Rose's age is the easiest to track down, thanks to Dorothy openly saying it in Season 1, Episode 22, "Job Hunting. Going off the idea that Season 1 takes place within the same year, Rose would have been 55 at the start of The Golden Girls as well. None of the other Golden Girls outright state their ages, so Dorothy is where the deductive work begins.
Sophia states it happened in , making it likely Dorothy was born sometime in , judging by her sign. In the end, the math adds up to Dorothy being 53 at the start of the series. Sophia was never afraid to admit how old she was, often using it to her advantage over the other women in the house. Ironically, the actress that played Sophia, Estelle Getty, was a year younger than Bea Arthur, who played her daughter, Dorothy. During the series, Blanche learns that George had a sixth child, a son named David , as the result of an affair.
During the course of the show, Blanche is revealed not to have been very 'hands-on' as a mother. She has a strained relationship with her daughters, especially with Janet, something that led to some of the most dramatic storylines as she expressed regrets that she wasn't there for her children more.
Blanche also had a falling out with her daughter, Rebecca Shawn Schepps over her decision to drop out of school to pursue a modeling career in Paris. When Rebecca returned 4 years later, she was overweight and engaged to a man named Jeremy Joe Regalbuto who did nothing but insult.
Blanche tried to convince Rebecca to break up with Jeremy, and Rebecca once again accused her mother of trying to control her life and stormed out. On the way to the airport, she realized her mother was right and returned to her mother and told her she dumped Jeremy. Rebecca now played by Debra Engle lost the extra pounds and returned a few years later, and she said she was going to have a baby through artificial insemination.
Blanche made no secret of her disapproval of her daughter having a baby out of wedlock and raising the baby without a father. Blanche and Rebecca visited a fertility clinic with Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia joining them, and she called the doctor "a sperm pusher" and told everyone she didn't want "a test tube for a son-in-law.
Blanche realized that her own pride wasn't worth risking losing relationships with her daughter and grandchild and decided to accept Rebecca's decisions. While Rebecca was pregnant, she decided have her baby in Florida instead of at home with her own doctor so Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia could be there for the baby's birth.
They joined Rebecca when she decided to visit a birthing center as an alternative. Rebecca said: "Hospitals have a rigid way of doing things.
Blanche still feels embarrassed about the decisions Rebecca made, and Rebecca decides to leave the next morning, taking her baby with her. That night, Rebecca experiences contractions and she's taken to the hospital, and Blanche is with her in the delivery room when she gives birth to a baby daughter, Aurora Devereaux.
Rebecca later visits again with Aurora a name Blanche hates because it's not "musical" or "Southern" enough and she even called her "Oreo". Unfortunately, Aurora is the catalyst of one more major conflict between Rebecca and Blanche when Blanche meets a man named Jason Alan Rachins while babysitting Aurora.
Jason assumes that Blanche is Aurora's mother rather than her grandmother, and Blanche is so flattered that she fails to correct him. When Jason finds out the truth, he breaks off their relationship, and Rebecca accuses Blanche of using her granddaughter to "land a man" and decides to leave and never speak to her mother again until Sophia convinces her to reconcile so Aurora doesn't grow up without having her grandmother in her life.
Blanche also has at least four grandchildren: David, Melissa, and Sarah all born to Janet, who married a "Yankee" , as well as Rebecca's daughter, Aurora. Blanche is the youngest of the 4 women living in the house she owns. Although it is widely believed that her exact age was never revealed Rose attempts to find out in 1 episode and learns that Blanche's record was "Deleted by Authority of the Governor" , in Season 3, Episode 25 entitled "Mother's Day" Aired May 7, , it is revealed in a flashback that Blanche was in fact 17 in ,meaning she was born in or , before Christmas and is about a year or 2 younger than Rose and Dorothy.
That would make her 53 years old when the series began in and 60 when the spin-off ended in Although throughout the series, she usually claims to be in her forties or even younger , the above episode, along with the ages of her children and the fact that she entered menopause in the second-season premiere average age of menopause in the U. She claimed in a third-season episode that she was still capable of childbirth despite the fact that she had undergone menopause a full season beforehand, but Dorothy quickly shot down that claim.
If Blanche was still alive, she would be eighty-nine years old. Rose are involved in the same activities, be it auditioning for a play or doing community service projects.
Though she is annoyed at times by Rose's constant storytelling, she sees her as both her best friend and a surrogate sister. To be sure, Blanche has her own collection of strange stories which she also shares from time to time, often tales of her rivalry with sisters Virginia and Charmaine or of the promiscuous stunts she pulled as a teenager.
Her relationship with Dorothy is mixed with envy and condemnation on both parts: Dorothy envies and condemns Blanche's being comfortable sexually, while Blanche envies Dorothy's intelligence and singing talents, among other things. And yet, both she and Dorothy at times isolate themselves from Rose, ganging up on her when the latter says anything particularly foolish, and taking turns hitting her on the head with a newspaper or magazine.
Their relationship is also symbiotic: in one of the last episodes in the series, Dorothy admits that Blanche has helped her be comfortable with her own sexuality, while Dorothy herself has always served as Blanche's other voice of reason.
With Rose she saw her as a sister, she could see that Rose is good natured but she could be annoyed by her as well. Blanche critiqued her for doing long stories that were pointless, when Rose won tickets for a Frank Sinatra Concert she told Blanche the full story and in anger Blanche told a reduced version to Dorothy.
Edit The Golden Girls — Showing all items. It was not originally scripted for Blanche to have a Southern accent. Instead, it was Rue McClanahan 's idea to do so. The actresses consumed over cheesecakes during the show's seven-year run. Bea Arthur hated cheesecake in real life. When the show first aired, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother loved it so much that she wrote to the four actresses and asked them to perform a live show especially for her.
They obliged, and acted out a sketch during the The Royal Variety Performance , at which the Queen Mother was present, in which the girls are depicted onstage visiting London, first interacting with the host Ronnie Corbett and then sitting down for dinner, recreating various moments from previous episodes. During the "Herring War" story that Rose tells, Rue and Bea break character as the scene got so out of hand that they were going to cut the scene from the episode entirely, but they kept it in the episode to show just how good the comedy in the show could be.
Betty White was the oldest of the four main actresses. Ironically, with the death of Rue McClanahan , she became the last surviving member of the cast. To make facts even more ironic, White was also the oldest of the eight regulars of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and eventually in became the last surviving as well. Rue McClanahan was found asleep in all sorts of places on the set. Rue McClanahan had a clause written into her contract that she be allowed to keep all of Blanche's custom-made clothing.
McClanahan had 13 closets filled with the designer wardrobe in her Sutton Place co-op in Manhattan. All four actresses won Emmys for their performances. Betty White had always been a fierce competitor when she had appeared on Password back in the day, and she found a kindred spirit in Rue McClanahan when it came to word games. The two ladies frequently played alphabet games in between takes for example, if the topic was cars, they would take turns naming different brands - Audi, Buick, Cadillac-alphabetically throughout the entire day of taping.
Estelle Getty underwent a face-lift between the first and second seasons, much to the horror of the make-up crew who already had to go to great lengths to make Getty look old on camera. Although there were four women living in the house, there were always only three chairs around that famous kitchen table.
That was strictly due to the limits of filming-to avoid either squeezing all four shoulder-to-shoulder or having one actress with her back to the camera. Bea Arthur was always given the center chair, both because of her height and also in order to catch her priceless facial expressions in reaction to either Blanche's remembrance of sexual encounters past, Rose's St.
Olaf story, or Sophia's "Picture it! Bea Arthur initially resisted efforts to be cast in the series. Arthur finally agreed when McClanahan told her that she and White decided to swap roles.
The show was originally intended to end after Season 5 but Bea Arthur agreed to stay 2 more years. Throughout the series, there are many jokes made by the girls at Rose regarding her natural hair color.
Betty White is in fact a natural brunette and dyes her hair Blonde. It took 45 minutes in make-up to transform Estelle Getty into Sophia. In several episodes which showed flashbacks to when Dorothy and Sophia were living in New York during the '40s and '50s, Estelle Getty appears without the wig and makeup. In the first season exteriors of the house were shot from a real house in California.
They built an exact replica of the house in Orlando. This replica was demolished in In The Golden Girls: Sophia's Choice , the story revolves around Sophia trying to get better retirement home care for her friend Lillian after breaking her out of a "bottom of the barrel" type. In the last scene, Rose suggests they make a pact that they will always stick together so they won't battle old age alone; Blanche adds that they all should go to a nursing home together.
Rose then adds "but what happens when there is only one of us left? They are also sitting in the order in which they passed away. According to Betty White , she and Bea Arthur did not get along throughout the series. In one episode, Blanche wants to watch the soap opera Another World Rue McClanahan , who played Blanche, made several appearances on that soap opera. While visiting his elderly aunt one day, he saw how she and her next-door neighbor, who was also her best friend, interacted.
They would argue and bicker a lot, but they were still best friends and loved each other. Tartikoff thought that would make a great show. The first episode attracted more than 25 million viewers, beating out The Cosby Show for the number one spot in the ratings that week. Due to Estelle Getty 's intense stage fright, during Friday tapings she would often freeze on camera. She was the least experienced actress of the four, and it intimidated her. She stated in a interview that working every week with talent like Bea Arthur and Betty White scared her out of her wits.
She felt like a fraud and worried that the fans would "find out" that she wasn't as good as her co-stars. Reportedly, Getty used to ask the producers "couldn't we just make [Dorothy and Sophia] Jewish?
Bea Arthur did not have pierced ears, thus all those "crazy earrings" her words that Golden Girls stylist Judy Evans gave Dorothy were clip-ons. Arthur loved the dramatic effect of the jewelry, but hated that her ears were numb with pain by the end of the day. The show was a hit in sixty countries and remade in England, Greece, Mexico, the Netherlands and Russia.
They switched roles because they didn't want to be typecast. Also the switching of roles persuaded Bea Arthur to join the cast. The show garnered a total of 68 Emmy nominations. The others were not really friends. Rose was the only character whose husband, Charlie, was never depicted on the show. Dorothy's ex-husband, Stan, was a recurring character. Sophia's husband, Sal, was seen in flashbacks. Blanche's husband, George, was depicted in a dream.
According to a Bravo documentary about the show the writers' racy jokes were usually censored and then softened for network viewings. An example, Dorothy and Sofia were playing Scrabble. Dorothy tells Sofia "Ma! Pizwam is not a word! This pool is Pizwam! Disdam is not a word! You're no good at disdam game! McClanahan asked the producers if they could write a new room mate in for the Girls. The producers briefly considered the idea and even spoke with Doris Roberts to join the show.
This was one of the few series of its era to include openly gay and lesbian characters. The Pilot featured the Girls' openly gay personal chef Coco. Blanche's openly gay brother, Clayton, appeared in a few episodes. Another episode featured an old friend of Dorothy's, who was a lesbian. The series had a strong following among the LGBT community. Dorothy has two children: Kate and Michael.
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