The Golden Girls Premieres
The Golden Girls is an American sitcom created by Susan Harris that aired on NBC from September 14, 1985, to May 9, 1992. The series comprises 180 half-hour episodes across seven seasons and features an ensemble cast led by Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty. Set in Miami, Florida, the show centers on four older women who share a home and navigate friendship, aging, and daily life.
The series was produced by Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions in association with Touchstone Television. Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas, and Susan Harris served as the original executive producers.
The Golden Girls received critical acclaim during its original run and earned numerous accolades, including two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series and three Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy. Each of the four lead actresses won a Primetime Emmy Award, making it one of only four sitcoms in history in which all principal cast members received Emmy recognition. The show ranked among the Nielsen top 10 for six of its seven seasons.
In 2013, TV Guide ranked The Golden Girls number 54 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time. In 2014, the Writers Guild of America placed the sitcom at number 69 in their list of the "101 Best Written TV Series of All Time". Terry Tang of the Associated Press reported that the series continues to attract new fans in the 21st century and characterized it as an example of a sitcom that has aged well.
Ideas for a comedy series about older women emerged during the filming of a television special at NBC Studios in Burbank, California, in August 1984. Produced to introduce the network's 1984–85 season schedule, two actresses appearing on NBC shows, Selma Diamond of Night Court and Doris Roberts of Remington Steele, appeared in a skit promoting the upcoming show Miami Vice as Miami Nice, a parody about old people living in Miami. NBC senior vice president Warren Littlefield was among the executive producers in the audience who were amused by their performance, and he envisioned a series based on the geriatric humor the two were portraying.
Shortly afterward, he met with producers Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas, who were pitching a show about a female lawyer. Though Littlefield nixed their idea, he asked if they would be interested in delivering a pilot script for Miami Nice, instead. Their regular writer declined, so Witt asked his wife, Susan Harris, who had been semi-retired since the conclusion of their ABC series Soap. She found the concept interesting, as "it was a demographic that had never been addressed," and she soon began work on it. Though her vision of a sitcom about women in their 60s differed from NBC's request for a comedy about women around 40 years old, Littlefield was impressed when he received her pilot script and subsequently approved production of it. The Cosby Show director Jay Sandrich, who had previously worked with Harris, Witt, and Thomas on Soap, agreed to direct the pilot episode.
The pilot included a gay house attendant, Coco (Charles Levin), who lived with the girls. Levin had been suggested by then-NBC president Brandon Tartikoff based on Levin's groundbreaking portrayal of a recurring gay character, Eddie Gregg, on NBC's Emmy-winning drama Hill Street Blues. After the pilot, the character of Coco was eliminated from the series.
The Walt Disney Company, NBC Studios and the creators were named in a federal copyright infringement suit filed by Nancy Bretzfield claiming the show was based on a script rejected by NBC in 1980. The suit was later settled.
According to the actor Mark Feuerstein, Susan Harris has stated that she intended The Golden Girls to be a show about four Jewish women. Feuerstein said that "She wrote it about four old Jewish women living in Florida. They shot a pilot, it was great and everyone was excited, but the network told her 'Rewrite it. Nobody is interested in watching four old Jewish women.'"
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