Preach it, brother.
That’s it? Because Bea Arthur looks and sounds like a drag queen?
This straight guy liked the show because the scripts were funny and because Betty White can keep a straight face while telling a story that cracked up the others out of character. That was part of the attraction of the Carol Burnett Show, too - Tim Conway’s ability to destroy Harvey Korman in a scene while maintaining perfect self-control.
Are there any links anywhere to Rose’s St. Olaf stories? I’d love to hear the one about [paraphrasing] Irma Steppe, the town’s hairdresser, and how she ran off with Otto Fetchit, the dance instructor.
I’m not gay and I loved The Golden Girls! In fact, I’ve written a script, in case they ever decide to get back together:
Ha! That’s comedy gold, right there. Plus, it really makes you think.
Rose: “Between the Lindstroms and the Johanssens there was a great herring battle.The two families controlled the most fertille herring waters off the coast of Norway. The Johanssens wanted to pickle the herring but the Lindstroms wanted to train them for the circus.”
Blanche: “Wouldn’t it be kind of hard to see the little herrings riding the elephants?”
Rose: “No, it was a herring circus.”
Dorothy: “Tell me something, Rose. Did they ever shoot a herring out of a cannon?”
Rose: “Only once. But they shot him into a tree. After that, no other herring would do it!”
Blanche: “You’re makin’ this up!”
Rose: “I am not! My grandfather told me that story! Of course, he always used to call me by my sister’s name. And sometimes he’d wear his underwear on the outside of his pants. Guess he wasn’t a very reliable source . . .”
I’ve always wondered if those were at least somewhat improvised, because unlike the rest of the show they maintained the same voice and remained funny throughout the run of the series (which I think was from 1954-1998; by the end Sophia had to have been older than Miss Jane Pittman).
Never more than mediocre imo (especially when compared to SOAP , Susan Harris’ other brainchild), Golden Girls evolved into what was probably the worst spinoff not associated with The Jeffersons or Dukes of Hazzard. However, did anybody see the hysterical Sunset Blvd. episode of The John Larroquette Show? Betty White played a campy version of her post-Golden self, an insanely rich megalomaniacal intent on a comeback in “ST. OLAF THE MUSICAL” who falls in love with John Laroquette and gives him a gold cigarette case engraved “I was bought by Miss Betty White”; Rue and Estelle played themselves as the “waxworks”. (Bea sat this one out but was hysterical as Dewey’s babysitter in an episode of Malcolm in the Middle. (Supposedly she’s in talks to eventually reprise her role as Yenta the Matchmaker in the new Alfred Molina version of Fiddler on the Roof, though it’s a small role for a star of her magnitude.)
Wow, that has to be some kind of record!
Anybody remember the Saturday Night Live skit they did where Chris Kattan was a Golden Girls fanboi, getting together with his friends to dress like the characters and reenact episodes until he succumbed to a tragic cheesecake accident?
I’d think that would speak against their having been improvised. Improv is never consistently funny (indeed, is rarely funny at all . . .)
I have been openly gay for almost exactly eleven years. In all that time, the gay men/Golden Girls connection was never once mentioned to me until this week.
Then it came up for a third time, at a gay men’s discussion group I went to tonight. What is that? Why was I the last to be informed?
Oh, and for Eve, I found a few of the St. Olaf stories programmed into a very campy little game run out of Lifetime TV’s Golden Girls website.