Estelle Getty, best known for her role as the acid-tongued octogenarian Sophia on the 1980s television series The Golden Girls, died today at her Hollywood Boulevard home in Los Angeles. She was 84. Getty had been suffering from advanced dementia for several years.
The Golden Girls, quite possibly (by far) the wittiest US TV show of the '80s, featured four female retirees sharing a spacious house in Miami. The show's other three cast members were Beatrice Arthur, who played Getty's daughter, Dorothy (in real life Arthur was actually older than her Golden Girls mother); Rue McClanahan as the seductress Blanche; and Betty White as the ditzy Rose. The series ran from 1985 to 1992.
Among Estelle Getty's film appearances, mostly in small roles, were Sydney Pollack's Tootsie; Mask, as Cher's mother; and the Andrew McCarthy-Kim Cattrall vehicle Mannequin. Getty got solid reviews for her comic performance as Sylvester Stallone's mother in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, but the 1991 farce bombed at the box office.
Getty's last film appearance was in the little-seen 2000 production The Million Dollar Kid, starring Richard Thomas, Maureen McCormick, and C. Thomas Howell.
Estelle was a treasure and I have spent many afternoons and evenings with "the Girls".