HURWITZ: We all became more competitive. It was about trying to top somebody else's jokes, and that was reflected in the show. But a more generous way to look at it is that it was probably a more honest depiction of what would happen in year 6 of these women living together.
CHERRY: The marching orders were not to change — and the women got stuck in the same place: Rose got dumber, Blanche got sluttier, Dorothy got more sarcastic.
WITT: Part of it was attrition and fatigue. You look at some of the latter episodes and realize that they weren't about enough other than being funny.
Arthur apparently agreed, and in 1991 she decided it was time to hang up Dorothy's caftans for good: ''Playing those things got a little usual.'' On May 9, 1992, 27 million viewers tuned in for ''One Flew Out of the Cuckoo's Nest,'' the hour-long series finale, in which Dorothy marries Blanche's uncle Lucas (Leslie Nielsen) after a whirlwind courtship.
ARTHUR: I knew that I had to leave. I didn't want to do any more episodic television. It was in the beginning of the seventh season that I thought, We've had it. Let's leave when we're really at the height.
MCCLANAHAN: They had to give [Bea] the moon to get her to come back for a seventh year. Had she continued past that, I think we could have run for a few more years as The Golden Girls.
WHITE: I remember walking through the last season of Mary being so sad, but with The Golden Girls, it wasn't so much sadness as it was a deep realization that none of us would ever be a part of something so special again.
With the Girls' lanai closed, the three remaining actresses accepted a surprising new offer: a spin-off. On Sept. 18, 1992, Blanche, Rose, and Sophia moved into The Golden Palace, in which the trio operated a South Beach hotel. Hurwitz ran the show, which also starred Cheech Marin and an unknown named Don Cheadle. Its Friday-night premiere on CBS — where it moved after NBC and Witt-Thomas-Harris Productions reportedly failed to agree on the number of episodes that would be produced — notched so-so ratings, and Palace was canceled after one season.
WITT: The decision to keep going was based on keeping everyone working. We felt a responsibility. In retrospect, we didn't have as much to say as we thought we did.
MCCLANAHAN: They should have hired a new actress to replace Bea. We had a good show but nobody saw it. It was buried.
THOMAS: We were on thin ice with the whole damn premise. Every time I see Don Cheadle, I apologize.
IV. THE GILDED AGE
The Golden Girls joined Lifetime's lineup in 1997 and quickly became one of the network's most popular shows; nightly airings still attract roughly 1.2 million viewers. (Last month, the network began airing The Golden Palace.) Witt and Thomas went on to produce series including The
John Larroquette Show and Pearl and films like Insomnia, and they continue to develop scripts. Harris, meanwhile, is writing a play. The rest of the cast remains busy: White now appears as cantankerous Catherine Piper on ABC's Boston Legal, a role that earned her a 15th Emmy nod last year; Arthur occasionally takes her Tony-nominated show Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends on the road; McClanahan is currently starring as Madame Morrible in the Broadway musical Wicked and is writing her autobiography, My First Five Husbands. They all agree
that The Golden Girls is one of TV's all-time greatest sitcoms.
MCCLANAHAN: I knew that I was doing something revolutionary in its quality, but I had no idea of the effect that it was going to have.
ARTHUR: It was so antiestablishment that everybody loved it.
WHITE: I taste the glory each and every time I meet a fan. It's what you dream about, why you get into this business in the first place. It was the peak of everybody's career.
More Beatrice Arthur and Golden Girls:
Beatrice Arthur, 'Golden Girls' star, dies at 86
Beatrice Arthur: An appreciation by Ken Tucker
Golden Girls: A roundtable Q&A
Estelle Getty: Share your memories
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