Fifty More Nifty Things You Didn’t Know About The Golden Girls

We Have Barely Scratched the Surface

In a previous article, I offered 50 neat facts about the classic sitcom Golden Girls. Syndicated on several channels and streaming on Hulu, the award-winning sitcom follows three older single women living together in Miami. The four main characters — Rose Nylund, Blanche Deveraux, Dorothy Zbornak, and Dorothy’s mother Sophia Petrillo — bring fun and laughter to each scene as they navigate their crazy lives and learn to love each other despite each character’s rough edges. Due to the fun and laughter experienced with gathering the facts, I have decided to offer fifty more interesting things from this amazing sitcom world. Many of these came from linked sources, but others came from knowledge gained after watching the show for decades. (For further reading, you could spend hours perusing the Golden Girls Wikipedia page or various fan sites). Sitcom lovers and comedy aficionados, let us go for round two, and remember we are hardly scratching the surface.

Photo by Agence Olloweb on Unsplash

1. Sophia Petrillo and her husband Sal lived in an apartment on Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, where Dorothy and her siblings grew up.
2. Dorothy Zbornak’s nickname by her mother is “Pussycat.” A secret name by her father was “Spumoni Face.”
3. Rose Nylund’s hometown, Saint Olaf, supposedly has a monument similar to Mount Rushmore, Mount Losenbauden, which features only losing presidential candidates.
4. Rose recounts in one episode that the fictional play Hey That’s My Tractor started right in Saint Olaf.
5. Blanche Deveraux grew up on a plantation near Atlanta. Her father “Big Daddy” allegedly had an affair with her childhood nanny who visited Blanche in Season 6.
6. Estelle Getty once appeared on The Rosie O’Donnell Show and described her character Sophia Petrillo’s purse as “something many elderly women may have that holds the most precious things they own when a lot starts to be taken from them.” Getty was close to Rosie O’Donnell and others who recalled her activism for HIV/AIDS awareness.
7. Like her alter ego, Rose Nylund, Betty White was passionate about animals. For her work with animal welfare organizations, she won numerous awards and honors, including Los Angeles's designation of her as an “Ambassador to the Animals.”
8. Rue McClanahan, who played Blanche Deveraux, was married six times in real life. She was an advocate for animals and gay rights.
9. Bea Arthur, who starred as Dorothy Zbornak, was known as a key voice for the LGBT community as well as an advocate for women’s rights.
10. In the first season, Dorothy becomes involved with a married gym teacher but calls off the affair when she realizes she can’t have a full relationship with him. The gym teacher returns in season 7, but the couple is unable to restart their relationship even though the gym teacher is now single.
11. In the series, all of the women have a talent for dance. In one episode, they recount competing in a dance marathon, during which Rose showed off her acrobatic moves.
12. The women also have quite a talent for other sports, including bowling. In one episode, Dorothy proves to be quite an aficionado tennis player when competing with her college best friend. In one episode, Sophia competes in an elderly runners’ marathon.
13. Both Sophia and Rose are experts and aficionados in cooking and other domestic matters. While Dorothy is very organized and contributes to cleaning and other chores around the house, she does not seem to have inherited her mother’s talent in culinary arts. In one episode, Stan retorts that Dorothy never made a decent meal in 38 years of cooking. Blanche does not appear to be much of a cook and is known to be somewhat of a slacker around the house. In one Season 7 episode when the girls are going through storage, Blanche insists she is “pulling her weight” in helping to which Dorothy replies, “That’s between you and the laws of physics.”
14. As a kid, Dorothy endured many humorous trying events. She reports that her mother didn’t invite her to her sweet sixteen and told her a paper bird would turn into a real canary. Her sister Gloria once destroyed her favorite doll, for which Sophia recalls Dorothy made Gloria somehow have to “get a rabies shot.” Despite these minor ordeals, Dorothy recalls a very positive childhood with loving parents.
15. Dorothy’s daughter Kate, married to podiatrist Dennis, faces marital troubles in Season 2 when she finds Dennis had an affair. Dorothy and ex-husband Stan are angry with Dennis but are forced to offer love and support when Kate forgives Dennis.
16. Blanche finds romance with a wide variety of male suitors. She briefly dates a budding baseball player and at one point woos a man who turns out to be blind.
17. Dorothy, Rose, and Sophia also find many male suitors from a variety of backgrounds. In one episode, Dorothy dates a successful lawyer who ends up retiring from law to become a clown full-time. At one point, Rose briefly dated a man who wore a Goofy costume at Disney World but recounts the relationship fizzling when the guy “removed his Goofy head.”
18. In one Season 2 episode, Blanche gets close to a fitness trainer nearly half her age. This forces her to start a fitness and nutrition regimen which she quickly ditches when the trainer Derek reveals she reminds him of his mother.
19. Among the many controversial issues tackled by the series, one recurring theme is the plight of individuals reaching advanced age who often face poverty, debilitating health conditions, and lack of access to quality housing and healthcare. In one Season 4 episode, the women help Sophia’s friend Lillian find a new care home after they find her current facility has a poor reputation and proves to be underfunded and understaffed.
20. Both Rose and Sophia have volunteered at local hospitals over the years as candy stripers. In one episode, Blanche and Dorothy give Rose a dog after she experiences a tough loss in her volunteer role. She eventually gives the dog to one regular patient’s widower.
21. Rose used to play the tuba as a child, and even as an adult, it still helps her blow air into a tire.
22. Dorothy has an advanced intellect and proficiency in numerous fields. In one episode, she makes it to the final rounds of Jeopardy tryouts. However, her arrogance and snobbery keep her from being selected as a live contestant.
23. Rose likes to bake famous Scandinavian dishes, including many main courses made of herring.
24. The women try their hand at multiple business gigs. In one Season 3 episode, they recount trying to start a catering business where they prepare chickens for a wedding that doesn’t fizzle out.
25. Rose has a knack for annoying the other women (and other people) with Saint Olaf stories. She usually weaves stories about colorful townspeople, unbelievable animals, strange laws and ordinances, and unlikely occurrences into conversations.
26. Sophia has a colorful and engaging way of sharing many of her life stories. Many times, she starts a story with “Picture it. . .” and then gives place and year before beginning. While many stories are exaggerated, she often uses them to share powerful lessons.
27. Master chef Sophia tries her hand at multiple cooking gigs and contests. In one episode, she and Rose make sandwiches to sell to outdoor workers. In another episode, she enters an Italian dish into a local contest.
28. Dorothy is revealed in Season 5 to have once been a smoker and briefly starts the habit again due to stress when Sophia gets married.
29. In Season 3, Dorothy’s ex-husband Stan Zbornak gets the former couple in deep trouble when an IRS audit reveals he falsely reported a Corvette purchase as a business expense. Dorothy pawns the expensive ring Stan bought her on their 38th wedding anniversary, but Stan buys it back for her and ends up selling his prized car.
30. No flashbacks or episodes in the show’s present ever reveal Stan’s residence. Apparently, Stan had a dream home in Maui with his second wife Kate, the stewardess. But he must have lost it to her in the divorce because he moves back to Miami and seems to spend more time at the women’s home than anywhere else.
31. Blanche, Rose, and Dorothy all date the local theater’s special guest star, famous actor Patrick Vaughn, in one Season 2 episode. It is revealed Vaughn has courted dozens of the women actors who belong to the theater.
32. Throughout Season 7, Dorothy goes with Stan to several appointments with his therapist to help him get over her. The psychiatrist uses a “monkey transference” treatment, requiring Stan to transfer his feelings for Dorothy to a traffic cone-shaped fake monkey. The treatment falters when Stan hooks up with Dorothy’s sister Gloria right before a hurricane.
33. Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose vacation on a tropical island in Season 2. In their run-down resort, they must share a bathroom with three young rude, cigar-smoking men.
34. In one Season 2 episode, Dorothy and Rose collaborate to compose an energetic music score advertising Miami’s wonders. They enter a competition and win second place.
35. The women often spar over romantic interests. In one Season 2 episode, Dorothy and Blanche even feud over Dorothy’s ex-husband Stan(Dorothy is mainly angry Blanche continues to go out with Stan because she thinks Blanche is treading too closely on her past life).
36. Rose reports in Season 3 that she was valedictorian in her high school class even though she ranked 4th in grades. She won the honor through a traditional “senior straw drawing contest.”
37. Sophia briefly joins the convent in Season 6 after her friend passes on. However, Dorothy, Rose, and Blanche convince her to come back home and resume her very abundant life.
38. In Season 3, Rose writes letters to USSR Premier Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan pleading for both superpowers to dismantle their nuclear weapons. The letter gets profound praise from USSR leaders, and the women are invited to the country. However, disappointment erupts when it is revealed the leaders think Rose’s letter was written by a nine-year-old.
39. Throughout its seven-season run, many top stars made guest appearances. This included the teenage Mario Lopez making one of his television debut guest starring and others like Burt Reynolds, Lyle Wagner, and Sonny Bono. The series finale starred Leslie Nielsen as Blanche’s Uncle Lucas who ends up marrying Dorothy.
40. Blanche fears getting older and constantly hides her age or claims to be much younger. At one point in Season 6, she lets a new romantic interest believe her baby granddaughter is her new baby daughter.
41. Blanche’s sister Charmaine writes a novel in one Season 5 episode. The novel is about a young heroine obsessed with her looks and wooed by many male suitors. Blanche thinks the book is about her and ends up confronting Charmaine at a book signing. However, the clash seems to help push sales of the novel. Later, Charmaine actually reveals the novel is about herself.
42. The roommates’ squabbles are usually resolved with apologies, deeper understanding, and cheesecake. In one Season 3 episode, Blanche and Dorothy secretly read Rose’s diary that mentions cruel things about roommates who “squeal at night” and “belch in their face.” It turns out Rose kept the diary while raising two pigs when a teenager in 4H.
43. Throughout the series, Blanche works as a part-time assistant at a local museum. Dorothy takes a temporary job there in Season 2, and the shared work environment creates tension between the two friends.
44. Dorothy’s son Michael infrequently visits his mother over the series. In season 2, he stays and unexpectedly has a fling with Rose’s daughter, Kirsten. In season 3, he ends up marrying a black woman named Lorraine.
45. The lanai in the women’s house’s back porch has several reclining seats and a grill. In one episode, a skydiver accidentally lands in their backyard, and in several others, trees fall over but usually miss the house.
46. Before Stan Zbornak, Dorothy briefly was the romantic interest of John Noretti, who stood her up at their high school prom. When he returns in Season 6, it is revealed Sophia sent him away because he was rude and snobby. John tells Dorothy he credits this encounter with Sophia for turning his life around.
47. Sophia has a big mouth and pistol-like wit. She is known to tease all three of her “children” roommates, including jiving about her daughter Dorothy’s lack of a romantic life and mistake of “getting knocked up in high school.”
48. Rose’s sister Holly visits during one episode in Season 4. Annoying to her older sister, Holly proves to have destructive behaviors when she is caught with Blanche’s boyfriend Harry.
49. In Season 7, Dorothy briefly dates a Beatles impersonator who is not quite the talented composer she thought he was.
50. The women are all wholeheartedly devoted to charity and public service(even Blanche in her own way). At some point, each of the women is considered for one or more service or volunteer awards.

Photo by Antonio Cuellar on Unsplash

So, we have ventured into round two of fifty nifty things about The Golden Girls. What a fun exercise(though not nearly as exciting as watching any episode of this top-rated sitcom). We may be back soon with an additional fifty unrealized things about some of our favorite comedy stars ever. Or, you may be so amused by the humor and brilliance of the series to share some amazing facts of your own.