“Thank you for being a friend.”
It’s one of the most iconic theme songs to one of the most iconic sitcoms in television history, and even if you’re too young to have watched it live, surely you’ve hummed or at least heard the tune that kicked off “The Golden Girls.”
And 40 years since they came into our homes, “The Golden Girls” are still worthy of our cheesecake.
Dr. Taylor Cole Miller, an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, is one of the authors and editors behind the new book “The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai,” which explores the groundbreaking series that debuted in September 1985 and brought four women of a certain age into one home.
Miller joined Sean Lewis on Sunday’s WGN Weekend Morning News to talk about why “The Golden Girls” was such a groundbreaking sitcom and how its legacy is still going strong after four decades (see the attached video player for the full segment).
Miller notes that in the show, the four main characters kind of disliked each other at first before discovering they could get along — over cheesecake.
“These are four women that lived together because they couldn’t afford to live in Miami by themselves,” Miller says.
Miller also said the show was unique in that all four leads were older women already well-established in Hollywood, a casting decision most shows wouldn’t have considered.
“You have all of these older actresses that had been (Hollywood) veterans,” Miller says. “… It was just this incredible rich pool of talent that wasn’t otherwise being explored, and (creator) Susan Harris was like, ‘Let’s make that a show. Let’s put them back.’”
The book, written by professors, takes a deep dive into the stories behind the show, the relationships of the actors and how the series impacted society.
“One of the chapters in the book describes how the women were sexual beings,” Miller notes. “They were taking charge of their sexuality in their older years, and how very rarely that was actually explored with older women on television, and even to this day (is) still not often explored.”
The show creatively — and humorously — tackled many important topics most shows would’ve avoided in those days, like the HIV scare or having a lesbian friend (who Blanche hilariously confused as “Lebanese”).
“Television was taking up the mantel of educating the public in a way that our administration at the time was not doing,” Miller explains. “And so ‘The Golden Girls’ thought, ‘How can we make this a human story through the mouths of these women?’
“And the show often tackled topics that were really big and important in the day.”
With the show’s four main actresses — Bea Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak, Betty White as Rose Nylund, Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux, and Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo — now gone, the book talks with producers and those behind the scenes about a show that, 40 years in, still has never NOT been aired on TV.
“All of these women essentially lost their husbands, and they kind of thought that the family part of their life was over,” Miller says. “But what they discovered is, no, there’s a way to reconstitute a family, to provide yourself a meaningful relationship with others.”
A lesson on chosen family and how we can talk about difficult topics through humor and a slice of cheesecake.
Michael Johnson
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