THE SECRETS THEY SHARED Only With Each Other
BETTY WHITE RECALLS THE INTIMATE MOMENTS AND TIMELESS BOND SHE ENJOYED WITH HER CASTMATES
The Golden Girls was such an instant hit after its 1985 premiere that all three lead actresses — Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan and Betty White — earned Emmy nominations along with Estelle Getty for her supporting role. When Betty won the award, she eloquently spoke of how close she and her castmates had grown. “I am the lucky one who gets to come up and pick up this beautiful golden girl,” she said, hugging the statue, “but Estelle, Rue, Bea and I all thank you. We’re a matched set — you can’t split us up!”
Betty went on to applaud NBC “for taking a chance on four old broads — er, ladies,” which won a big laugh thanks to her deft delivery. And while giggles were also abundant on set, the four actresses helped each other through some tears and tragedies during the show’s sevenseason run, sharing secrets only with each other. “We adored each other. It was such a special experience,” says Betty, 95. “Between scenes, instead of going to our dressing rooms, we’d sit there and yak and talk about very intimate things.” Adds an insider to Closer, “They were best friends. They felt comfortable enough that they’d divulge things they wouldn’t even tell their own family members.”
GIRLS POWER
While taping the show’s first season, Bea (Dorothy) and Betty (Rose) lost their mothers, which took a toll on their emotional states. “My father had died a number of years before I did Maude, so [my mom] was living independently” in California, Bea recalled. Around the time The Golden Girls started airing, Bea’s mother “was almost totally blind and almost totally deaf,” she said. “It was a pretty rough year.”
The deaths of both mothers hit the stars hard. “We were ready to shut down the show
for as long as they needed,” director Lex Passaris tells Closer, “but both ladies said, ‘No. We need to work.’” They soon learned that they could lean on each other.
“Betty did her best to console Bea,” the insider shares, “and some of the kindest words Betty ever received from Bea were after her mom’s passing. They were both going through painful things. It helped their professional relationship and their personal relationship as well.”
While there’s been some talk of Betty’s chronically cheery disposition rubbing the more serious Bea the wrong way, the truth is the two were tight. “Bea wouldn’t go to dinner between shows unless Betty would walk with her,” Rue recalled. And as Jim Colucci, author of Golden Girls Forever: An Unauthorized Look Behind the Lanai, tells Closer, “Bea would look for Betty and take her hand” as they headed off to dine. “It was a thing of solidarity. They were in this together,” he explains.
The two would even occasionally commute to the set together. “Betty would pick my mom up in the driveway, or my mom would pick her up,” Bea’s son Matthew Saks tells Closer. “It was such a love affair between all of us,” Bea recalled of the level of support shared by the actresses.
Their unwavering camaraderie helped Betty process another loss she suffered a few years before The Golden Girls started: the 1981 death of her beloved husband, Allen Ludden, at age 63. “Without a doubt, losing Allen at a relatively young age was a life-defining moment for Betty,” a source reveals, “and work was her therapy.”
Lex recalls how Betty’s emotions about her loss bubbled to the surface during one taping. “In ‘The Heart Attack’ episode, everyone thinks Estelle’s character Sophia is dying, so it was particularly poignant,” Lex reveals. “Rose tells a story about her husband Charlie’s death, and Betty’s basically talking about Allen.” The actress had earlier confided to Lex how much she missed Allen, reminiscing about how he had relentlessly pursued her until she agreed to marry him. “Betty’s voice kind of cracked,” Lex says, “and she took a breath and said to me, ‘I’d give anything to have that year of my life back again.’ ”
Rue, who played Blanche, had grown close to Betty while the two worked on Mama’s Family a few years earlier. “She was everything as far as a friend is concerned,” Betty says. The two were “like two peas in a pod,” the insider adds. “And they confided in each other,” says the source. “Rue was a great listener and a sympathetic shoulder. She had a sounding board in Betty as well. By the time The Golden Girls started, Rue had just ended her fifth marriage, so they had one another through all those tough times.”
“Every day was golden! We had a great hit on our hands.”
— Rue
TEAM SPIRIT
Estelle needed her co-stars to help her combat her anxiety attacks and performance struggles. “She had an awful time remembering her lines because she’d freeze and panic,” Rue said. “The day before tape day, you could see a big difference in her. She’d be walking around like Pig-Pen under a black cloud. By
tape day, she was unreachable.”
Though she was a successful stage actress, Estelle hadn’t worked much on TV and the constant script changes sometimes overwhelmed her. “I was so terrified that I’m going to freeze in that spot and not be able to move,” she said, but the others were there to champion her. “I was always telling Estelle, ‘You’ll get the hang of this, believe me. You’ll catch on to how this is done,’ ” Rue said.
“They were all protective of her,” the insider adds. “If Estelle ever felt like she was letting them down, they’d always say, ‘It’s nothing! You’re doing great!’ And she really needed that.” Says the source, “Estelle was part of the team and, in many ways, their glue, so they all wanted to see her shine.”
Betty still feels terrible for all the stress Estelle put herself through. “You thought, ‘She’s never going to be able to take a step out on that stage,’ ” Betty recalls, though Estelle was able to rise to the challenge. “She’s one of the reasons for the success of the show with young people,” Betty adds. “They get such a kick out of little Estelle telling big Bea off!”
That on-screen mother-daughter relationship lived on behind the scenes as well. “I love Bea Arthur like she’s my own daughter,” said Estelle, who was actually one year younger than her TV offspring. “I think of Bea in a very maternal way.” Bea agreed. “I don’t think there’ll ever be another relationship I have that will be quite as fulfilling as that,” she said.
Even after Bea decided the seventh season would be her last, the actress’ memories would last a lifetime. “We did extraordinary work on Golden Girls,” Bea recalled, and she was proud of ending the show while they were on top: The emotional series finale drew a whopping 27.2 million viewers.
Still, saying goodbye wasn’t easy. “Even at the [last] table read, Bea couldn’t get through that final dialogue without crying,” Lex reveals. “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.”
As the only cast member alive today, Betty holds a special place in her heart for the show. “I’ve missed Golden Girls since we went off the air,” she says, still thankful for the years she got to spend with her dear friends. “It was just heaven. “It was like being with your family every day.”
“[It] was such a special experience. We all had such fun together!”
— Betty