The Gay Atributes of ‘The Golden Girls’: Exploring The LGBTQ+ Lovers Appeal Of The Senior TV Series
This year marks the 40th Anniversary of The Golden Girls, which originally aired on NBC from 1985 to 1992.
The senior-gear sitcom, centered around four 55+ females living in Florida, starred Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty.
Image Credit: Alan Light/Wikimedia commons
‘Miami Nice’
The Golden Girl’s core concept was generated by the genius of NBC programmer Brandon Tartikoff, a protege of the equally legendary TV network executive Fred Silverman. Tartikoff sent out a memo to his staff with the term ‘Miami Nice.’
That phrase was a play on words of the network’s then-hit crime drama, Miami Vice. That series, starring Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas, was another brainchild of Tartifkoff who was seeking a detective show based on the term ‘MTV Cops.’
The Golden Girls, created by Susan Harris, of ABC’s 1970s Soap fame, resulted from Tartikoff’s ‘Miami Nice’ mandate.
Image Credit: IMDb/ ABC Press
The Golden Cast
According to Matt Baum at TheStranger.com and Jim Colucci’s acclaimed book Golden Girls Forever, Susan Harris could not have been more intuitive with her casting prowess for the series.
Estelle Getty found success relatively later in life by appearing in Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy. The actress, who died in, was briefly visiting Los Angeles when she auditioned for the role of Sophia Petrillo, the eldest Golden Girl who had suffered a mild stroke.
A post-Maude Rue McClanahan and a post-Mary Tyler Moore Show Betty White, had recently performed on the original first season and NBC edition of Mama’s Family (The Carol Burnett Show Vicky Lawrence spin-off that was later a syndicated hit).
On The Golden Girls, McClanahan and White were cast against type. The former portrayed the intimacy-starved Blanche Devereaux, the latter played the airhead Rose Nylon.
Another post-Maude star, this time, it’s leading lady Bea Arthur, jumped at the chance to play Dorothy Zbornak.
Image Credit: IMDb/ ABC Press
An Instant Hit
The Golden Girls premiered in September 1985 and was an instant hit, not only with the Senior Community but with the Gay Community, who, according to Matt Baum, “may have been particularly comfortable with the cast because they had all worked on queer-friendly projects in the past.”
“Bea Arthur, for example, had done two gay episodes of the show Maude, including one in which she defends a gay bar from homophobic protestors,” Baum explained.
“Rue McClanahan had appeared in Some of My Best Friends Are, a low-budget film set in a gay bar. Betty White had appeared on Love, Sydney, an NBC sitcom in which Tony Randall starred as a gay man. And Estelle was famous for Torch Song Trilogy, but had also played a lesbian in the show The Divorce of Judy and Jane [which The New York Times had called ‘impertinent’].”
Image Credit: IMDb/ ABC Press
The History
As Matt Baum continued to point out, “That history of the cast’s comfort with queer roles was replicated across the seven-season run of The Golden Girls, starting with the first episode.”
“In episode one — and only that episode,” Baum relayed, “…the girls have a gay houseboy named Coco, a sort of continuation of Susan Harris’ groundbreaking Jody character from Soap. The idea was that Coco would be a younger voice on the show.”
“But after the pilot,” Baum clarified, “…it was clear that the chemistry really lay in the interaction between the women, so he was cut in favor of giving more time to Estelle Getty’s Sophia character.”
The Golden Girls avoided gay storylines for a while after Coco’s disappearance, but as Gaum went on to assess, by the second season, “that would change.”
That’s when young television scribe Jeff Duteil submitted a teleplay he had written in which Dorothy’s daughter visits and comes out as a lesbian.
At the time, TV shows rarely accepted unsolicited scripts, “much less produce them,” Baum noted, “…but as luck would have it, showrunners were looking for a queer storyline and they liked Jeff’s.”
Following some changes in the script, such as having the lesbian character be Dorothy’s friend instead of her daughter, the episode “Isn’t it Romantic?” was screened to grand success.
Image Credit: IMDb/ ABC Press
Similar Episodes Followed
Similarly-themed episodes followed, such as when Blanche’s brother, played by Monte Markham, pays a visit and reveals that he’s gay. Two years later, he returns with a boyfriend he intends to wed.
According to Matt Baum, there’s also an episode in which one of the girls offers counsel to a homosexual male proposing to his partner. In another episode, White’s Rose “learns that she may have been exposed to HIV.”
Although that latter segment “never explicitly mentions homosexuality,” Baum noted, “there’s a moving scene in the middle in which it’s made clear that AIDS is not ‘a bad person’s’ disease — a message that was too seldom heard on TV shows of the time.”
Image Credit: IMDb/ ABC Press
Throughout the Entire Run
Throughout The Golden Girls’ six seasons, “the attitude is unfailingly affirming to queer people,” Matt Baum said. “There’s the time Sophia says that if her kid [were] gay, she wouldn’t love him one bit less.’ There’s the time Blanche struggles to understand her gay brother and then comes around to accept him because she wants to be happy. The time a gay proposal is preceded with the words ‘love is love, years before marriage equality would become a mainstream political issue. The time Rose responds to a lesbian crush by saying that she’s ‘flattered and proud that you think of me that way.'”
“Even when the topic isn’t explicitly queer,” Baum clarified, “the characters share certain qualities with gay viewers, particularly when it comes to their [intimate] lives. The Golden Girls is a show about people whose [intimate life] isn’t often depicted on television, but who manage to have exciting, fun, recreational [intimacy]. They’re not concerned with procreation — just having a good time, and speaking openly and honestly about taking precautions to protect the health of themselves and their partners.”
Overall, the show’s cast “were known for their strong allyship to the queer community,” Baum decided.
Image Credit: IMDb/ ABC Press
Another Perspective/Arthur’s Alliance
David Ferguson at GCN.com would agree with Matt Baum. As Ferguson once discussed, “Bea Arthur is probably the one who is already considered a gay icon. The LGBTQ+ community had supported her career since the 1970s, and she embraced the community. In the early 1970s, she would host wild dinner parties at her Los Angeles home. The guests were, by and large, gay and mostly closeted men, as most were then, including the likes of Hollywood star Rock Hudson.”
“Later in life,” Ferguson continued, “Arthur decided to give something back and left an endowment to the Ali Forney Center, an organisation for homeless LGBTQ+ youth in New York City.”
Arthur learned of Ali Forney Center in 2005, Ferguson said, “when her friend Ray Klausen, who designed most of the Academy Awards sets in the 1980s, asked her to perform for a benefit show for an organisation in dire financial straits. Despite her advanced age, she agreed to fly from L.A. to New York to perform her one-woman Broadway show.”
After Arthur finished, she sat for photographs. “She nearly didn’t make it out alive as her appearance nearly caused the mostly-gay crowd to fly into a frenzy,” Ferguson explained. Her admirers were “pushing toward her, grabbing at her, eager for face time with the great legend,” recalled Carl Siciliano, Ali Forney’s executive director.
Arthur “escaped unscathed,” Ferguson noted, “and the benefit raised $40,000.”
The actress assessed the organization in this way: “These kids at the Ali Forney Center are literally dumped by their families because…they are lesbian, gay or transgender – this organization really is saving lives.”
Image Credit: 1995 Columbia Pictures Television/IMDb
The White Way
“Betty White was also an LGBTQ+ ally and a queer icon,” David Ferguson said. He referenced the aforementioned AIDS-related episode of The Golden Girls when her character, “Rose dealt with the possible exposure to HIV through a blood transfusion.”
In the process, the episode allowed The Golden Girls an opportunity to become one of the first sitcoms to mention HIV and AIDS.
“The message behind the episode was that it had the potential to affect everyone,” Ferguson clarified, “…not just the LGBTQ+ community.”
White said, “Not only were people understandably afraid of AIDS, but a lot of people wouldn’t even admit it existed. So this was a daring episode…and the writers went straight for it.”
As Ferguson continued to explain, this was not the only time White “dedicated her time to HIV and AIDS causes.”
“She recorded a public service announcement on the dangers of drug users sharing needles to help prevent HIV transmission at the height of the AIDS epidemic,” he explained. “She was also a firm supporter of Elton John’s AIDS foundation.”
In 2013, White changed her name to “Betty Purple” for one day in honor of Spirit Day, which Ferguson described as “an anti-LGBTQ+ bullying awareness day.”
When questioned about her support for LGBTQ+ rights on Larry King in 2014, White responded, “Oh, I don’t care who you sleep with…it’s what kind of a human being are you.”
Image Credit: Image Credit: IMDb/ ABC Press
The McClanahan Take
Rue McClanahan, meanwhile, portrayed Blanche with panache. In David Ferguson’s view, Blanche was “the character gay men wanted to be: someone who is strong, independent, and living life on their own terms.”
“Interestingly,” he observed, “McClanahan had been offered the part of Rose, but she didn’t connect with the character, having played a similar role before, and felt she could do more with Blanche. Luckily, she [was] asked to read for Blanche, and the rest is history.”
Once more adding to Baum’s assessment, Ferguson said, McClanahan’s “onscreen character struggled with coming to terms with her brother’s [intimate life].”
“The other women helped her understand him,” he noted, “…and it showed that people can change their minds if they listen. The show eventually aired her brother’s commitment ceremony. Like Arthur and White, she was a vocal supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and marriage equality, notably participating in the 2009 benefit concert Defying Inequality for equal marriage rights.”
Image Credit: Image Credit: IMDb/ ABC Press
The Getty Gal Museum of Insight
“Finally, we have Estelle Getty,” David Ferguson said. In 1989, Getty revealed, “I am tremendously grateful to the gay community. They put me where I am today. They discovered me, and they stuck by me, and they’ve been very loyal.”
The “discovered me” portion of her statement, Ferguson said, “is a reference to queer playwright Harvey Fierstein creating a character specifically with her in mind. In 1982, at nearly 60 years old, the role of Mrs. Beckoff in the Broadway production of Torch Song Trilogy was her breakthrough role.”
For Getty, “HIV activism was a very personal cause,” Ferguson noted. At a benefit in 1987, the actress described it as her “most important cause right now.”
In 1989, Getty said, “I’ve been in show business all my life, and the majority of my friends are gay. I don’t deny that. A lot of my friends have died from AIDS.”
“One of those friends,” Ferguson said, “included her Torch Song Trilogy co-star Court Miller (1952–1986). She also cared for her nephew, Stephen Scher, until his death from AIDS in 1992.”
Image Credit: Golden Girls / ABC Television.
In the Big Picture Scheme of Things
The Golden Girls was initially intended to be geared toward the senior community. It certainly did much to help that sector of the population gain respect. But the show also and most clearly appealed to a much wider and more diversified audience than just those over 55.
Related:
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- ‘Laverne & Shirley’ Star Michael McKean Paid Birthday Tribute To Late ‘Newhart’ Icon Peter Scolari
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This article originally appeared on Newsbreak.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org
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