"The Golden Girls" was a popular sitcom that aired from 1985 to 1992 on NBC, with a total episode count of 180 half hour episodes during its seven season run. It won two Emmy's for Best Comedy, and each prime character won an individual Emmy for comedic performance. The show also won three Golden Globes for best comedy.
The show stars Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty. The series centers on the adventures and misadventures four older single women sharing a house in Miami, Florida. The owner of the house is a widow named Blanche Devereaux (McClanahan), who was joined by fellow widow Rose Nylund (White) and divorcée Dorothy Zbornak (Arthur), after they each responded to an ad Blanche had placed on the bulletin board of a local grocery store a year before the start of the series. In the pilot episode, the three were joined by Dorothy's 80-year-old mother, Sophia Petrillo (Getty), after the group retirement home where she had been living burned to the ground. (Fun fact, Sophia was only going to be a minor character in the show, but test audiences loved Getty's performance so much that she was made main character.)
It was a smash hit, and in many ways ahead of its time, tackling issues like the AIDS epidemic, homosexuality, race relations, homelessness and assisted suicide, and often did it from a perspective that hadn't been seen before on television, from the perspective of a 50 plus all female cast.
"This show shocked people," said Marcia Gnadt. "It was extremely funny and more than a little racy. They usually went right up to the line, and if nobody dared to talk about it, the girls would joke about it. And it was so charming that they got away with it, people couldn't get enough of this show. Even now, years later in 2017, people are still watching on the Classic TV channels and it's got a huge fan following. Betty White, who's the last living cast member, is a huge star to this day, in large part because of her role in that show."
And so Marcia and the Jesse James Players want to capture that spirit this December.
"In Garretson Christmas has traditionally been a big deal," she said. (Continued on Page 2 of our online edition)
