Harvey wrote this when Estelle died.
"AT the height of popularity of “The Golden Girls,” there was no more beloved character on television than Sophia Petrillo. Estelle Getty, who brought Sophia indelibly to life, was awestruck: “What the hell is going on? I have the highest TVQ of any woman on television?”
It was true. For several years, Estelle Getty, formerly Estelle Gettleman of Bayside, Queens, was the most bankable star on any network. She was bigger than Carol Burnett, more saleable than Mary Tyler Moore and surer to deliver viewers than Cher. Still, the day after she won the Emmy, she told me she’d trade it and her Golden Globe for a Tony.
Despite all of the glamour, glory and gold of television fame, Estelle Getty was a theater creature.
With her husband, Arthur, and friends Anne and Jules Weiss, she was a fixture at La Mama ETC and other off-off Broadway venues. Working as a bookkeeper by day, this semi-pro actress haunted the East Village by night supporting experimental theater.
In 1978, when we produced the first of the plays that would become “Torch Song Trilogy,” Estelle chided me: “Listen, Mr. Big Shot Playwright. Why don’t you write the role of your mother, and I’ll play it opposite you?”
Just picturing this 4-foot-8-inch fireball playing the mother of a 6-foot-tall drag queen made me giggle. The following year, when she came to see the second of the trilogy, she challenged me again, and this time I took the bait. I went home and created Mrs. Beckoff for Estelle.
From the first reading through seven years of productions here and on the road, the marriage of actress to role was remarkable. There was simply nothing like seeing this henna-wigged tornado in a turquoise suit arrive onstage to announce, “I’m the mother.”
So great was her performance that almost every audience member identified with my character. You read that right: Estelle’s Mrs. Beckoff was so identifiable that everyone claimed her as his or her mother. And if she was their mother, then they were a drag queen.
The thing about Estelle was that you could not catch her acting. She was being. If her character was supposed to be angry, Estelle got angry. If her character was brokenhearted, the actress was brokenhearted. It all felt real.
Acting opposite her was both a pleasure and a challenge, since she demanded the same truth from the rest of us. When we’d fool around onstage, as actors in long runs tend to do, she would berate us, even hit us, and then join in the laugh.
Popular thinking is that by creating Mrs. Beckoff, I launched Estelle’s career. But it is just as true that when Estelle inspired that character, she gave me mine.
Without the mother, “Torch Song Trilogy” would never have achieved its universal popularity and might not have reached further than La Mama. But with the mother, the play was, and remains, a force not to be denied.
And so, hand in hand in hand, Estelle, Mrs. Beckoff and I marched our way to Broadway and theater history.
Still, with Estelle’s triumph came disappointment. When the 1982 Tony nominations were announced, Estelle was overlooked. We were stunned. How could anyone who’d witnessed that performance overlook the achievement?
The only explanation I could muster was that she was so natural in the way she inhabited the role that people couldn’t see how hard she was actually working. She made it all look effortless when it was anything but.
Estelle was dealt another blow four years later when she wasn’t cast in the film version of “Torch Song.” Although we never discussed it directly, I knew how much that hurt her. (Recently, I’ve come to know exactly how she felt – know what I mean?)
Estelle and I remained friends and supporters of each other’s efforts for more than 30 years. I’m proud to say that her last job was voicing a character for my HBO family special, “The Sissy Duckling.” I take comfort knowing the world will always have a part of her in those endless “Golden Girls” reruns.
But only those who saw her onstage have any idea who we really lost this week."
