This Week in Television History: May 2017 PART II

As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history,
the more that fact and legend become intertwined.
It's hard to say where the truth really lies.

May 9, 1992

The final episode of "The Golden Girls" aired on NBC.

After six consecutive seasons in the top 10, and the seventh season at number 30, The Golden Girls came to an end when Bea Arthur chose to leave the series. In the hour-long series finale, which aired in May 1992, Dorothy meets and marries Blanche's Uncle Lucas (Leslie Nielsen), and moves to Hollingsworth Manor in Atlanta, Georgia. Sophia was to join her, but in the end, Sophia stays behind with the other women in Miami, leading into the spin-off series, The Golden Palace. The series finale was watched by 27.2 million viewers. As of 2016, it was the 17th-most watched television finale.

May 9, 2002

CSI Miami first aired. 

Starring David Caruso as Lieutenant Horatio Caine, Emily Procter as Detective Calleigh Duquesne, and Kim Delaney as Lieutenant Megan Donner, the series is the first direct spin-off of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, "transplanting the same template and trickery — gory crimes, procedural plot and dazzling graphics — into [a new city] while retaining the essence of the original idea".

May 12, 1992

Robert Reed died on May 12, 1992, at his home in South Pasadena, California, after a six month battle with colon cancer and lymphoma; he tested HIV positive the previous year but did not have AIDS at the time of his death, as has been reported in the media. 

He was cremated and his ashes are interred in Memorial Park Cemetery, Skokie, Illinois next to his grandparents, Harvey and Elizabeth Rietz, and an uncle who died in childhood. Joined by many mourners at a private memorial were the cast of The Brady Bunch, and his best friends Anne Haney and E. G. Marshall. Both his mother, Helen, and daughter, Karen, declined to attend his memorial.

May 13th, in 1922

Bea Arthur is born Bernice Frankel

She was an American actress, comedian, singer, and animal rights activist. Her career spanned seven decades.

Arthur achieved fame as the character Maude Findlay on the 1970s sitcoms All in the Family (1971–72) and Maude (1972–78), and as Dorothy Zbornak on the 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls (1985–92), winning Emmy Awards for both roles. A stage actress both before and after her television success, she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance as Vera Charles in the original cast of Mame (1966).

To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".

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Tony Figueroa