How Old Were the Golden Girls Supposed to Be? [Archive] - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

Yong Fang

03-09-2023, 05:42 AM

First, we can look at how old the actresses were in 1985. Three of the four of them played themselves at their own ages. The series began in the Fall of 1985. From the oldest to the youngest player.....

Betty White was 63. (Who lived the longest.) (Rose)
Bea Arthur was 63. (Dorothy)
Estelle Getty was 62. (Sophia)
Rue McClanahan was 51. (Blanche)

I think except for Estelle Getty as Sophia, the three other women played their characters about the same age as them. The character of Blanche thought she was pregnant but went through menopuase which is about the right age of the actress above.

Using Wikipedia as a guide of the characters and their age....

Blanche

"Through out the course of the show, Blanche's precise age was never told. In the first-season episode "Blanche and the Younger Man" she admits that she is over fifty. During the Mother's Day episode, Blanche's mother says that she was 17 in 1949, placing her birth year in 1931 or 1932. In an episode later in the series, Rose successfully got all of Blanche's documentation, but when she sat down with the other girls to go over the information she had received, the age columns of all of papers said "Deleted by Authority of the Governor", implying Blanche had sex with the Governor to get her age struck from her record. In a 1993 episode of The Golden Palace, Blanche's brother, Tad, confirms to Rose that Blanche is in her early 60s.

In the first episode of season two, Blanche fears she is pregnant. She told the girls that she will be 65 when the baby is 18, therefore she would be 47 in season 2. However Sophia responds with “try 70” implying that Blanche's real age is 52.

In real life, Rue McClanahan was the youngest member of the show's cast (11 to 12 years younger than the other three series regulars).
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Rose.

Charlie and Rose's marriage length is unclear. Although it was mentioned in the 1985 pilot episode that Charlie had been dead for 15 years, in the first-season episode "Job Hunting", Rose says that she had been a housewife for 32 years when Charlie died in 1980. In the same episode, Rose is 55 years old in 1985, which would put her birth year in 1930. This would make her 63 when The Golden Palace goes off the air in 1993.
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Dorothy

Born in New York City (as was actress Bea Arthur), Dorothy is the daughter of Italian immigrants Sophia and Salvadore Petrillo. Dorothy states in one episode that she is a Leo[3] (born in July or August). In the episode "Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself" (1987), Sophia says Dorothy was conceived in 1931, after Sophia and Salvadore's first argument as newlyweds (Bea Arthur herself was born in 1922). In the episode "Till Death Do We Volley" (1989), it is said Dorothy attended her high school prom in 1946, though it is not mentioned if this was during her senior year or if she was younger (as some high schools have junior proms, junior/senior proms, and proms that allow anyone in high school to attend). A later episode, "An Illegitimate Concern", implies her graduation date would have been 1949. Dorothy was regarded to be in her mid-50s in the first season of The Golden Girls (Bea Arthur was 63 when the show began). In the show's final season in 1992, Dorothy's age is stated as 62 (Bea Arthur was 70 at the time).
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Sophia

Sophia was born in Sicily to Angelo, Sr. and Eleanor. Their family name was never established in the series. She had two sisters, Angela and Regina, and a brother, Angelo, Jr. Although another brother was mentioned, he was unnamed and was only spoken of a few times. Dorothy mentions an "Uncle Vito" in Season 2, but it is unclear whether he is Sophia's brother or the brother of her husband, Salvadore. In the first episode of The Golden Palace (1992) Sophia was described as a 87-year-old who experiences flashbacks to her younger life in Sicily, depicting herself as a young peasant girl having multiple romantic affairs earlier in life (1912 and 1922). However, in another Season 2 episode "And Then There Was One", Sophia claims she had been "walking since 1904." These discrepancies are likely due to age-related cognition errors, or more likely, dramatic license taken by the show's producers.
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Bonus.................

Stan (Dorothy's ex-husband.) Played by Herb Edelman, was born in 1933 meaning he was 52 when the show began in 1985, making him roughly eleven years younger than Bea Arthur who played his ex-wife. However Stan and Dorothy were the same age in the show, but Edelman looked older than what he was (and just looking him up surprised me)

So from the actresses to the characters...................

Sophia was about 25 years older than the actress playing her.

Blanche is about the same age as the actress playing her.

Dorothy is about 10 years younger than the actress playing her.

Stan is ten years OLDER than the actor playing him.

Rose was about eight years younger than the actress playing her.