again with our friends Dorothy, Blanche, Rose and Sophia made life in the 80’s a little more golden.
