| Designing Women | |
|---|---|
The original cast of Designing Women. Clockwise from left: Potts as Mary Jo, Smart as Charlene, Burke as Suzanne and Carter as Julia |
|
| Format | Sitcom |
| Created by | Linda Bloodworth-Thomason |
| Starring | Delta Burke (Seasons 1–5) Dixie Carter Annie Potts Jean Smart (Seasons 1–5) Meshach Taylor (Seasons 3–7; recurring previously) Julia Duffy (Season 6) Jan Hooks (Seasons 6–7) Judith Ivey (Season 7) |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 7 |
| No. of episodes | 163 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | approx. 30 minutes (with commercials) |
| Production company(s) | Bloodworth-Thomason Mozark Productions Columbia Pictures Television Sony Pictures Television |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | CBS |
| Original run | September 29, 1986 – May 24, 1993 |
| Chronology | |
| Followed by | Women of the House |
Designing Women is an American television sitcom that centered on the working and personal lives of four Southern women and one man in an interior design firm in Atlanta, Georgia. It aired on the CBS television network from September 29, 1986 until May 24, 1993. The show was created by head writer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who wrote many of the episodes in the show's initial seasons. As of 2011, the series currently airs in syndication on the Comedy Gold and TV Guide Network channels.
Sisters Julia Sugarbaker (Dixie Carter) and Suzanne Sugarbaker (Delta Burke) are polar opposites. Julia is an elegant, outspoken liberal intellectual; Suzanne is a rich, flashy, often self-centered former beauty queen and Miss Georgia World. They are constantly at personal odds but have launched Sugarbaker Designs, an interior design firm. Julia manages the company while Suzanne is mostly a financial backer who simply hangs around and annoys everyone under the guise of being the firm's salesperson.
The pragmatic designer Mary Jo Shively (Annie Potts), a recent divorcee raising two children, and the sweet-natured but somewhat naïve office manager Charlene Frazier Stillfield (Jean Smart) are initial investors and co-workers. Anthony Bouvier (Meshach Taylor), a former prison inmate who was falsely convicted of a robbery, is the only man on the staff and later in the series becomes a partner. Bernice Clifton (Alice Ghostley), an absent-minded friend of the Sugarbaker matriarch, also appears frequently.
The show changed premise in seasons six and seven, when Delta Burke's character of Suzanne moved to Japan and sold her part of the design business to her wealthy cousin Allison Sugarbaker (Julia Duffy). At the same time, Jean Smart chose to leave the show and was replaced by Jan Hooks as Carlene Dobber, Charlene's sister fresh off the bus from Poplar Bluff; Smart's character, Charlene, moved to England where her husband was stationed and her sister, Carlene, took over her job. The character of Carlene was very similar to Charlene; however, Allison was a prim and proper conservative who provided a bossy foil to the liberal Julia.[1] Despite series-high ratings, the changes were critically panned and many felt that at that point the series had "jumped the shark". The Allison character was unpopular with audiences and Duffy was let go at the end of the season.
Annie Potts announced in 1993 that she would leave the show after the seventh season, due to the fact that the producers dropped her character's proposed pregnancy storyline at the last minute; however, this turned out to be the show's last season, so there was no need for her character to be replaced.
The final season featured Judith Ivey as Bonnie Jean "B.J." Poteet, a rich Texas widow who invested some of her millions in the business (the role was initially offered to Bonnie Hunt, who turned it down). B.J. was presented as a friendly, outspoken and strong-willed woman with a zest for life and, unlike the other cast members, was completely capable of standing up to Julia. However, these replacements could not stop the ratings slide which caused CBS to cancel the series in 1993. CBS's decision during the 1992–93 season to move the show from its previously successful Monday night time slot, following Murphy Brown, to Friday nights was said to also play a role in the ratings decline. The series received no formal finale, concluding with an hour-long episode in which the principal characters, while redecorating a plantation house, envision what their lives would have been like if they had been characters in Gone with the Wind, and simultaneously thwart a wealthy adversary of B.J's and an illegal leveraged buyout of her company.
The show was a reunion of sorts for several members of the cast and crew. Burke and Carter had both been members of the short-lived CBS sitcom Filthy Rich, which was written by Bloodworth-Thomason. Meanwhile, Potts and Smart had guest-starred together in a 1985 episode of Lime Street (TV series), which was also created by Bloodworth-Thomason.
When the show debuted in CBS's Monday night lineup in 1986, it garnered respectable ratings; however, CBS moved the show several times to other time slots. After dismal ratings in a Sunday night and a Thursday night time slot, CBS placed it on hiatus was ready to cancel the show, but a viewer campaign saved the show and returned it to its Monday night slot. The show's ratings solidified, and it regularly landed in the top 20 rankings.[2] From 1989 through 1992, Designing Women and Murphy Brown (which also centered around a strong, opinionated female character) aired back-to-back, creating a very successful hour-long block for CBS, as both shows were thought to appeal to similar demographics. The show was a top 30 hit for three seasons, from 1989–1992.[3] However, with CBS's move of the show to Friday night in the fall of 1992, ratings plummeted and the show fell from 6th place to 52nd place. The show was cancelled in May 1993.
The series' theme song was the Georgia state song "Georgia on My Mind". During the first five seasons, the theme was performed as an instrumental, including a version by trumpeter Doc Severinsen for Seasons 1 and 2. For the sixth season it was performed vocally by Ray Charles, whose 1960 rendition of the song was the most commercially successful and is perhaps the best known. The song was dropped in the seventh season and the credits rolled over the actual episode instead, following the industry trend at the time.
The exterior of the house seen in the series as the location of the Sugarbaker design firm is the Villa Marre, a Victorian mansion located in the historic Quapaw Quarter district in Little Rock, Arkansas. Additionally, the exterior of the home of Suzanne Sugarbaker seen in the series is the Arkansas Governor's Mansion, also in the Quapaw Quarter. Both homes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
| Season | Ratings Rank | Households |
| 1986–1987 | #31 |
14,071,400 |
| 1987–1988 | #33 |
13,874,760 |
| 1988–1989 | #33 |
13,541,920 |
| 1989–1990 | # 23[4] | 14,091,300 |
| 1990–1991 | # 11[5] | 15,361,500 |
| 1991–1992 | # 6[6] | 15,933,300 |
| 1992–1993 | #52 |
9,552,060 |
David Trainer (63 episodes, 1987–1991) David Steinberg (37 episodes, 1987–1993) Harry Thomason (19 episodes, 1987–1991) Jack Shea (14 episodes, 1986–1988) Iris Dugow (5 episodes, 1989–1991) Barnet Kellman (4 episodes, 1987) Hal Holbrook (4 episodes, 1988–1990) Matthew Diamond (3 episodes, 1987–1988) Dwayne Hickman (3 episodes, 1989–1990) Ellen Falcon (2 episodes, 1986–1990) Charles Frank (2 episodes, 1991–1992) Roberta Sherry Scelza (2 episodes, 1991–1992)
Linda Bloodworth-Thomason (73 episodes, 1986–1992) Pamela Norris (29 episodes, 1989–1991) Mark Alton Brown (17 episodes, 1990–1993) Dee LaDuke (17 episodes, 1990–1993) Cassandra Clark (7 episodes, 1989–1991) Deborah Pearl (7 episodes, 1989–1991) Paul Clay
The plot played the four principal characters against each other, and frequent visitors Anthony (in initial seasons; he later became a regular cast member) and Bernice, as they dealt with a professional or personal crises.
Although it was a traditional comedy, and often included broad physical comedy, Designing Women was very topical (particularly in episodes written by Bloodworth-Thomason herself), and featured discussions of controversial topics such as homophobia, racism, dating clergy, AIDS, hostile societal attitudes towards the overweight, and spousal abuse.
The program became noted for the monologues delivered by Julia in indignation to other characters, a character trait that began in the second episode, when Julia verbally castigated a beauty queen who had made fun of Suzanne. That speech, which Julia ends by emphatically saying, "And that....is the night....the lights....went out.....in Georgia!" became a fan favorite. Dixie Carter, a registered Republican, disagreed with many of her character's left-of-center commentaries, and made a deal with the producers that for every speech she gave, Julia would get to sing a song in a future episode.[7]
There was great controversy surrounding the show in 1991 because of the abrupt dismissal of Burke, a pivotal part of the series. Burke was fired, and alleged that her dismissal was due to her having gained a substantial amount of weight, while producers maintained that Burke was let go due to her "argumentative" behavior and for creating discord on the set. The ensuing squabbling was covered amply in the tabloid press, but despite that (or perhaps because of it), the show reached its pinnacle of popularity that year (the year-end Nielsen ratings ranked Designing Women as the number 6 show). It fell out of the top twenty next year and the show concluded its seven-year run.
Delta Burke reunited with the Thomasons and CBS to reprise the Suzanne Sugarbaker character for a short-lived 1994 sitcom, Women of the House, in which Suzanne's latest husband died and she won his seat in Congress.
Shout! Factory has released the first five seasons of Designing Women on DVD in Region 1.[8]
| DVD Name | Ep # | Release Date |
|---|---|---|
| The Complete First Season | 22 | May 26, 2009 |
| The Complete Second Season | 22 | August 11, 2009 |
| The Complete Third Season | 22 | March 2, 2010 |
| The Complete Fourth Season | 28 | September 14, 2010 |
| The Complete Fifth Season | 24 | December 6, 2011 |
On September 2, 2003, Sony Pictures released The Best of Designing Women, a single-disc DVD featuring five episodes ranging between seasons one through four: "Designing Women (Pilot)", "Killing All the Right People", "Reservations for Eight", "Big Haas and Little Falsie" and "They Shoot Fat Women, Don't They?".
On September 28, 2010, Shout Factory released Designing Women, Volume 1, a single-disc DVD featuring seven episodes from the first season: "Designing Women (Pilot)", "A Big Affair", "Design House", "I Do, I Don't", "New Year's Daze", "Monette", "And Justice for Paul". Further selected episode volumes have yet to be announced.
Show creators Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason were strong supporters of longtime friend and then-Democratic nominee for President of the United States, Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary. In one episode, Julia is stranded in the airport while attempting to attend Clinton's first inauguration. Additionally Charlene mentioned working for Clinton during his Arkansas governorship. Yet another Clintons-related joke was the introduction of the prissy character, Allison Sugarbaker, who makes it quite clear to the other "Designing Women" that she attended Wellesley College (Hillary's alma mater). One episode revolved around Julia running for commissioner, where she debates on television against a conservative candidate, to whom she eventually loses. In reality, Dixie Carter was a Republican who disagreed with the liberal views spouted by her onscreen character. She reached an agreement with the producers in which she was allowed to sing a song for every liberal "speech" her character made on the series.
Julia also expresses her admiration for former president Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, and is very upset in the episode, Miss Trial, when her service for jury duty prevents her from attending a dinner with the Carters, who like her volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. She is later very flattered to discover that the Carters have sent her flowers and rushes off to meet them for coffee.
The Sugarbaker's Design interior decorating firm was operated out of Julia Sugarbaker's attractive suburban home at 1521 Sycamore Street in Atlanta, Georgia. Although the TV series was based in Georgia, the exterior shots of the Sugarbaker home were actually photographs of the Villa Marre, a museum located at 1321 Scott Street in Little Rock, Arkansas. Built in 1881 by Angelo Marre and his wife Jennie Marre, the Victorian home with touches of Italian architectural style passed through the possession of a few more owners until it finally fell into disrepair in the 1960s. It was renovated and then given to the Quapaw Quarter Association in 1979 by James W. Strawn, Jr.
A few blocks away from the Villa Marre is the Arkansas Governor's Mansion (former home of Bill & Hillary Clinton) located at 1800 Center Street (at 18th and Spring Street). The exterior of this Georgian Colonial style building (finished in 1950) served as Suzanne Sugarbaker's residence during the early episodes of the program.