The ABC News special The Golden Girls: 40 Years of Laughter and Friendship gave a glimpse at many unseen and forgotten aspects of the famed television show, including the rivalry between Betty White and Bea Arthur, which reached a boiling point during one episode. The solution to this was rather quirky and ended up being memorable for everyone involved in the show.
Betty White and Bea Arthur’s Golden Girls feud ended because of ‘naked’ photos
The Golden Girls ran from 1985 to 1992 on NBC and has been widely considered one of the most popular shows ever made. Apart from all the other avenues the new special explored, it delved deep into the rivalry between the two legendary Emmy-winning actresses, Betty White and Bea Arthur. They played Rose Nylund and Dorothy Zbornak, respectively.
While they had tension between them, it boiled over to a threatening exchange when they were working on the 1986 season 3 episode, Twas the Nightmare Before Christmas (via PEOPLE). “I used to get calls at home from Bea complaining about Betty,” co-producer Marsha Posner Williams said on the special. “I got a call from Bea one day, and she said, ‘I just ran into that woman at the supermarket. I’m going to write her a letter.’ I said, ‘Bea, do yourself a favor. Please write her a letter, read it out loud, and then throw it away, because you would serve no purpose.'”
In that particular episode, things reached their peak. “We heard yelling backstage. And we all sort of crept out. They were having a fight. It was the only time ever,” Barry Fanaro, a part of the writing team, recalled. “The next day you could feel the tension in the air a little.”
To cool things down, the stagehands came up with an unexpected idea. “They had taken naked pictures of themselves, riding horses, in saddles, as firemen,” Fanaro explained. “So they had planted them in the calendar, and that immediately broke any tension. It was all over. They were hugging each other.” Executive producer Tony Thomas added, “Bea laughed so loud.”
The Golden Girls remains one of the most celebrated sitcoms of all time.
Originally reported by Sourav Chakraborty on ComingSoon.
