She said that Susan Harris, the show’s co-executive producer, asked her to persuade Arthur to take the part, as she kept turning it down. McClanahan remembered things a bit differently. “I thought it was one of the funniest, most adult, hilarious, sophisticated, terrific, delicious things I had ever read.”Ĩ.

Arthur auditioned for “Golden Girls” after Dorothy was described initially as “a Bea Arthur-type.” “I thought it was brilliant,” she told the Archive of American Television of reading the first script.