The comedy world is littered with duos who couldn’t hang for the long term — so much so Lorne Michaels, who appears on this list of comedy partnerships that imploded, has another one that’s not even cited here: Susan Morrison’s new Michaels biography tells the story of how he parted ways with his comedy partner Hart Pomerantz a few years before creating Saturday Night Live. The feud between Golden Girls co-stars Beatrice Arthur and Betty White is also well-known, but the thing about a good piece of gossip is that there’s almost always something more to unpack. And some people who worked on the show behind the camera have been sitting on stories for a while.
The Golden Girls is in the midst of a 40th-anniversary celebration, including a live reading of two episodes that closed out the ATX TV Festival earlier this month, attended by several people in costume (and wigs) as the show’s beloved characters. The latest event was a panel at the Pride LIVE! Hollywood festival last night, with several Golden Girls writer-producers, a casting director and a script supervisor. Based on The Hollywood Reporter’s recap, co-producer Marsha Posner Williams didn’t even wait for a question about the friction between White and Arthur, bringing it up herself.
“When that red light was on (and the show was filming), there were no more professional people than those women, but when the red light was off, those two couldn’t warm up to each other if they were cremated together,” Williams said.
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Evidently Arthur’s practice of calling White a “c—” was so well-known that if Arthur would call her “and say, ‘I just ran into that c— at the grocery store,” Williams would know which c— Arthur was talking about. Arthur is described as using the term in reference to White in other venues, including on a plane and while hosting guests at her home for dinner. It’s a shame the festival organizers couldn’t track down Arthur’s hairdresser, accountant or car mechanic, all of whom she presumably also heard such tales in the 1980s.
While script supervisor Isabel Omero pushed back on Williams’ claims, recalling Arthur and White walking “arm in arm” together to receive notes at show tapings, Williams wasn’t having it, implying that it was so one of them could push the other in front of any runaway golf carts they might come upon.
The source of the actors’ animosity is, it seems, still a matter of dispute that neither of the late performers publicly shared before their deaths. Co-producer Jim Vallely theorized that it was because studio audiences gave White a more effusive reaction when the cast was introduced at tapings. Williams, however, countered that Arthur hated White’s habit of breaking character mid-scene to address the studio audience directly.
Bad as this sounds, casting director Joel Thurm suggested how it could have been worse. When Brandon Tartikoff, then the head of NBC Entertainment, balked at casting Arthur, Thurm pitched Broadway legend Elaine Stritch instead. In a 2002 one-woman show, Stritch herself described her experience of auditioning for the show, saying she “blew it” by improvising too much. Even if Stritch had been word-perfect with her dialogue, however, Thurm said at the panel that all the Golden Girls decision makers were dead set against her and chilly during her performance. Stritch also said in 2002 that, although she regretted missing out on the payday and job security, “for me to work with Betty White every day would be like taking cyanide.”
Calling a co-star a c— isn’t particularly generous, but it’s a long way from a poisoning suicide.
Williams, it turns out, also worked with Stritch for a day on a pilot: “Before the day was half over, we were calling her ‘Elaine Bitch.’” And Williams is the one who puts the blame for the show’s end after seven seasons on Arthur, the only cast member who wasn’t willing to continue.
If nothing else, this panel has let us all know Williams has a lot of stories and no filter: Send the full transcript to a hungry literary agent and get this loose-lipped lady a book deal.
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