In honour of the 40th anniversary, pop culture guru David Ferguson explores the legacy of the amazing women behind The Golden Girls, the iconic TV show that has a special place in the heart of the LGBTQ+ community.

I have written a few gay icon pieces, but this one is special: it’s about The Golden Girls. Seeing as it is the 40th anniversary of the first episode, it seems like it’s the perfect time to do it. I know what you’re going to say: isn’t The Golden Girls an obvious pick? The show that caused LGBTQ+ clubs to shut off the music so people could watch it? The show that had queer representation back when you didn’t see a lot of it?

But this is about the actors behind the characters: Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty.

Bea Arthur is probably the one who is already considered a gay icon. The LGBTQ+ community had supported her career since the 1970s, and she embraced the community. In the early 1970s, she would host wild dinner parties at her Los Angeles home. The guests were by and large gay and mostly closeted men, as most were then, including the likes of Hollywood star Rock Hudson.

Later in life, Arthur decided to give something back and left an endowment to the Ali Forney Center, an organisation for homeless LGBTQ+ youth in New York City. She first learned of the organisation in 2005, when her friend Ray Klausen, who designed most of the Academy Awards sets in the 1980s, asked her to perform for a benefit show for an organisation in dire financial straits. Despite her advanced age, she agreed to fly from L.A. to New York to perform her one-woman Broadway show.

After she was finished, she sat for photographs. She nearly didn’t make it out alive as her appearance nearly caused the mostly-gay crowd to fly into a frenzy, “pushing toward her, grabbing at her, eager for face time with the great legend,” recalled Carl Siciliano, Ali Forney’s executive director.

She escaped unscathed, and the benefit raised $40,000. Bea Arthur said of the organisation, “These kids at the Ali Forney Center are literally dumped by their families because of the fact that they are lesbian, gay or transgender – this organization really is saving lives.”

Betty White was also an LGBTQ+ ally and a queer icon. Her Golden Girls character Rose dealt with the possible exposure to HIV through a blood transfusion in a 1990 episode titled ’72 Hours’, the sitcom being one of the first to mention HIV and AIDS. The message behind the episode was that it had the potential to affect everyone, not just the LGBTQ+ community. White said, “Not only were people understandably afraid of AIDS, but a lot of people wouldn’t even admit it existed. So this was a daring episode to do, and the writers went straight for it.”

This was not the only time Betty White dedicated her time to HIV and AIDS causes. She recorded a public service announcement on the dangers of drug users sharing needles to help prevent HIV transmission at the height of the AIDS epidemic. She was also a firm supporter of Elton John’s AIDS foundation.

In 2013, she changed her name to “Betty Purple” for a day to mark Spirit Day, an anti-LGBTQ+ bullying awareness day. When asked about her support for LGBTQ+ rights on Larry King in 2014, Betty White responded, “Oh, I don’t care who you sleep with, whom you sleep with, it’s what kind of a human being are you.”

Rue McClanahan played Blanche, the character gay men wanted to be: someone who is strong, independent and living life on their own terms. Interestingly, McClanahan had been offered the part of Rose, but she didn’t connect with the character, having played a similar role before, and felt she could do more with Blanche. Luckily, she ended up being asked to read for Blanche, and the rest is history.

Her onscreen character struggled with coming to terms with her brother’s sexuality. The other women helped her understand him, and it showed that people can change their minds if they listen. The show eventually aired her brother’s commitment ceremony. Like Arthur and White, she was a vocal supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and marriage equality, notably participating in the 2009 benefit concert Defying Inequality for equal marriage rights.

If you doubted the actor’s popularity among gay men, then just picture a line of them spilling out of A Different Light, the gay themed bookstore in West Hollywood, and stretching a quarter block down Santa Monica at lunchtime. Just to get a book signed by her, more precisely, her autobiography: My First Five Husbands… And the Ones Who Got Away. Her real life seemed to have all the romance and vigour of her onscreen character.

My favourite thing I discovered in my research about her is this: asked if she had ever seen The Q Guide to The Golden Girls, a book about the show and its impact on gay culture, she replied, “No, I haven’t. Is it naughty?”

Finally, we have Estelle Getty. In 1989, she said, “I am tremendously grateful to the gay community. They put me where I am today. They discovered me, and they stuck by me, and they’ve been very loyal.” The “discovered me” is a reference to queer playwright Harvey Fierstein creating a character specifically with her in mind. In 1982, at nearly 60 years old, the role of Mrs. Beckoff in the Broadway production of Torch Song Trilogy was her breakthrough role.

For Estelle Getty, HIV activism was a very personal cause. At a benefit in 1987, she called it her “most important cause right now.” In 1989, she said, “I’ve been in show business all my life, and the majority of my friends are gay. I don’t deny that. A lot of my friends have died from AIDS.” One of those friends included her Torch Song Trilogy co-star Court Miller (1952–1986). She also cared for her nephew, Stephen Scher, until his death from AIDS in 1992.

As you can tell, all these women deserve the status of queer icons even without their iconic roles on The Golden Girls. Hopefully, you’ve learned a little bit more about what made them truly magnificent human beings.

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