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.
Getty, who
suffered from advanced dementia, died at about 5:30 a.m.
Tuesday at her Hollywood Boulevard home in Los Angeles, said
her son, Carl Gettleman of Santa Monica, Calif.
"She was loved
throughout the world in six continents, and if they
loved sitcoms in Antarctica she would have been loved on
seven continents," her son said. "She was one of the
most talented comedic actresses who ever lived."
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 Rue McClanahan in Mama's Family.
The last character to be cast was Sophia Petrillo, the
feisty 80-something mother of Arthur's character.
"Our
mother-daughter relationship was one of the greatest comic
duos ever, and I will miss her," Arthur said in a
statement.
When she
auditioned, Getty was appearing onstage in Hollywood as the
carping Jewish mother in Harvey Fierstein's play Torch
Song Trilogy. In her early 60s she flunked her
Golden Girls screen 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 makeup artist did;
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," White said in an e-mail to
the Associated Press after Getty's death was
announced.
The Golden Girls culminated a long struggle for
success during which 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 Mannequin 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.
Audiences
particularly loved the verbal zingers Getty would hurl at
the other three. When McClanahan's libidinous
character Blanche once complained that her life was an
open book, Sophia shot back, "Your life's an open
blouse."
Getty had gained
a knack for one-liners in her late teens when she did
stand-up comedy at a Catskills hotel. Female comedians were
rare in those days, however, and she bombed.
Undeterred, she
continued to pursue a career in entertainment, and while
her parents were encouraging, her father also insisted that
she learn office skills so she would have something to
fall back on.
Born Estelle
Scher to Polish immigrants in New York, Getty fell in love
with theater when she saw a vaudeville show at age 4.
She married New
York businessman Arthur Gettleman (the source of her
stage name) in 1947, and they had two sons, Carl and Barry.
The marriage prevailed despite her long absences on
the road and in The Golden Girls.
Getty was evasive
about her height, acknowledging only that she was
"under 5 feet and under 100 pounds."
In addition to
her son Carl, Getty is survived by son Barry Gettleman, of
Miami; a brother, David Scher of London; and a sister,
Rosilyn Howard of Las Vegas. (AP)
