Golden Girls Forever

by Jim Colucci

  On tape night, the producers and director would give the actors notes and changes to the script at dinnertime, between the dress show, which we filmed, and the taping of the air show. I found Betty really cute how she handled the notes. She’d pull up a chair right in front of the producers’ table, and sit with her notebook and pencil in her lap. Once, when we were toward the end of the stage where we had the set for the theater, Betty came up and put her arm in mine, and said, “You poor thing! The week you come to direct, we’ve got chicken outfits and dance numbers!” So I asked her: “Betty, do you know what show I’ve been directing for two and a half seasons? Perfect Strangers!” And we just laughed, because that show had chicken suits every week—metaphorically, if not literally.

  RUE McCLANAHAN: There were about five episodes where we all dressed in costumes—this one, plus once we were cats, once we were nuns, once we were pregnant in a fantasy sequence, and once we were all dressed as male members of a country club. That was a real boon having Judy Evans as our costume designer; she was so artistic. I always got the producers to make me up a little photograph of each show with us in costume, and I put them up on the wall so that I’d have Betty and me in those getups, side by side. I just thought it was funny, both of us dressed as those things, like here I’m a goose and she’s Chicken Little. And I thought Bea looked amazing as Turkey Lurkey.

  SEASON 7

  EPISODE 156

  WHERE’S CHARLIE?

  Written by: GAIL PARENT & JIM VALLELY Directed by: LEX PASSARIS Original airdate: OCTOER 19, 1991

  Rose is initially thrilled to receive a ring—albeit of the non-engagement variety—from Miles to solidify their relationship. But after peering at the configuration of cantaloupe in a fruit salad in the fridge, the naïve St. Olafian becomes convinced it’s a sign: her late husband, Charlie, is apparently as disapproving of her commitment to Miles as he was of cubed melon. A naughty Sophia makes things way worse by pretending to channel Charlie’s spirit and ordering Rose to return the ring. To Sophia’s surprise, Rose does; and it’s up to Dorothy to force her meddling mother to confess to her particularly cruel joke—after all, Shady Pines, she informs her mother, is under new management: Germans—so that Rose and Miles can reconcile.

  Meanwhile, Blanche begins coaching her latest amour, Stevie, in softball; and in an homage to the 1988 film Bull Durham, she provides him with one of her black camisoles to wear under his uniform for inspiration. Unfortunately, the plan temporarily backfires, as, while on their date at the batting cages, Stevie alerts Blanche he’s been recruited by a team in Tokyo. Ultimately, the softball star opts to stay in the US of A with Blanche—while sporting a newfound look: a blue satin dress, heels, string of pearls, and matching earrings. Blanche breaks up with Stevie—not because of the drag, she insists, but because he had been prepared to leave her. But as she kicks him out the door, she admits the truth to her trusted Girls: “It was the dress.”

  Rue practices her swing with guest star Tim Thomerson (right).

  Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD.

  COMMENTARY: When sitcoms resort to ripping off the plots of recent hit movies, it’s often a sign that the show’s writers are running out of ideas. Take, for example, an ill-conceived episode of Alice during that show’s sixth season in 1981, where the three waitresses, inspired by the plot of 9 to 5, tie up their boss, Mel, in the storeroom of his eponymous diner.

  Because this episode pops up so late in the Girls run, it, too, might seem born of writerly desperation. But Blanche Devereaux—and more specifically, Rue McClanahan—makes it work. Guest star Tim Thomerson was an inspired casting choice; not only was he tall enough to step into Bull Durham star Tim Robbins’s baseball uniform, but he had also already shown an ability to play both hypermacho and effeminate, as the “transmute” character Gene/Jean on NBC’s short-lived 1977–78 space-travel spoof Quark.

  RUE McCLANAHAN: I liked doing this takeoff on Bull Durham, because I found the comedy in it very funny. They dressed me the way Susan Sarandon had been dressed in the movie, with her off-the-shoulder sweater. The problem is I had never been any good at softball. So all week, I practiced hitting with our stage manager Kent Zbornak—because I was going to have to tape this scene, and make it look like I hit what could be a home run. I was going to have to swing convincingly, and really whack that thing. And it turns out I did hit the damn thing, on the very first take. I didn’t hit it very hard; I think it would have been only a base hit. But that was a real victory for me.

  TIM THOMERSON: I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and say, “Hey man, were you that guy in the dress on The Golden Girls?” And I think that’s pretty cool, because it was a really funny episode.

  Most baseball players are typically macho guys, so I thought that when this guy Stevie puts the dress on, it would be that much funnier if he still keeps that straight guy manliness, swaggering his way through the door. He’s still walking like he’s in the batting cages, and not swishing it up. But there was one more feminine gesture I decided to do, and even my wife, who’s in casting, pointed it out: clutching my chest with a sigh. I felt like that really sold it.

  The interesting thing for me about the table read of this episode was that in this first performance of that week’s show, nobody was really that funny yet. I did notice that the women were all such pros, and they had this routine down so perfectly. They just rehearsed, and worked hard all week, and then by the end of course all four of them were hilarious.

  I had most of my scenes with Rue McClanahan. I rehearsed, working out the beats with her, and of course she was terrific. Then came time for the tape night. As I waited backstage to make my entrance at the end, suited up in a gown and earrings and those fucking heels—I don’t know how women do it!—I walked past Betty, who was sitting there, knitting. She did a perfect take, glancing up at me, and said, “You’re the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen!”

  That helped loosen me up. But what really did it was when I entered the scene: I ring the doorbell, and Bea answers the door. Bea was kind of a tough person to make laugh. But the moment she opened the door and got a look at me, she would lose it, every time. Bea didn’t break that often, so I knew it meant that the gag was working. And then of course it was infectious, and I’d start laughing too. It took maybe four takes to get it right, but it was great, because our laughing really loosened up the audience, too. And then that frees you up as an actor, because now you’ve broken that fourth wall, and everybody’s in on the gag together.

  “Blanche, you really know how to mold a man. He comes in Steve, and goes out Eydie!”

  —DOROTHY

  EPISODE 158

  BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

  Written by: MARC CHERRY & JAMIE WOOTEN Directed by: LEX PASSARIS Original airdate: OCTOER 5, 1991

  Having sprained both ankles, Sophia is temporarily wheelchair bound, prompting Dorothy to hire a nurse. And while Sophia is initially horrified to recognize Mildred DeFarge (Edie McClurg) from their prior acquaintance at Shady Pines, she soon warms to the woman’s pampering, and to her bullying of the other Girls on Sophia’s behalf. When Dorothy and Rose attempt to fire Nurse DeFarge, Sophia suffers a conveniently timed leg cramp, and the nurse refuses to leave until her charge is literally back on her feet. Only when Sophia gets caught not just out of her chair but dancing around the living room does the truth come out, and Nurse DeFarge decamp to aid some other patient in need.

  Meanwhile, Blanche coaxes her visiting granddaughter Melissa (Alisan Porter) into forgoing fun like the circus in order to compete in the Little Miss Miami pageant. Becoming a monstrous stage grandmother, Blanche doesn’t notice that Melissa is miserable until the young girl freezes during her talent competition performance of “Put on a Happy Face.” In the end, Blanche recognizes shadows of her strained relationship with Melissa’s mother, Janet, and apologizes to the girl—but only after bringing the number home herself onstage, complete with high kicks and fabulous feat
her boa flourishes.

  COMMENTARY: She was The Hogan Family’s perky neighbor Mrs. Poole, and Ferris Bueller’s bubbleheaded school secretary. Now, Edie McClurg turns up for a fun guest spot as imposing Nurse DeFarge—named for the villainous knitter in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. Although scary to Sophia at first, she soon muscles in on the other Girls’ turf, upsetting especially Dorothy as she gains permission to call her patient Ma.

  Watch this episode closely for a true Golden Girls blooper that made it onto the screen. In the scene where Nurse DeFarge and Sophia barge into the living room and wrest control of the remote, that’s probably real annoyance on the Girls’ faces—and in Betty’s case, real pain. As Edie explains on the next page, she accidentally pushed a wheelchair right over Betty’s foot—and if you watch Betty closely, you’ll see that’s the take the producers opted to use.

  MARC CHERRY: We had Rose, Blanche, and Dorothy about to watch The Nun’s Story, because that’s one of my favorite movies. But ever since, I’ve felt bad that when Nurse DeFarge says, “She leaves the convent in the end,” I’m ruining the movie for people.

  There were two funny stories I remember from the production of this episode. The first one was that Estelle just couldn’t handle the wheelchair. She had the worst time with it, and couldn’t maneuver it very fast. She had an entrance where she was supposed to come in and say her line, but we ended up waiting too long for her to get there to say it. So we ended up having one of the stagehands push her in, and here comes this old woman, flying into the room, clearly not of her own power. Luckily, once she hit the carpet, the chair slowed itself down. But if you look closely at it, it looks ridiculous, and that made all of the writers laugh.

  Rue rehearses peeking out from behind the curtain at the Little Miss Miami contest.

  Photo courtesy of the EDWARD S. STEPHENSON ARCHIVE at the ART DIRECTORS GUILD.

  The second story is that one of our producers, Tracy Gamble, had two lovely daughters, Bridget and Carrie, and he had always wanted to get them on the show as extras. So here was the chance, as we had this Little Miss Miami pageant. The producers put Tracy’s daughters in cute little costumes, and put them in the scene. But then the joke of the scene is how Blanche insults all the other contestants: “Ugly!” “No charisma!” “There’s a gym teacher waiting to happen!” We all had to laugh, because Tracy finally got his daughters on TV, only for them to be dissed by Rue McClanahan.

  JAMIE WOOTEN: Marc and I were devoted fans of The Hogan Family. We even wrote a spec script of the show when we were starting out. That’s one of the reasons we begged them to hire Edie McClurg—and when they did, there was no audition. They just called to offer the job, which The Golden Girls hardly ever did. And we weren’t disappointed, because Edie was great. But there was that awkward moment where she ran over Betty’s foot with the wheelchair, and it got tense onstage. That part was disappointing, because we wanted everyone to be friends and it was not to be.

  EDIE McCLURG: The Golden Girls was an iconic show, and I loved watching it. I always thought, “I’d like to be on that show.” And then I was very surprised when I finally got to do it! Those women were just icons to me.

  I always had loved Betty White so much—we’d done quite a few benefits together—and so doing the show with her I was pleased as punch. It was so much fun to watch those four great women working. And especially at their ages. Standing backstage on rehearsal days, I would love to eavesdrop on them gossiping amongst themselves. I wouldn’t stand next to them, but I would put my ear out, just wanting to hear how they talked to one another. I could tell that Bea was very down, because one of her dogs was very ill.

  The rehearsal days were on the set, but without the camera. Bea was sour. She didn’t speak to me, and she didn’t smile. She wouldn’t even look at me. But Betty and Rue were as sweet as could be, and Estelle too, so I thought, “This is going to be okay.”

  Then, on the third day, it was camera-blocking day. When I came in to the set, Bea turned around and was just as nice as could be. She was smiling at me for the first time in three days, and it was such a difference she actually frightened me. When I remarked to Betty how all of a sudden Bea had changed, Betty pointed out that this was the first day that we were on camera, with a feed going up to the producers’ office so they could see what they needed to rewrite or change. This was the first time they were watching us.

  Despite her initial misgivings from their shared days at Shady Pines, Sophia grows to love Nurse DeFarge (Edie McClurg).

  Photo by ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/ABC via GETTY IMAGES.

  Estelle was so tiny that when they tried to put her in a regular wheelchair, she couldn’t control it at all. So they got a kids’ wheelchair, and she fit in it just fine. On the set, there wasn’t much room between the couch, where three of the women would sit, and the big square coffee table. During rehearsal, they would move the table farther from the couch, so I could fit through, pushing Estelle in the wheelchair.

  But on the night of the taping, as I was ready to make my entrance I noticed—they haven’t moved the table! I thought, “What am I supposed to do? There’s a live audience!” So I tried to fit in between there—and ended up running right over Betty’s foot. It really hurt her, but she improvised by picking up her foot and pantomiming saying “Ow!” really big, so that they could still use the take. After that, they moved the table, but I was mortified. I hadn’t had that much to do in the episode, and this had been one of my important scenes.

  EPISODE 160

  MOTHER LOAD

  Written by: DON SEIGEL & JERRY PERZIGIAN Directed by: LEX PASSARIS Original airdate: OCTOER 26, 1991

  When Rose mistakenly takes home her coworker Jerry Kennedy’s (Peter Graves, 1926–2010) date book, it’s a boon for Blanche, who scores a date with the handsome anchorman. The rendezvous is romantic—that is until Jerry’s mother, Millicent (Meg Wyllie, 1917–2002), tails Blanche home in order to scare her off. Ultimately, at Blanche’s urging, Jerry stands up to overbearing mama in the Girls’ living room, asserting his right to love whichever woman he chooses; unfortunately for Blanche, that woman is someone named Christina.

  Meanwhile, Dorothy’s ex-husband, Stan (Herb Edelman), asks her to join him in a session with his psychiatrist, in order to help him move on with his life. But the moment the two sit down in the office of Dr. Richard Halperin (Steve Landesberg, 1936–2010), Stan professes his love for his “mama bear”—who turns out to be Sophia, a stand-in for his own departed mother with whom he had been unable to make peace.

  Lured to their next session with the promise of going to Disney World, Sophia initially scoffs at the thought of loving the yutz who knocked up her daughter, sponged off her husband, and cheated throughout thirty-eight years of marriage. But when she remembers the happy moment at the hospital, glimpsing her grandson

  Michael for the first time through the nursery window, she musters enough loving memories to give the man what he needs. A jubilant Stan announces a Chinese feast to celebrate—for two; Dorothy is not invited.

  COMMENTARY: For an ex-husband, that Stanley Zbornak sure does find ways to weasel back into Dorothy’s life—and the Golden Girls writers sure do find ways time and again to bring audience favorite Herb Edelman back into the house on Richmond Street.

  But Herb isn’t the only beloved actor visiting the Girls this week. Playing Blanche’s latest paramour, Jerry Kennedy, is silver-haired guest star Peter Graves, instantly recognizable from his role as elite forces leader Jim Phelps on CBS’s 1966–73 Mission: Impossible series and again in its 1988–90 reprise. His early career comprised appearances in Western and sci-fi films of the fifties and sixties, but much like Leslie Nielsen, who would appear in the Golden Girls series finale, Peter began a new phase of his career when he proved his skills in comedy in the 1980 film Airplane! and its 1982 sequel. Having begun his career as a radio announcer in his native Minneapolis, the actor put his mellifluous tones to good use—not just by playing this Miami anchorm
an, but also in hosting A&E’s long-running series Biography from 1987 to 2002.

  Grown man Jerry Kennedy (Peter Graves) is torn between the affections of Blanche and his mother (Meg Wyllie).

  Photo by ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES /A BC via GETTY IMAGES.

  By this point, Meg Wyllie was a member of The Golden Girls’ reliable stable of recurring players, having first played an aged stewardess in the season-three episode “Nothing to Fear, But Fear Itself.” In actuality only nine years older than her TV son, Peter Graves, Meg had a long-standing career on the small screen, the most noteworthy moment of which may be her role in the 1966 Star Trek pilot as the series’ first villain, the Talosian Keeper. In her final TV role, she recurred in the mid-nineties as Aunt Lolly to Helen Hunt’s character, Jamie Buchman, on NBC’s sitcom Mad About You.

  The episode’s third guest star, Steve Landesberg, remains best known for his role as Sergeant Arthur Dietrich on ABC’s long-running cop comedy Barney Miller. Immediately after this first appearance, Dr. Halperin would appear again in the two-parter “The Monkey Show”—and in fact those episodes’ most memorable prop, a stuffed monkey head atop a traffic cone, is already visible here in his office.

  DON SEIGEL: The main story here is a story about Stan, whom I loved writing. He was a lot of fun—an idiot and a bullshitter, but he loved Dorothy. This story gave us an interesting look at the relationship, too, between Stan and Sophia, where we get to uncover the true, loving feelings they have for each other. I was in therapy while working on The Golden Girls—I’m a big advocate of it—and so I always wanted to do a show based in a therapist’s office. I was happy with how these scenes came out, with Steve Landesberg as the doctor. We didn’t write many lines for him, and although he was so funny, he played the part straight, as the foil for Dorothy, Stan, and Sophia.