Why didn't The Golden Girls have a lead Jewish character?

Who cares?

Heaven forbid!

Anti-semitism in TV.

The producers were not allowed to. There are interviews about the difficulties the producers had getting the Mary Tyler Moore show on because of the Jewish characters.

I think the infamous "fifth lead", Coco, was intended to add a little mishigas.

Interesting question. I always felt that George Costanza was Jewish, and so were his parents. But I suspect the family was given an Italian last name because there was already a “Seinfeld” and higher-ups wouldn’t allow more than one officially Jewish character.

Italian sells better to middle America than Jewish. They're New Yorky but at least they're Christian the thinking would go.

Everyone was crypto-Jewish so it doesn't matter.

[quote] Everyone was crypto-Jewish so it doesn't matter.

Including Blanche and Rose?

Because at 2% of the country they're already overrepresented on tv?

r9 Overrepresented because they're way more interesting and talented than boring flyoverstan.

You can make all your own arguments you like Mary, quit piggybacking off mine!

Why not your own people?

The next door doctor was Jewish, I think. At first I thought Dorothy was Jewish.

Haha. Jew.

They all acted like yentas. Isn't that enough?

[quote] The next door doctor was Jewish

Dr. Harry Weston was a Jew?

They weren't over-represented at the time.

Anyway, in Miami Beach, they are like 50% of the population--and even higher in the 1980s!

Bea Arthur is Jewish? I didn't think there were Jewish women over 6 ft tall.

No Latinos & It's Miami.

R18 She's 5' 8" without heels.

Everyone else on the show is super short except for Stan.

There were no trans women of color as leads either. This programme was literal violence.

I always felt the humor and the writing on the show was substantially Jewish. But Italian and Jewish humor is marginally adjacent, so it passed. You could see the similarities and differences during the show where Phil had his funeral in the interplay between Brenda Vaccaro, Bea Arthur, and Estelle Getty. Shortly afterwards the network, (or another one) tried out a Boston-Irish family sitcom. Most of the actors were Jewish and the humor was Jewish. It was a disaster, and off the air in half a season. There is such thing as Irish humor (think Melissa McCarthy, or Graham Norton), but it's quite a bit different from Jewish humor and the tone of the show was just off.

Max was Jewish, and you have to assume that Miles was too.

R5, I never bought Elaine Benes as WASP, either. In my mind, they were all Jewish.

[Quote] There is such thing as Irish humor (think Melissa McCarthy, or Graham Norton)

Graham Norton is Protestant. His humor is WASP.

My Italian grandmother and her friends hated the Golden Girls because Bea and Estelle were terrible at playing Italian. Even Estelle hated playing Italian...she said so in an interview that she begged the producers to rewrite the characters as Jewish.

LMAO R3 The entire entertainment industry is made by semitic people.

OP, stop being an sjw snowflake and continue living your aimless life.

Gutman! He's Jewish.

JEWISH-JEWISH ??

i always thought Sophia was Jewish. She seemed way more Jewish than Italian and the Jewishness fit into retired in FL.

They had a rabbi at the Moonlight Madness party. Maybe one of the girls was planning to convert?

Dorothy's cold and cruel treatment of me broke my heart.

I was also on the hook for that reservation for 10 at The Mortimer Club.

I, as well as the rest of Miami's literary intelligentsia, will never forgive her.

I also suspect both she and her dwarf mother might have been closet Jews.

[quote] No Latinos & It's Miami.

There was the boxer guy they sponsored. Didn’t he go on to Julliard?

Maybe they figured the fact that all of the producers, most of the directors, and probably around a third of all actors are Jews is enough Jewishness to go around.

George was Catholic. His father was even a member of Knights of Columbus.

They probably figured "picture it...Jerusalem 1935" wasn't going to fly

Wasn't the southern belle Blanche revealed to have some Jewish ancestry in one of the episodes? Or was that on Designing Women?

[quote] I always felt that George Costanza was Jewish, and so were his parents.

I think it was implied that his mother was Jewish and his father was Italian. Which, I guess would make him Jewish. I mean, come on, that woman who played his mother has to be Jewish.

They didn’t include Jewish characters because the show centers around racial and regional stereotypes, and Jewish Hollywood left themselves out on purpose. Dorothy and Sophia are spicy Italians, Rose, a dumb Scandinavian, Blanche, slutty Southerner, Stan, dumb Pole.

[quote]There was the boxer guy they sponsored. Didn’t he go on to Julliard?

And a lucrative career as a TV reporter!

I never thought about the show that way

but you're probably right about the lack of Jewish stereotypes.

r25 Graham Norton was Protestant, but he was raised in Ireland. Both of his parents were raised in Ireland. He had his genealogy traced on a television program. His immediate forebears for many generations are Irish. His closest English ancestor was from the 1700s in Yorkshire - someone who migrated to Ireland at that time. His sense of humor is definitely Irish, not WASP. There are other elements of Irish humor that revolve around Catholicism (guilt, sex), but other aspects are just generic Irish humor- quick wit, quick comebacks, play on language.

LOOL! :)

Did we forget Dorothy convincing her student to turn himself into immigration?

This touching holiday classic doesn't mention Hanukkah once.

Yenta.

Bea was NOT Jewish. She was Italian.

Beatrice Frankel was Italian?

Estelle really wanted Sophia and Dorothy to be Jewish b/c of the humor but the networks weren't having it.

[quote]Beatrice Frankel was Italian?

BERNICE, not Beatrice.

R49

That's funny ' cause Valerie Harper wanted Rhoda to be Italian but they said, 'No, Jewish.'

Why no black lead? Why no Asian?

[quote] I think it was implied that his mother was Jewish and his father was Italian. Which, I guess would make him Jewish. I mean, come on, that woman who played his mother has to be Jewish.

You need to meet annoying Italian mamas.

From Wikipedia:

Beatrice Arthur was born Bernice Frankel on May 13, 1922, to Rebecca (née Pressner; 1895–1985, born in Austria) and Philip Frankel (1885–1973, born in Poland) in Brooklyn, New York.[1][2] Arthur was raised in a Jewish home with older sister Gertrude and younger sister Marian.

Yes, r37. Southern Belle Blanche's great-grandmother was a Yankee Jew.

Dorothy: "Oh, did I mention her last name was Feldman?"

Why didn't The Golden Girls have a lead Sudanese character?

It just hit me why there was no Jewish lead. A Jewish lead character in a South Florida-based sitcom would have been living in some condo complex (like Mr and Mrs Seinfeld), not a regular old detached house in some random neighborhood. Particularly since the four GG women were not Miami natives, but transplants.

Every Jewish person living near the beach was a transplant.

You guys really should watch this documentary that came out last year about Miami Beach in the 1970s-1980s.

Why didn't The Golden Girls have a lead Abyssinian character?

Why are people rattling on about Jewish and Italian as if they are exclusive, you can be both.

[quote]I think it was implied that his mother was Jewish and his father was Italian.

What makes you think that? There are never any even slightly overt references to George's mother being Jew, other than things like a rye bread and she plays mahjong.

We could teleport Nanny Fine's mother and Grandma Yetta from Queens to Miami. They can be the Jewish Golden Girls.

Not to drag the BRF into this, but I didn't know the Queen Mother was a huge fan and had them perform in London on stage.

Marc Cherry, who was a writer and producer for the last seasons of "Golden Girls" (and "Golden Palace") did create a Jewish character for Judith Ivey on "The Five Mrs. Buchannans". A lot of the humor was based on the fact that Eileen Heckart and the other daughters-in-law were of a Christian faith. "Oh there's that delightful Semitic sense of humor", Heckart cracks in the first episode, and Charlotte Ross's character upon meeting her says "Shalom!". Later while the women are preparing for Christmas, Heckart is upset by the breaking of her ceramic baby Jesus and Ivey goes off on her for not respecting her Hanukkah beliefs. That was on just a year after the ill-fated "Golden Palace".

This is an actual thing.

The Jewish executives at TV networks in that era did not think audiences would be up for a show with Jewish lead characters, and even if audiences went for it, they were afraid that advertisers would shy away.

So clearly Jewish characters like Golden Girls and everyone-but-Jerry on Seinfeld were made not-Jewish and on Friends they downplayed the characters Jewishness-- I was shocked that many DLers did not realize Rachel (Aniston) was supposed to be Jewish since she embodied EVERY SINGLE JEWISH PRINCESS STEREOTYPE ever-- doctor daddy who paid for everything, nose job, works as buyer for Bloomingdales, was going to marry dentist because he was rich, etc., etc.

Compare that to 2019 where you've got shows like Transparent, which must often be baffling AF for gentiles with all the Jewish in-jokes and even Mrs. Maisel and Entourage, which I assume like three DLers watched, but was the first TV series that showed Jews doing Jewy things like going to synagogue and attending bar mitzvahs.

R65, you usually annoy me, but thank you for that post.

Bless your heart, R66. you are quite welcome.

The actress who played Sophia practically begged the writers and producers at the beginning of production -- based on the scripts -- to just make her and Dorothy Jewish but it was a no go.

Is that Dorothy? Or Miss Gilda Radner emerging from her morning toilette?

R20 she gave her height as 9' 1/2" in stockinged feet, but she was known to fudge facts about herself. For instance, she denied serving in the military during WWII, even when confronted about it in an interview. Incidentally, here's her ID card photo that shows her height. She's more like 5'11" and with heels she'd exceed 6', which is probably why she always wore flats on the GG's.

R63

I'm a Jew.

Whoo!

Because their mothers weren't Jewish.

R70 Betty and Rue are/were very, very short — like 5’3” max, and with age probably had already shrunk a bit. I read the 5’91/2 thing too and that sounds about right. What’s crazy is how undesirable that was considered in that generation. Now every girl wants to be 5’10”.

But is being short a Jewish thing anyway? I’m asking seriously, it’s always seemed somewhat true but maybe more so for men? I don’t know. I’m Jewish on my fathers side and we had/have a lot of tall, lanky types both men and women on that side — as am I. I’ve never really thought of it as being built “not Jewish.”

Bea wasn’t really built that way though; more of the “tall and big” type.

Why should anyone think this show needed a Jewish Character?

Nobody is 'Jewish on my father's side,' R74.

R76 1) that’s an antiquated ridiculous “rule” and 2) even if you take that to heart it makes sense only if you view “being Jewish” as solely a religious thing. I’m an atheist anyway but I never deny my Jewish background (and neither do most Jewish atheists unless their self-hating).

And as it turns out a disproportionate number of Jews are atheists because they’re smart enough to know better. But they’re still Jewish ethnically.

The actress who played George Costanza's mother was Jewish. She was a friend of one of my father's cousins who mentioned her from time to time (pre -Seinfeld days when she did many commercials)

More Barbara Thorndyke posts! More! More!

The "we can't have them be Jewish" thing mostly came from Jewish producers and network executives who convinced themselves that middle America would never go for Jewish characters. That got relaxed slightly in the 90s, so while some of the Friends were allowed to be Jewish (or half-Jewish) it was rarely mentioned to the point that although the Rachel Green (Aniston) character embodied every single JAP stereotype, many DLers were shocked to learn she was supposed to have been Jewish.

That's why Transparent was such a radical show. Because it was much more about Jews being Jews than about trans.

SEE ALSO: Gay TV producers and network executives who thought middle America was not ready for a gay character.

R80 all true, great post!

I was just thinking about the answer to this questions and decided that R1 had the best response. Who care?

You're welcome R81

Because there are no Jews in Miami.

Despite the name Costanza, I have always interpreted every primary Seinfeld character as Jewish.

And now that Curb Your Enthusiasm exists, I see every good part of Seinfeld being an aspect of Larry David’s mind.

Incidentally, Robert De Niro and Christina Ricci are Italian in name only; Ricci is mainly of Scots-Irish descent, and De Niro is mainly Irish-English-German-French (i.e., mutt). It is like that a lot in The US. I actually met guy with the Spanish surname Jimenez (hee-MEN-nes), but he pronounced it gym-min-nez. He was also mainly of Scandinavian descent and looked it. Somewhere in his family tree someone married a Spanish dude.

Yet "the Goldbergs", the original Goldbergs was the most popular television show for years in the late 40s-early 50s. It was a very Jewish storyline for almost a decade. It was a slice-of-life show, not a comedy, not a drama, just real life as it happened then. The show always opened with a sponsor's product commercial written into the plot. Mrs. Goldberg would gossip with the neighbors in the windows of two apartments next to hers. Gertrude Berg won the first ever Emmy award for an actress in a show.

They didn’t even want The Nanny to be Jewish (per my related Datalounge thread). Totally ridiculous.

I’m a nonreligious gentile but I grew up understanding, through television, that the entertainment industry is by and large run by Jewish people. I didn’t understand until later that sitcom humor is Jewish humor, but I surely could not miss that half the Jewish comedians’ punchlines in the 80s related to their Jewishness and the Jewishness of the entertainment industry.

Roseanne was a hit sitcom when I was growing up and my mom always remarked how weird it was that Roseanne’s TV family shared one of our English/Irish family names when Roseannne Barr was Jewish and the show was her creation and based on her standup comedy persona. My mom always pointed out that the show emphasized Halloween but never celebrated Hanukkah. And then I think it occasionally made references to Christmas and that’s when my mom was really confused about why her character wasn’t Jewish. We actually discussed it pretty often. Maybe, we thought, Roseanne thought that to be relatable to working-class middle Americans, the family had to be gentiles—but then Roseanne Barr herself came from a working-class middle American family and she is very strongly identified with being Jewish.

It does seem weirdly covert to have so many Jewish people on TV pretend not to be. It’s not a secret.