It's easy to watch The Golden Girls and buy into the on-screen relationships. The stars look like they're having a blast and, to hear them tell it, they really were. Well, for the most part. When the show ended in 1992, largely because Bea Arthur wanted out, the talk about off-camera drama picked up. Most whispers spoke of a rift between Arthur and Betty White, but nothing was confirmed for years. Then, in 2007, Rue McClanahan dished the dirt in her memoir, My First Five Husbands...And the Ones Who Got Away.
According to McClanahan, Arthur was bothered when White won the first Emmy for The Golden Girls in 1986 and called White some unsavory names. In 2011, two years after Arthur passed away, White finally opened up about the situation. Arthur "was not that fond of me," White said (via the Village Voice). "...She found me a pain in the neck sometimes. It was my positive attitude — and that made Bea mad sometimes. Sometimes if I was happy, she'd be furious!"
Arthur's son, Matthew Saks, tried to downplay the feud between the two women, but he agreed that Arthur wasn't White's biggest fan. Speaking with Closer Weekly, Saks said, "My mom unknowingly carried the attitude that it was fun to have somebody to be angry at. ... It was almost like Betty became her nemesis, someone she could always roll her eyes about at work."
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