America and Sicily have lost a good friend....Sophia Petrillo

Picture this, Sicily 1930....I am very sad to learn that Estelle Getty, Sophia Petrillo, passed away yesterday. Sophia Petrillo was born in April 1906 in Sicily to Papa and Eleanor Angelo, with two brothers, Angelo and Vito, and two sisters, Regina and Angela. (In the episode "A Piece of Cake," it is revealed that her 50th birthday was in April 1956). While in Sicily, as a teenager she was briefly engaged to a young man from her village, Augustine Bagatelli. Later, she became engaged to Giuseppe Mangiacavallo, who jilted her at the altar. She moved to New York after she annulled her arranged first marriage to Guido Spirelli when she was fourteen. Then, she married Salvador "Sal" Petrillo, and had three children with him: Dorothy, a divorced substitute teacher; Phil, a cross-dresser married to a woman named Angela with several children in a trailer park in Newark, New Jersey; and Gloria, who lived in California and married into money and who later lost the fortune that her husband had left her in an investment scam.

I have to tell you, I have been watching the Golden Girls since I was a small child in my grandmother's beauty parlor. Sophia can make me laugh even on my worst day, the lady had talent. For some reason the Golden Girls have always been a favorite of people my age and some of my friends from college even dress up like them for Halloween and certain events throughout the years. Its kind of a standard. So I am going to post their pictures today, in honor of you, Sophia. We all want to say..."Thank you for being a friend."

Estelle Getty born Estelle Scher in New York City, the daughter of Sarah and Charles Scher, Polish immigrants who worked in the glass business. Getty got her start in the Yiddish theaterer and also as a comedienne in the Catskills borscht belt resorts, and her most important stage role was playing Harvey Fierstein's mother on Broadway in the play Torch Song Trilogy. She is best known for her role as Sophia Petrillo on the popular 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls. Petrillo was a wise-cracking old Sicilian mother of Dorothy Zbornak, played by Beatrice Arthur (the other main characters being played by Betty White and Rue McClanahan); in real life, Getty was in fact one year younger than Arthur. Getty also played in Mannequin, another classic from the 80's. She died yesterday of natural causes at the age of 85.

Toward the end of her career, she wrote an autobiography, with Steve Delsohn, titled If I Knew Then, What I Know Now... So What?