'GIRLS' SERIES IS SOLID GOLD FOR HARRIS

by Jon Anderson

A stylish writer with sparkling wit, Susan Harris, 44, is a master of the sitcom form. She created "Soap" and "Benson," wrote for "Maude" and, to prove that nobody's perfect, had a crashing flop last year with "Hail to the Chief." Now, Harris is back on top. "I never thought sitcoms were dead," she says. "What happened was bad product, a lot of it. Something good comes along, people start paying attention."

Her proof is "Golden Girls." Those are her fingers scratching out the lines of the funniest hit of TV's fall season, a show that breaks a longtime network rule: "Nobody cares about old people." Harris disagrees. "There is life after 50," she argues. "People can be attractive, energetic, have romances." They also can be passionate, sagging, fearful, lusty, feisty, vulnerable, loving and goofy, as these four "Golden Girls" sharing a home in Miami show a huge audience at 8 p.m. every Saturday night on NBC-Ch. 5.

What's stranger about this show is that unlike most pilots, which are suggested by independent producers, the NBC network itself came up with the initial concept. Explains Warren Littlefield, NBC's senior vice-president for series: "It started at a taping for last year's fall lineup, a big black-tie party at the studios in Burbank. Selma Diamond was doing a bit about this hot, slick show we had. She called it 'Miami Nice' and said, "It must be about a bunch of old people in Miami playing pinochle.'

"Two weeks later, 10 or 12 of us were sitting around in a development meeting with Brandon [Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment]. I said, 'You know, Selma Diamond is one of the funniest people on the air. She should do a show called "Miami Nice."' Society writes off people who are over the hill. Our people should be young in attitude, full of hormones and take no bull!" Also, added Littlefield, with a knowing nod to the number of talented older actresses in Hollywood: "There'd be no problem with casting."

Several weeks later, two television producers, Paul Witt and Tony Thomas, came in to pitch an idea to NBC for a series about adventures of a young female attorney. In turn, NBC suggested "Golden Girls." Suspicious, Witt replied: "You won't put it on the air." He was given a 13-week commitment. The gamble paid off. For its first outing, an eye-popping 43 percent of the nation's television sets in use tuned in to "Golden Girls." It was NBC's strongest comedy premiere since "Chico and the Man" in 1974.

"At the time," says Harris, who is married to Witt, "I wasn't going to do any more television. Yet as soon as I heard the idea, I said 'I've got to do that.' I never respond that way to a television idea. But this one was very fresh, very new. I wanted to write people that age; mature people. There's a wisdom from having been around for 60 years. I knew I could build the potential fun. And I was right. I have a lot of fun writing it."

Some writers enjoy sitting before blank paper and pouring out emotions, wit, widsom and camera angles. Not Harris. "I'm terrible," she says. "I like the process of having written. I hate writing. I wait to the last possible minute then I do it." That means, after story conferences with partners Witt and Thomas, she sits at her kitchen table and writes in pencil in UCLA notebooks.

"I have to write a lot of unusable stuff to get flowing. When I get going, my best thing is to keep going. I have no schedule. I write when I have to, when the deadline is close enough to make me very uncomfortable. I throw away a lot of paper. I generally pick a scene I think I'll have the most fun with and start there. If I write something well, I'm encouraged. I go on writing better. If I hit problems, I go the other way. I write badly."

To NBC's Littlefield, Harris' strength is that "she creates sensational characters." In "Golden Girls," indeed. Harris has come up with a Magnificent Four of the Geriatric Set, led by Bea Arthur, the stately, strong-willed star of "Maude" [1972-78]. "Just because 'Golden Girls' is about old people doesn't mean it's an old show," adds Robert Daubenspeck, who oversees the buying of $300 million in television time for the advertising firm of Foote, Cone & Belding. "This show has a lot going for it. It's irreverent. It pokes fun at human foibles. The women are older, no husbands left, but they are warm, likeable, real people." As Harris sees her troupe:

*Dorothy [Arthur] "is the smart, sarcastic, discontended one. I always imagined Bea Arthur playing the part, but Anne Bancroft also would have made a terrific Dorothy."

*Rose [Betty White] "has some of the vagueness of Jessica Tate in 'Soap.'"

*Blance [Rue McClanahan] "does a terrific Southern Belle. She is not Blanche DuBois [the vulnerable flower of 'Streetcar Named Desire']. This Blanche sees herself as Scarlett O'Hara."

*Sophia [Estelle Getty] "is easy to write. She says what everybody else thinks, but can't say. In Sophia, there's a bit of my grandmother, an independent woman who had her own apartment in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. until her death at 93."

In real life, Getty, only a few years older despite the age of her character, is the only one now married. White and Arthur have elderly, invalid mothers living at home. McClanahan is divorced. Arthur's 25-year marriage to the director Gene Saks ended under the pressures of "Maude." White, married to game show host Allen Ludden for 18 years, was widowed four years ago.

Some observers note that much "Golden Girls" humor reflects old Borscht Belt routines. For example, Sophia notes she is regular, goes to the bathroom every morning at 7 a.m., but "unfortunately I don't wake up until 8." All that's missing is a "paa-ding!" from the pit-band drummer. Harris hee-hees to herself when asked about this, declines to divulge humor sources, but says she herself has no ambitions to mount the stage. "I'm different when I write than when I talk," she says. "Once I had to go to a luncheon as writer-creator of 'Soap.' My agent told me later that people complained that 'she's not funny.' He told them, 'only on paper.' It's true.'

Last season's "Hail to the Chief," her comedy about a woman in the White House, also was a learning experience. "It had nobody you could like, nobody you could believe. That's why the show failed. We screwed up."

Not so with "Golden Girls," a show on which Harris' undoubted skills now seem happily in tune. "I thought 'Soap' was wonderful," Harris says, "but we never had the critical acclaim that this one is getting. It has stunned me. Except for Time [which called the show "a dehumanized joke machine"], reviews have been 100 percent positive and it's not just the over-50 crowd reacting. Kids love the show, even mine. If my kid [Sam, 18, a Stanford freshman] gives his reluctant nod of approval, I know I'm doing something right."

*article from the Chicago Tribune TV Week, October 20, 1985