Episode 1: Who Actually Created The Golden Girls? The Executives and Producers S [11:29-16:32]

door. Later on, we had a lot of young writers on the show and we have talked to them over the years and they all say, we had no idea how good we have in terms of who we had doing our stuff and you and Paul and Susan there to back us up and to fight our battles and Brandon who supported us and we premiered number three on a Saturday night. It's hard to top the pilot, to be honest with you. There's two memorable moments in that. The dress rehearsal which you filmed, which tape was practically perfect. The dress rehearsal, you to film it because you end up using pieces of it for it to actually go on the air and you take a lot of notes and you're talking to your assistant people and you're telling them to remind me to tell them to do that differently. Make sure she does that with a more urgency. Don't let it take a pause. You know, losing the comedy, there she's coming into early or change that shot. Make sure that's in a two shot and all that stuff that you do is you're giving notes. It was perfect. It was a show. It was the show. Billy Persky sat in the booth with this. He said, what is this an all-star game? So this is like watching Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and all these guys play on the same team. It was a dream team. It was just boom. And NBC chose to run the entire pilot for the sponsors and for the season announcement in New York and the Waldover story. And it was giant ballroom, 25 100 people. And it was the fields of wheat. Heads going back. Heads going forward. Heads going back. Just incredible. And tears be talked about working at the college and getting in the car and looking in the mirror and not recognizing the woman. She's still one of those girls. And you know, and reflecting on life and perfect month. Perfect. We gave them the best possible production. We could give them. And the best working conditions we could give them. And all of them had been in television series before. And they looked at this writing and said, oh my god, this woman Susan Harris is a brilliant genius. They also got that this doesn't come along often. They got what all of our writers and other people that worked on that show got later on, which was it's never going to be this good again on one series at one time. One of those comes along once in your life. And they truly made it magic for us. When we showed up strong on a Monday with a fantastic script, they made it unbelievable. When we showed up not so strong, they made it pretty darn good. Serving as president of the television academy and Walt Disney Studios, Richard Frank oversaw their production and distribution of numerous hit films and television shows. Under his leadership, Disney launched the Disney Channel with dozens of hit shows for new audiences. His perspective on the series launch speaks volumes about the industry's appetite or lack thereof for innovation in the mid 80s. This interview was conducted by Jim McCarrants in 2012. I'm curious when you came to Disney, how did you even begin to build its almost nonexistent programming and stable writers and producers? Probably the most important deal that we made when we first got there was with Thomas Harris. They gave us our first hit in Golden Girls. I mean, it was just no doubt about it. It was a show that Susan Harris had pitched. The funny story about it when the script was turned in, one of the few notes we got back is that it couldn't be four Jewish women in South in Miami and they told that to Susan and she went home and she put a vowel on the end of everybody's name and said they're Italian and she didn't change anything. Which I always said Italian families and Jewish families are the same. Apparently she made that point, too. Yeah, exactly. Once it was cast, it was just who's brilliant what they did. Nobody realized that, you know, Stelgette was the youngest of the girls. She to me just she was she was what the fans was supposed to have these days. It was when you needed the joke, when you needed a hit, she'd come in with a few bags knocking out and was there. Each of the women had their own ways. I mean, how can you do just in the middle of it, Betty White. I mean, it's like my god, she's one of the great, great performers of all time. But if it's if you could say it, she's a nicer person than than that. As great as she is, are we on how great she is? I remember times we would be doing pilots of game shows for syndication and somebody would get sick. I remember one time I called her and I said, we're going to shoot this afternoon. It's a new game show. Somebody thought, is there any chance you could come and do this and she'd say, well, if you get somebody go over and pick up my dress and somebody could go feed the dog and come and get me. And she would be happy. And it would never be, let me call somebody. Let me check. Let me do. She was just the consummate pro. She was in the middle. Be author was she was perfect for that part. She delivered that that character and and Rue was there. It was just an unbelievable cast that they were able to write for every week.