Celebrity Graveland

July 25, 1923 – July 22, 2008

All you need is one role.

For 10 years, Estelle Getty portrayed the wise-cracking octogenarian Sophia Petrillo over the course of four television shows: The Golden Palace, Empty Nest, Nurses and The Golden Girls.  It was, of course, on The Golden Girls where audiences met and fell in love with the irascible Sicilian mother of Bea Arthur’s Dorothy. Getty won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her performance and was nominated many other times. Prior to landing the role of Sophia, Getty made the usual TV rounds of the late ’70s and ’80s with appearances on shows like Fantasy Island, Newhart and Cagney & Lacey. She infamously appeared alongside Sylvester Stallone in the Razzie Award winning (that’s not a good thing for those who don’t know) 1992 comedy Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. But, it was always as Sophia that audiences would best remember her. Due to a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia, Getty retired from acting and public life in 2000. She died in 2008 at the age of 84.

Burial

Hollywood Forever Cemetery – Los Angeles, CA

Specific Location

Section 14, Row CC, Grave 88; take Pineland Avenue south from the main entrance until it starts to curve to the left, stop and Estelle’s large marker can be seen on your right, behind a row of hedges.

This entry was posted on October 10, 2018 at 8:34 am and is filed under Hollywood Forever Cemetery with tags Actors, Golden Girls, Hollywood Forever. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.