Golden Girls House Party…Thank You For Being a Friend! November 1, 2009
Posted by FCM in entertainment, pop culture.Tags: bea arthur, television, the golden palace
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i love the golden girls! and so does the new york jets’ running back thomas jones. this made me laugh and laugh:
Some Jets like to spend their free time tweeting on their Twitter pages or playing video games on their PS3s. Thomas Jones, the AFC’s leading rusher in 2008, unwinds by watching “The Golden Girls.” Sure, he also watches other old-school shows such as “The Cosby Show” and “Saved by the Bell,” but there’s just something about Bea Arthur.
“My favorite thing to do to relax is watch ‘The Golden Girls’ marathon,” Jones admitted yesterday during a rare interview at SUNY Cortland. “It kind of puts me in the mind-set of how things kind of used to be. When I see that show, it reminds me of those times when you could go outside and have fun and ride your bike all day. Now, you can’t even go outside anymore, you got people doing all kinds of crazy stuff and people getting killed. It’s like a crazy world.”
co-signed, thomas jones!
above is the final scene of the series. this episode just played here the other night, but i didnt realize at the time that i was watching the series finale! i might have welled up a little, had i known. another thing i didnt realize was this: there was a spinoff series called “the golden palace” that apparently lasted just one season. does anyone remember this? heres the opening of the first episode, which picks up where the series finale of TGG left off:
and here are the first few scenes inside the hotel, where the new series takes place: (part 3 of the pilot is available here for anyone who wants more)
now, when i was looking through other GG images, i naturally came across some bea arthur material. i absolutely loved her. but i didnt know much about her, or her pre-GG career. one thing that i learned from sifting through this material was that at one point, for a large part of her career in fact, she was extremely uncomfortable doing interviews. heres one with johnny carson that was particularly painful to watch: (part two is available here)
as time went by, she apparently became ok with it, and more comfortable in her skin, as you can plainly see in this interview with bryant gumbel:
there were also several bea arthur retrospectives, and my absolute favorite one, the one that had me literally blubbering in remembrance was this one. i highly, highly recommend it. sorry for the click-through, but the creator disabled the embed function. but dont let that stop you from clicking, really. it was that good!
it also seems that bea has been a hot-item google search this week. why? according to aol news:
On Tuesday a check for $300,000 arrived at the Ali Forney Center, an organization that houses and supports LGBT runaways. Turns out the cash came from none other than the late ‘Golden Girls’ great [Bea Arthur]. They don’t make ’em like Bea anymore.
golden girls marathons rock. those idiots at i-tunes will probably never make it available for my i-pod, but thats OK. i will just call in from work, and watch it at home, whenever i need my fix.
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femonade 
I love The Golden Girls too! What a refreshing notion that women over 50 don’t lose their vitality as Hollywood would have us believe. I always thought they were quite beautiful and funny; and I loved their bond, which enabled them to endure whatever life threw their way. On one episode, Rose (Betty White) has an AIDS scare. On another, they feed the homeless at Christmas. And all along, they challenge the traditionally held notion that women have no spunk or interest in sex when we get older. They have body issues AND eat cheesecake. Brilliant!
hi fem
did you watch any of the clips? i vaguely recall the “golden palace” but i had completely forgotten about it until i saw them on you-tube. and the bea arthur retrospective is really worth watching. there are GG marathons on every day on the hallmark channel, which i love. thanks for stopping by!
I have seen every episode at least three times because I watch the reruns on Hallmark and Lifetime. (Oops! That’s probably not something “normal” people admit.)
😉
Bea Arthur is one of my personal heroes.
i am pretty sure i have gone through them all more than once LOL the “golden palace” wasnt really worth watching, judging from the pilot. but it was just REALLY good to see rose, blanche and sopia together again. and i am positive that the reason GP didnt work was because bea arthur didnt participate. the four of them together were what made the whole thing work…and bea was pretty obviously the star of the show.
I know this might send me to the feminist penalty box, but Golden Girls was just unwatchable for me.
A feminist with no sense of sitcom humor sorry to say or happy to say 🙂
sheila, i never thought GG was feminist, at all. at least the message wasnt feminist. i think less and less of it the less and less i identify with the fun-fems too, because alot of the shows charm had to do with the women “still being sexual” with men after all these years. but guess what? i am starting to think that sex with men is way, way overrated.
i still love the show though. bea arthur was amazing, and the very fact that 4 older (and one of them rather elderly) women actors could find work for years on a show that revolved around their characters was teriffic.
I remember there was one episode where Rose met a lesbian who also thought she (Rose) was a lesbian. I can’t remember how it played out, but it was presented as this woman being slightly predatory. Bea Arthur WAS amazing though (and also a real life feminist,if liberal) and I loved the show. Within its cultural constraints it was still quite remarkable. And the relationship between the four women was the heart of the show.
polly, now you have me thinking back over the show, episode by episode. i remember the predatory lesbian ep. at the end, rose and the lesbian character decide to just be friends, with rose giving an absolutely frightful monologue that was obviously written by a “well-meaning” but ignorant and homophobic straight man LOL “i dont understand those feelings, but if i did, i like to think i would feel flattered that you were attracted to me!” like, you dont understand WHAT feelings, rose? sexual attraction to another human being? sheesh.
but throughout the series, they hit on some very interesting and tough subject matter that i have NEVER seen addressed elsewhere, before, during, or since. like what happens to older women after their kids are gone and their husbands die (or after a bitter divorce after decades of marriage, as bea arthurs character experienced). they still have to work to survive, in a world that is reluctant to employ older women. they are still dependant on their dead husbands pensions, which can and do terminate when the company goes under years later. they get sick. bea arthurs ex-husband gets sick and she STILL ends up taking on physical caretaking responsibilities for him, even after they have been divorced for years, becuase he didnt have anyone else to do it, and she still recognized him as a human being.
in one particularly relevant ep, the 4 women made a pact to take care of each other, if one or any of them ever got sick or became chronically or terminally il, disabled etc. bea said it was like an “insurance policy.” this really resonates today (at least as much as the day it was written, if not even more). it makes me think that women have been going through the same shit this whole time. sometimes i think we are reinventing the wheel by not talking about womens realities. that story line was written in the 80s and women STILL need each other, as an insurance policy. but i am sure that i would have thought myself pretty clever if i had come up with the idea. thank god for reruns, no?
heres an estelle getty retrospective if anyone is interested. its not as good as the bea arthur one IMO (laregely because of the music!) but its still worth watching.
I always liked Bea Arthur, however, and knew she had great politics. Must have missed a lot of 80s TV, so by the time I came across Golden Girls, it was too late FCM. Off topic, I’m really rooting for “Julie and Julia” for Oscars next year. To see a movie where two women of different generations are central to a plot, with husbands who totally support the ambitions of their wives is incredible, even today. Another topic… Happy New Year!
giving this a bump. rue mcclanahan died today. watch the retrospectives if you want a big old lump in your throat, especially bea arthurs. if anyone has one of rue, feel free to embed. i will look for one when i have a chance.