How ‘The Golden Girls’ Elderly Cast Helped the Writers Get Away With Dirtier Jokes

Contrary to Dorothy Zbornak’s famous line, age is more than just a state of mind. It’s also what paved the way for some of The Golden Girls’ most beloved jokes. 

TV producer Stan Zimmerman discussed how ageist misconceptions surrounding the series’ older cast shaped Golden Girls’ signature sense of humor and allowed the writers more leeway to sneak in gags that might have otherwise been censored. “I couldn’t believe what we got away with on the show,”  Zimmerman admitted during a TV appearance ahead of Golden Girls’ 40th anniversary on Sunday. “People thought, ‘Oh, they’re just these old ladies, they can say anything, they seem so harmless.’”

This perception particularly paid off in Season One’s “Adult Education,” when Blanche Devereaux famously said “kiss my a**” to her creepy psychology teacher. “I’m like, ‘That’ll never go, it’ll get flagged by the censors,’” Zimmerman recalled of his initial reaction to the line, one he said appears “on T-shirts now.” 

The cast’s collective star power also played a role in Golden Girls’ boundary-breaking humor. In the early days of watching Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, Betty White and Estelle Getty in rehearsal, Zimmerman said he and his fellow writers “knew this wasn’t just some ordinary show,” and this revelation drove them to be even wittier while crafting the sitcom’s scripts.  

“We can’t just give them ordinary jokes,” he said of the “pressure” from the series’ producers. “We have to give them the best of the best because they were the best of the best.”

This push paid off, by cementing Golden Girls as a TV classic and allowing the show’s writers’ room even more freedom. “Once you have a hit show, you get away with a lot more,” Zimmerman concluded.