Golden Girls Forever

by Jim Colucci

  In part two, as the date approaches for Dorothy and Lucas’s wedding, the other Girls prepare for life to change forever. Sophia initially plans to leave with Dorothy, while Rose opts to move in with her own daughter. Even Stan (Herb Edelman) recognizes this moment as the end of an era, as he commandeers the wedding limo so as to get a chance to wish his ex-wife well. In the end, both Rose and Sophia decide to stay on with Blanche in Miami, and bid a tearful goodbye—three times!—to newlywed Dorothy Petrillo Zbornak Hollingsworth as she embarks on her new life in Atlanta.

  COMMENTARY: Series finales are a tricky business. Whereas a show’s pilot has to create a new world, to show the audience that through some incident happening right now, a can’t-miss party is just starting, a finale has to accomplish the opposite, to let us know the party’s over. For a hit series, it can be difficult to let your devoted fans down easy; the best sitcom finales (e.g., The Mary Tyler Moore Show) are the ones that show that due to a change in circumstances, the old gang may be breaking apart, but their love will last forever. And that’s exactly what this last episode of The Golden Girls accomplishes so beautifully. Dorothy may be moving to Atlanta with Lucas, but as her repeated hugs and proclamations attest, her Girls will always be in her heart.

  With his deep, stentorian voice, guest star Leslie Nielsen had started his career playing serious authority figures, such as the captain in 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure. But that all changed in 1980, when he got to unleash his silly side in the megahit film spoof Airplane! From then on, Leslie was a hot commodity in comedy, appearing as the title character in Mel Brooks’s Dracula: Dead and Loving It, several of the Scary Movie sequels, and in three Naked Gun films based on his own short-lived 1982 cop parody series Police Squad! A man famous for his love of the fart machine and joy buzzer gags, Leslie continued to appear in comedy after comedy right up until his death in 2010 at age eighty-four.

  Bridesmaids Blanche and Rose, and mother-of-the-bride Sophia, flank Dorothy and Lucas Hollingsworth (Leslie Nielsen) on their wedding day.

  Photo by ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/ABC via GETTY IMAGES.

  On Dorothy’s wedding day, cast, crew, and a church full of extras get ready for the big moment.

  RUE McCLANAHAN: It was painful doing the finale. I just didn’t want the show to end. At the end of the episode, when Dorothy leaves, and says goodbye—and then comes right back in, and we all scream and hug some more, and this goes on until she does leave for good—that was painful. Those were real tears.

  LEX PASSARIS: The weekend before we shot the Golden Girls finale, the Museum of Television and Radio in Los Angeles [now the Paley Center for Media] hosted a Mary Tyler Moore Show marathon, including that show’s final episode. [MTM director] Jay Sandrich was there, and afterward, I went up to him, and said, “You did the Golden Girls pilot, and I’m doing the finale. Do you have any advice?”

  The Mary Tyler Moore Show finale had that famous group hug scene, where they sang “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” Jay asked me, “Do you have your Tipperary scene?” After I responded yes, he advised me to just block it minimally, but otherwise not to rehearse it with the actors. I went back to the office and mentioned this to Paul Witt and Tony Thomas, and got their blessing to approach it that way.

  As it turns out, we were running short on time that week anyway. We normally had five days to make a show, but this last week we had only four, due to a mix-up in schedule for a ceremony where Paul, Tony, and Susan Harris were getting an award. On top of that, this was one of the rare times when we had an exterior shoot, near Highland Avenue and Fifth Street, for the scene in the limo where Stan surprises Dorothy and gives his blessing. Plus, producers had decided that the standard church set that had always been used on Witt/Thomas shows from Soap onward wouldn’t work, so we had a new one built; not only did the new set not arrive until the last minute, but it turned out to be difficult and time-consuming to shoot in.

  When we finally got to the final scene on our last rehearsal afternoon, and started running through it, Leslie Nielsen said his line, “Ready, Freddie?” and then exited—and the ladies were about to start in to their goodbye lines. I stopped them. I told Bea the basics of which doors she should use for each of her entrances and exits, but then said let’s move on. I had explained it all so fast that Estelle went over to Betty and Rue and asked, “What did he say?” I requested that the two of them just steer Estelle in the right direction, and once I told them I was acting on Jay’s advice, they got right away what was happening.

  Even at the table read of this episode on that Monday, Bea couldn’t get through that final dialogue without crying. And so the tears you see in the episode from all the ladies are the real thing, with these actresses saying their own real farewells for the first time. The producers had made very lucrative offers for Bea and all the ladies to continue, and I know the decision to leave had been hard for Bea. You could see it in her eyes on that last day. But I absolutely respect her decision, and I think she was right. She felt that after seven seasons the show had done everything it could do with the character of Dorothy Zbornak.

  TRACY GAMBLE: I didn’t like that we were ending the show with Dorothy departing to get married, because it seemed to me that The Golden Girls was about single women, and the theme was that they’re still vital. This ending seemed to say that a man was the answer to all Dorothy’s problems. However what I did like about the finale was when Dorothy kept coming back to say goodbye—and then she doesn’t come back. And suddenly, you feel her missing, and the void and the emptiness. I felt that was a great way to underscore the feeling. And if we were going to marry her off, Leslie Nielsen was a terrific choice.

  BEA ARTHUR: I hated that wedding gown. It was the first and last time our costume designer, Judy Evans, ever did anything I didn’t like. I had known Leslie Nielsen for years, from the Actors Studio. But I was terrified when he came on the show, because Leslie is known for that prank gadget that makes you sound like you are farting. He uses it with everyone. So I remember when he first came on to the set, I said, “Leslie please don’t shake hands with me, because I really don’t think that thing is funny.”

  I loved the bit about exiting and then running back in for another hug. I was just upset that I couldn’t do it faster, that I couldn’t do it so that I would leave in one door, and then instantly be back in through the next.

  MITCHELL HURWITZ: Because I had spent so much time with Paul Witt and Tony Thomas, I had been privy to a very personal story from Paul’s life, and I suggested that we adapt it for this last episode. Paul and Tony and Susan Harris had created their company, Witt/Thomas/Harris. Paul and Susan had dated for a while, but it was unsuccessful. And working together, the two of them had a very contentious and heated relationship, with a real intensity.

  At one point, Paul and Susan heard that Tony was going on a trip to Italy with his wife, and, flush with all this money from Soap, they decided to pull the greatest practical joke of all time. Tony didn’t know that they had access to his itinerary. So they came up with the plan to fly to Italy, and wait at the restaurant where Tony would be arriving. When he walked in, they would act surprised to see him, and tell him, “We just got married!” They anticipated he’d be shocked, so they’d tell him, “You left us alone, and passions ignited!”

  So they did it. They flew to Italy, and pulled this elaborate gag—but they didn’t get the reaction they expected. Instead of being shocked, Tony raised his glass and spoke at great length about how the two of them were the most wonderful people he’d ever met, and how it is so clear to everyone around them that theirs is real love, a good match. That is what the heat between them, and the fighting, is all about, he said. He’d always known this would happen someday, and that it had been merely a matter of time before Paul and Susan discovered the truth for themselves.

  Well right on the heels of that, Paul and Susan now had all this time to spend together in romantic Italy. And whatever it was that Tony had said, it led them to really take each othe
r seriously. And sure enough, they did get married!

  I would never have pitched a story about Dorothy pretending to fall in love with Blanche’s uncle Lucas, then doing so for real—because it’s crazy. But so many times, the stories that seem the most contrived are the real ones. So when we were looking for a romantic, two-part story for the finale, I remember saying, “I happen to know this thing about Paul Witt . . .” The finale story had to be special, and I knew all the other writers would be hard on any pitch. But I also thought to myself: “This story is so crazy I bet they approve it.” And they did. It didn’t all remain in the final episode, but in my first draft, Blanche even got up and spoke just as Tony had, saying, “Of course you guys got married, because you’re such a great match.”

  For me, doing this story was a great way to pay homage to the bosses, by telling their romantic story. It came from a real place, and that made it more interesting to write. Even the last hug, where Dorothy leaves, then comes back, then leaves again—twice—was something you might do in real life. We weren’t sure it would be that funny on TV, but it’s the type of real, dramatic moment you’d have in saying goodbye to somebody, and that’s what made it work.

  A view from the altar inside the brand-new church set.

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

  6

  FROM

  KITCHEN TO LANAI:

  PRODUCTION & SET DESIGN

  WHEN LEGENDARY PRODUCTION designer Ed Stephenson first read the script for Susan Harris’s new high-profile pilot, he knew just the home he wanted to create for the Girls. A decades-long TV veteran and three-time Emmy winner, Ed had worked with Betty White on live TV in the fifties, and later with Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan on Maude. Now as the in-house designer for all the Witt/Thomas/Harris productions, Ed had a gut feeling that The Golden Girls was going to be a big hit, and wanted to create a lasting environment befitting the show’s four powerhouse stars.

  Even before earning his credits in TV, Ed had started his career working in Florida theater. “So he knew exactly what he wanted to do,” remembers Michael Hynes, The Golden Girls’ longtime assistant art director. “He went home one weekend and designed the whole thing, and then we started making a model of the three rooms in the house the pilot called for: the living room, lanai, and Blanche’s bedroom.”

  Right from the start, Ed envisioned a certain “Florida look” for the Girls’ home’s interior, explains John Shaffner, the assistant art director Ed tasked with decorating the pilot’s sets. Ed wanted the look of pecky wood, a textured cypress popular in South Florida, for the house’s doors, interior columns, and roofline. Then, it was time for the two to talk furniture. “We realized that each of these women was going to be bringing something into this house. It wasn’t just Blanche’s house now, but a little bit of everyone’s,” John explains. And so, although the living room was dominated by a tropical rattan-style couch, its adjoining end table or console might not match.

  For the home’s fabrics and decorative touches, the designers opted for a palette of pastels and softer hues, with occasional pops of brighter color. Then, as John remembers, “When it came time for the set to be installed on the stage, it was so simple. The flooring I had selected was unrolled and taped down. The set walls were put up, and painted all the colors and textures Ed had selected. Prop men moved in the furniture and hung art on the walls, and I finished dressing the set down to the coffee mugs on the kitchen counter.

  “The producers came through the next day, and looked at everything, and said, ‘This is wonderful. Thank you very much.’ And that was it,” explains John, who went on to design the iconic looks of Friends, Two and a Half Men, and The Big Bang Theory. “It wasn’t nearly like today, where hand-wringing executives will come to check your progress every day, and say, ‘Are those the throw pillows you’re going to use? Are you sure about that lamp?’”

  It Takes a Kitchen

  THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED in a Miami minute. Not long before the actresses were scheduled to start rehearsing on the sets, Ed’s team received a revised script, complete with new scenes to take place in the Girls’ kitchen. “There had been no kitchen in the original script. But now, right at the last minute, we needed one,” Michael remembers. Luckily, having worked on so many sitcoms, Ed had kept over 150 of his past sets in storage; the Witt/Thomas warehouses were full of rooms previously seen on such shows as Soap, Benson, and It’s a Living. “Ed came back to the office,” Michael recalls, “and said, ‘What do we have in stock?’”

  Perusing the company’s inventory, Michael found a kitchen he convinced Ed would work, from Witt/Thomas’s earlier show It Takes Two. “So we took what had been that show’s kitchen and just spliced it right on to the Golden Girls’ living room,” he explains. “We took out the oven area and a couple of cabinets to make it a little smaller, but otherwise that was their wall paper, their shelves, and their plants.” Outside the same kitchen window, instead of a scrim of the glittering Chicago skyline was now an image of sun-dappled Miami palms. And with that, the kitchen that would become iconic as the setting for The Golden Girls’ beloved cheesecake scenes was created, recycled from the remnants of a forgotten show that had lasted merely one season.

  Left to right: Helen Hunt, Richard Crenna, and Patty Duke in ABC’s 1982–83 sitcom It Takes Two.

  Photo courtesy of PHOTOFEST, with permission of DISNEY NTERPRISES, INC.

  With the Girls’ new kitchen installed and ready, the show’s first crisis was averted—temporarily. By their very nature, sitcoms suffer from what Michael refers to as “the proscenium theater problem”: multicamera shows require three-walled sets, much like opened-up dollhouses, which still need to look convincingly like someone’s home. “Life exists in 360 degrees, and theater exists in 180,” Michael explains. “And yet I still have to fit everything in there: stairways, doors, the kitchen. So by their very nature, all sitcoms sets are already contorted.”

  Production designers usually devise ways around this issue in their blueprint or modeling stages; but here, the Girls’ kitchen had been added after the fact, creating a ripple effect of other changes that made the layout of the house cease to make sense. “The kitchen created issues no one could ever solve,” Michael admits. For starters, now that the room was established as being off the stage-right end of the living room, where was the access to the Girls’ sleeping quarters?

  The team’s solution was to create an upstage hallway, leading back to the bedrooms—but the fix created even more discrepancies. The pilot presents Blanche’s bedroom as being off the upstage-left corner of the living room, and the lanai as entered from a door just to the left of the fire-place; in the series, the lanai orientation would be reversed and its access moved upstage left, with Blanche now bunking off the same hallway as her roommates. Either way, Rose’s room now seems to be in the middle of the backyard. And now, the back exit of the kitchen, supposedly toward the garage, seems to lead right into the area of Dorothy and Blanche’s bedrooms. “We don’t know where the garage is,” Michael admits with a laugh. “All we know is there were minks in there once.”

  As Michael remembers, “We said, ‘Well, when we get through the pilot, we’ll fix it’—and then we never did.” And so, throughout the series, sharp-eyed fans remained confused. “We used to get letters on occasion, saying: ‘It looks like when Rose goes into her bedroom, she’s going into the backyard, and I don’t understand,’” he reveals. “And in fact, they were right. But Ed would answer the letters by saying, ‘Just keep watching the show, and you’ll figure it out eventually.’”

  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

  DRAWING ON HIS training in 1950s live TV, Ed Stephenson favored working with “modular” sets, which could be rearranged in different configurations to create various new rooms. By the time of The Golden Girls, Ed was expert at minimizing set-building expenses by recycling old pieces from his previous repertoire. Thus, a teak-paneled courtroom that had appeared
on Soap, with a little bit of redressing, now became Golden Girls offices, waiting rooms, and even the apartment of Sophia’s ancient millionaire roommate Malcolm in the show’s fifth-season episode “Twice in a Lifetime.”

  Conference room, season 7, “Rose: Portrait of a Woman.”

  Courtroom, season 7, “Ebbtide VI: The Wrath of Stan.”

  Psychologist waiting room, season 7, “Mother Load.”

  Meeting hall, season 5, “Great Expectations.”

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

  Mr. Edouardo’s hair salon, season 4, “Rites of Spring.”

  Men’s clothing store, season 4, “Love Me Tender.”

  French restaurant, season 7, “Ro$e Love$ Mile$.”

  Banquet hall for Bachelorette Auction, season 6, “Love for Sale.”

  Hotel ballroom, season 5, “The Mangiacavallo Curse Makes a Lousy Wedding Present.”

  Banquet hall for Volunteer Vanguard Awards, season 6, “Sisters of the Bride.”

  Hotel ballroom housing the East Miami High Class of ‘52 reunion in season 7, “Home Again, Rose.”

  Daughters of the Old South banquet hall, season 6, “Witness.”

  Because the Girls attended so many receptions and awards banquets in hotel ballrooms and restaurants, Ed also devised a set he called the Classic Interior, which would pop up on the show again and again. With a selection of French-paneled walls, arches, and Palladian windows connected by individual pilasters, the set could be assembled in various configurations. “Like LEGOs,” Michael explains. So whether they were vying for the Volunteer Vanguard Awards or crashing a high school reunion, the Girls were in differing versions of the same room.