Estelle Getty

Jul 25 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

IT WAS a bold idea, particularly for American TV, which traditionally tried to beautify human frailties, including old age.

But there was an endearing generosity of spirit in The Golden Girls, which placed in a family setting three women in late-middle age with the mother of one, who is perkily resisting the inevitable slip into Shady Pines old folks home.

Although it would seem less innovative now, the series, which ran from 1985-1992, realised that you didn’t have to be young and lean to be attractive.

Estelle Getty, 4ft 11ins, in a fluffy white wig, specs on a loop and a jumble-sale cardigan, played Sophia Petrillo, who is wiser than she appears, delivering the occasional homily, as well as being the deliverer and the butt of wisecracks.

“Please, I’m in my twilight years,” she said to Dorothy Zbornak (Beatrice Arthur), her daughter.

“You’re in the twilight zone,” replied Dorothy to gales of laughter.

The other two characters were Rose Nylund (Betty White) and Blanche Elizabeth Devereaugh (Rue McClanahan), the wilting southern belle, who is incorrigibly sexy.

On approaching a nudist camp, Blanche is confronted by the naked bell-boy, who wants to know where to put a certain object.

“Buy me a drink and we’ll talk,” says Blanche.

In another episode, Blanche had told Sophia that her life was an open book. She is corrected. “You’re life is an open blouse.”

Estelle Scher was born to Jewish parents in New York, attending the Yiddish theatre as a little girl. But her stage ambitions were broken by marriage to Arthur Gettle- man, a glass retailer, with whom she had two sons.

However, when they began school, she returned to the stage, appearing in experimental plays, which she would later admit meant that nobody knew what they were about. But before long her career had advanced back into the mainstream, including stage, TV and film, enabling her to “play mothers to heroes and mothers to zeros. I’ve played Irish mothers, Jewish mothers, Italian mothers and southern mothers.”

Stardom came to Estelle Getty quite late in life, though she was younger than her character, but she believed that she had already been a success, having brought up two children.

After Beatrice Arthur left, the Golden Girls became almost as popular in the Golden Palace (1992-93).

Estelle Getty, actress; born July, 1923, died July 22, 2008.