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Actress Estelle Getty dies at 84

amny.com staff with wire reports

7:00 PM EDT, July 22, 2008

Well before the world knew her as the feisty octogenarian Sophia on "The Golden Girls," Estelle Getty was a glass salesman's daughter on the Lower East Side.

Getty, who died yesterday at age 84, spent 40 years of her career struggling for success, largely in New York City. Getty, who suffered from advanced dementia, died at about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday at her Hollywood Boulevard home, said her son, Carl Gettleman of Santa Monica.

Born Estelle Scher to Polish immigrants on the Lower East Side, Getty fell in love with theater when she saw a vaudeville show at age 4. She studied at Manhattan's Herbert Berghof Studios, now known as HB Studio.

Her stage career later included Yiddish and experimental theater and productions both off-Broadway and on. While paying her dues on stage, she married husband Arthur Gettleman, from whom she took her stage name, and raised their two sons in Queens.

Getty remained relatively unknown until she was cast in Harvey Fierstein's play "Torch Song Trilogy." Soon after, Getty landed the role of a lifetime as the "Golden Girls'" Sofia, and the Native New Yorker left for California.

"Estelle always wanted to be an actress, and she achieved that goal beyond her dreams," former "Golden Girls" co-star Rue McClanahan told The Associated Press. "Don't feel sad about her passing. She will always be with us in her crowning achievement, Sophia."

"The Golden Girls," featuring four female retirees sharing a house in Miami, grew out of NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff's belief that television was ignoring its older viewers.

Three of its stars had already appeared in previous series: Bea Arthur in "Maude," Betty White in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and McClanahan in "Mama's Family." The last character to be cast was Sophia Petrillo, the feisty 80-something mother of Arthur's character.

"Our mother-daughter relationship was one of the greatest comic duos ever, and I will miss her," Arthur said in a statement.

When she auditioned, Getty was appearing on stage in Hollywood in "Torch Song Trilogy." In her early 60s, she flunked her "Golden Girls" test twice because it was believed she didn't look old enough to play 80.

"I could understand that," she told an interviewer a year after the show debuted. "I walk fast, I move fast, I talk fast."

She came prepared for the third audition, however, wearing dowdy clothes and telling an NBC makeup artist, "To you this is just a job. To me it's my entire career down the toilet unless you make me look 80." The artist did, Getty got the job and won two Emmys.

"The only comfort at this moment is that although Estelle has moved on, Sophia will always be with us," White said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.