Spunk Made Her a ‘Golden Girl’

LOS ANGELES – Estelle Getty, the diminutive actress who spent 40 years struggling for success before landing a role of a lifetime in 1985 as the sarcastic octogenarian Sophia on TV’s The Golden Girls, has died. She was 84.

Ms. Getty, who suffered from advanced dementia, died about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday at her Hollywood Boulevard home, said her son, Carl Gettleman, of Santa Monica, Calif.

“Estelle always wanted to be an actress, and she achieved that goal beyond her dreams,” former Golden Girls co-star Rue McClanahan told The Associated Press. “Don’t feel sad about her passing. She will always be with us in her crowning achievement, Sophia.”

The Golden Girls, featuring four female retirees sharing a house in Miami, grew out of NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff’s belief that television was ignoring its older viewers.

Three of its stars had already appeared in previous series: Bea Arthur in Maude, Betty White in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Ms. McClanahan in Mama’s Family. The last character to be cast was Sophia Petrillo, the feisty 80-something mother of Ms. Arthur’s character.

“Our mother-daughter relationship was one of the greatest comic duos ever, and I will miss her,” Ms. Arthur said in a statement.

When she auditioned, Ms. Getty was appearing on stage in Hollywood as the carping Jewish mother in Harvey Fierstein’s play Torch Song Trilogy. In her early 60s, she flunked her Golden Girls test twice because it was believed she didn’t look old enough to play 80.

“I could understand that,” she told an interviewer a year after the show debuted. “I walk fast, I move fast, I talk fast.”

She came prepared for the third audition, however, wearing dowdy clothes and telling an NBC makeup artist, “To you this is just a job. To me it’s my entire career down the toilet unless you make me look 80.”

The artist did. Ms. Getty got the job and won two Emmys.

“The only comfort at this moment is that although Estelle has moved on, Sophia will always be with us,” Ms. White wrote in an e- mail to The Associated Press.

The Golden Girls culminated a long struggle for success during which Ms. Getty worked low-paying office jobs to help support her family while she tried to make it as a stage actress.

“I knew I could be seduced by success in another field, so I’d say, ‘Don’t promote me, please,’” she recalled.

She also appeared in small parts in a handful of films and TV movies during that time, including Tootsie, Deadly Force and Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story.

After her success in The Golden Girls, other roles came her way. She played Cher’s mother in Mask, Sylvester Stallone’s in Stop or My Mom Will Shoot and Barry Manilow’s in the TV film Copacabana.

Other credits included Man-nequin and Stuart Little (as the voice of Grandma Estelle).

The Golden Girls, which ran from 1985 to 1992, was an immediate hit, and Sophia, who began as a minor character, soon evolved into a major one.

Originally published by Associated Press.

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