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Apr 27, 2022 · Rose Nylund is celebrated as an icon on the dance floor, a volunteer vanguard, and St. Olaf’s Woman of the Year. For more Golden Girls, click here: https://bit.ly/2q6r5sB Paramount+ is here!
- 16 min
- 284.6K
- TV Land
One for the Money: Directed by Terry Hughes. With Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, Estelle Getty. The girls recollect past attempts at starting their own businesses.
- (550)
- Comedy, Drama
- Terry Hughes
- 1987-09-26
Season 3 Episode 02"One For the Money"Originally Aired: September 26, 1987"Sophia's latest get rich quick scheme prompts the girls to recall other various ge...
- 5 min
- 8.4K
- GoldenGirlsHD
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Sep 29, 2021 · Top 10 Musical Moments 🎵 Golden Girls. Sing along to the musical stylings of Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia. For more Golden Girls, click here: https://bit.ly/2q6r5sB ...more. Sing...
- 16 min
- 560.8K
- TV Land
- Overview
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- Casting and Development
- Appearances
“Back in St. Olaf...”
— Rose beginning a story about her hometown
Rose Marie Nylund (née Lindstrom, born Karklavoner-Martin) is one of the four main characters in the NBC sitcom The Golden Girls and its spin-off, The Golden Palace. An innocent, loving, and kind-hearted simpleton, Rose rented a room in Blanche Devereaux's Miami home after being kicked out of her old apartment for keeping a pet. Though she often annoys her housemates with her dim-wittedness and her long, rambling stories of her hometown of St. Olaf, Rose's loving and supportive attitude helps her friends and loved ones keep a stiff upper lip during hard times.
Rose appeared in all seven seasons of The Golden Girls and and all episodes of The Golden Palace. She also appeared in the a few episodes in the related spin-offs of the series, Empty Nest and Nurses. She was portrayed by the veteran radio, stage and screen actress, Betty White.
Rose is an innocent, naïve, simple-minded, and exceptionally kind-hearted woman. It can be imagined that a good number of Golden Girls fans of Rose Nylund will agree wholeheartedly that indeed Rose is the sweetest of naivety with her unwavering cheerful disposition overall. She was best known for her rambling of somewhat nonsensical stories of her bizarre hometown village of St. Olaf, Minnesota. Many times, her housemates, Dorothy and Blanche as well as Dorothy's mother, Sophia, often endured Rose's St. Olaf's stories with exasperated silence, disbelief, and the occasional muttering of insults. She also has a tendency to become scared and paranoid easily, with the most prominent example being shown in "Break-In", when she developed CPTSD from a break-in at the house.
Rose is something a bit of a pushover, who rarely stands up for herself. On one occasion, her blind sister, Lily, tried to convince Rose into moving to Chicago to take care of her. At Dorothy's many urgings to Rose to reconsider, Rose said no to Lily, which forced Lily to learn how to care for herself. Without Dorothy being the voice of reason, Rose would have said yes and been the pushover being that Rose is simply so kind-hearted. Although all four women volunteered their time, Rose was arguably the most involved in charity work. She drove a bookmobile, was a candy striper at a hospital, and helped organize a charity talent show, as well as among other things. She was a perennial runner up for a Volunteer of the Year award, even coming in second to a woman who was already dead.
Rose is also quite domestic. She is seen often cooking or preparing food just as much as Sophia is. Whereas, Sophia tends to cook more savory Italian dishes that require a great deal of preparation work, conscientiousness, and tenacity. Rose, on the other hand, is more skilled at simple cooking and baking. She is often whipping up a Scandinavian dessert from pies, to cookies to cakes to Sparehooven Krispies. Her love for baked goods stems from her sweet tooth that she mentioned she had in "The Way We Met", but it could also be from living on a dairy farm, as dairy is a key ingredient in many baked items.
Rose is also shown on many occasions to be an animal lover. Whether it’s dogs and cats or cows and chickens, Rose loves all creatures big or small. In fact, she even claims to understand animals communicating with a mouse that found its way into the house back in season 1. Her love for animals can be at the cost of her friend’s annoyance since Rose often shelters animals without warning Blanche and Dorothy. She found a stray cat and kept it as a pet; in a continuity error, it is revealed in a later episode that Rose is allergic to cats). Well, speculation goes to show that despite having allergies to cats, Rose will go out of her way to help a fellow animal in need of finding affection, love, comfort, and having a decent quality of life, and will make any sacrifices necessary to help a fellow animal in need.
Rose is quite creative and artistic, being a very skilled sculptor, painter, and musician. She is also an incredible baker, giving her food smiley faces or cutting them into cute shapes. Like Sophia, Rose is often seen sewing or knitting. Furthermore, Rose is also extremely good with her hands as a result of growing up on a farm. She installed a brand new toilet with Dorothy's help, once single-handedly installed a plumbing system in the house, and even installed a house alarm system for the home, with all the products working as if a professional had installed them. She is also surprisingly agile for a woman of her age; more than once, she has demonstrated her strong dancing skills, including her ability to do almost perfect cartwheels and even full splits.
Another example of her craftiness is shown in "Vacation", where the girls are shipwrecked on an island with three young men who they were forced to share a room with in a terrible hotel. Rose ultimately raises her voice and takes charge when the group starts to bicker, instructing the boys to scout for water, while instructing Blanche and Dorothy to start breaking up the boat for firewood. Her change in stance intimidates even Blanche and Dorothy, who meekly follow her orders. Rose claims to have been the most decorated scout in all of northern Minnesota, who could start a fire with rocks, build a one-hundred-foot rope bridge, and filter seawater to freshwater, although she later admitted that she lacked the right tools for it, but said it anyway in the heat of the moment. Later, the girls are shown to have a bonfire burning, which shows that Rose was indeed competent in her claims.
Back in St. Olaf...
Rose was born on March 12th, 1930, in the town of St. Olaf, a Norwegian-populated farming settlement in the state of Minnesota. Her birth parents were "Big" Brother Martin, a monk at the St. Olaf Monastery, and his lover Ingrid Kerklavoner, the monastery's chef. Unfortunately, Ingrid died in childbirth, and the abbott, who had learned of Ingrid and Martin's relationship,. Rose lived in the orphanage until she was eight years old, and during this time she developed a deep, unrelenting conviction that her biological father was Bob Hope, a belief she would retain until she met her biological father in "Once, In St. Olaf". Eventually, Rose was adopted by Gunter and Alma Lindström, who raised her with eight other children lovingly on their dairy farm. Rose had a total of eight other siblings; sisters Holly and Lily, and Michael and five other brothers. Since Rose was growing up on a farm, she spent a good deal of time with the many, various farm animals. This fondness and bond to animals in close proximity to her gave rise to Rose's deep love for and companionship with various farm animals. Rose remarked that neither of her parents made her and her siblings feel like they were less important than the other eight, and that they would have the best Christmases complete with her father playing Christmas carols at the piano, her mother making homemade eggnog, and the family decorating the tree. While growing up, her closest childhood friend was a girl named Ingrid, and the two would often meet up to chat or play in a treehouse together several times per week until Rose got engaged. In 1937, Rose met Charlie Nylund, the boy who would become her husband, while he was selling insurance on the street corner. One day while Rose was hauling home a smoked ham, a group of hogs were set off and trampled her wagon. Though Rose's policy didn't cover acts of swine, Charlie paid for the replacement wagon himself. Charlie asked Rose to marry him soon after they met, and though it was love at first sight, and he proposed marriage, Rose's mother told her to wait until she was fifteen to get married. Rose’s teenage years were somewhat of a mystery. In "Ladies of the Evening", she stated she lost the St. Olaf Butter Queen Pageant due to a case of '"churn tampering". Rose's parents did not allow her to date without her parent's awareness until she was a high school senior. However, to her parent's lack of knowledge, between quite possibly Rose's middle school days up to her wedding day, she had fifty-six boyfriends. For a period of time, she was interested in a boy at her school named Clel Lightener, and agreed to meet him at a bar in Tyler's Landing one night. Rose stole her father's truck and drove out to the bar, but she was too chicken to leave the truck. When she eventually tried to go inside, she was stopped by her church's Reverend, who was leaving the bar with a married woman on his arm. Rose and the Reverend swore each other to secrecy, and the Reverend kept Rose's secret util the day he died...two days later, after he was shot by the husband of the woman he was seeing. The week after, Rose's family became Lutherans. When Rose was in high school, she had a history teacher named Fritz Sticklemeyer, who she insisted was a Nazi planted in American schools as part of a program to plant misinformation in the minds of students. There was also a female gym teacher named Ava Braun, who was rumored to have dated Mr. Sticklemeyer. This confirms that Rose's high school history teacher was undoubtedly Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Third Reich. Rose was fortunately not noticeably affected by any alleged propaganda, but she was aware that her teacher was Hitler operating under an assumed alias. However, Rose also had to switch high schools after her overcompetitive nature led to a rather distressing incident during a field hockey game. Rose also missed her high school graduation due to contracting mononucleosis from her first customer at a kissing booth -- which she passed to fifty other male students and a female gym teacher "who smelled of Old Spice". Rose was then in a mono-induced coma for several weeks, and when she woke from the coma, she had missed both her graduation and the integration of major-league baseball. Despite missing her graduation, Rose was her high school's valedictorian -- specifically, the fourth in a class of nineteen students -- because she drew the longest straw from a hat. Rose claimed she never gave her virginity to any of those boyfriends during the course of that time -- except for Charlie Nylund. After Charlie returned from fighting in World War II, he and Rose became engaged in 1946. Upon learning of this, the Nylunds threatened to cut Charlie out of the family grout fortune, but Charlie refused to bend to their will, saying he loved Rose more than grout. Rose later learned that the Nylunds' hostility was due to a feud between the Nylunds and her mother's maiden family, the Gorkleknabygens. On February 12th, 1948, Rose and Charlie were married in St. Olaf Church. Rose wore a white flannel wedding gown, which even had feet sewn into it.
Marriage to Charlie Nylund
Charlie and Rose had a relatively long and happy marriage and had a total of five children -- daughters Bridget, Gunilla, and Kirsten, and sons Adam and Charlie, Jr. Rose continued her education even after she married her husband, and had a rather extensive college career -- she majored in business management at St. Paul's Business School, general studies at Rockport Community College, and graduated first in her class from St. Gustaf University with a degree in Pig Latin. Around 1959, Rose sustained a back injury while plowing the fields and was prescribed high-strength painkillers to help with the pain. Charlie unexpectedly passed away in 1980, suffering from a heart attack while he and Rose were making love. As he had his heart attack, he asked Rose to dress him so he wouldn't be naked when the paramedics arrived. Rose was able to dress him despite a brief argument about her dressing him in white, and just before Charlie died, he told her he loved her. Due to the circumstances of Charlie's death, Rose spent the next handful of years abstaining from sexual intimacy out of fear that the next man she slept with would die like Charlie did.
Moving to Miami
Subsequent to Charlie passing away, Rose continued her days without him and stayed in St. Olaf for quite a while. However, after nearly a year alone in an empty house full of fond memories, Rose decided on her first birthday after Charlie's death that she would sell their house. The house sold quickly enough, and Rose used the money to pursue a new life in Miami, Florida. Upon moving to Miami, Rose got a job at a grief counselling center. Some years after moving to Miami, Rose was thrown out of her apartment for for violating her lease by keeping a stray cat, whom she'd named Mr. Peepers, as a pet. Now homeless, Rose took the cat with her to the local supermarket to search the community bulletin board for any rooms up for rent. She stumbled across a room-for-rent ad from Blanche Devereaux, and while Blanche wasn't initially fond of Rose, she was moved to offer her a place to stay after watching her give Mr. Peepers away to a little boy whose cat had just died. After arriving to move in to Blanche's home, she met Dorothy Zbornak, who had also taken up an offer to room with Blanche. Blanche later explained that she had multiple rooms available, and she let Rose and Dorothy pick out which rooms they wanted. While the ladies initially didn't get along, they eventually decided to stay together and learn to get along -- especially after learning of their shared love of cheesecake.
Soon after moving and somewhat settling into Miami, Rose found work as a full-time counselor at a grief counselling center. However, she was unable to handle working with people who were moderately-to-severely depressed and even suicidal, and her work took a toll on her mental health. After the counselling center closed and left Rose without a job, she tried to run a small counselling center out of the house, only to be bothered day and night by patients coming to see her and calling at all hours of the night. She was able to find a temporary job as a waitress at the Fountain Rock Coffee Shop, but at some point, the counseling center reopened and Rose got a job there again.
In 1989, the company Charlie worked for went bankrupt, and the Army cut off his pension payments. Rose was forced to look for a better-paying job, but was unable to find one as nobody would hire her due to her age. She later became personal assistant to consumer reporter Enrique Mas.
Rose has also worked a number of small jobs throughout the series:
•Pet Shop Employee: Rose worked at a pet shop in St. Olaf for ten years, coming up with the idea for squeaky toys for cows.
•Waitress: While she was looking for a new job, Rose became a waitress at the Fountain Rock Coffee Shop.
•Caterer: For a time, Rose and her roommates ran a wedding planning business called Miami Moms Catering. However, they ended up losing out on a sizable amount of money after their first client decided to elope with her fiancé.
In January 1987, Rose had an esophageal spasm that caused a near-death experience. In March 1989, she came clean about a decades-long addiction to prescription painkillers. Rose also endured an AIDS scare in February 1990, when she was alerted that a blood transfusion she had received during an operation several years before may have been tainted w...
As per Jim Colucci's extensive interviews and lengthy, in-depth scrutiny of all things golden in his book, The Golden Girls: An Authorized Look Behind the Lanai, producer Jay Sandrich wanted to cast the roles for the then-in production series. After Sandrich, Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas, and Susan Harris gathered together to discuss potential casting, the candidates were narrowed down to Betty White and Rue McClanahan. Betty White previously played the role of sarcastic, promiscuous, and man-hungry Susan Ann Nivens in the 1973 TV series, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. White had also co-starred with McClanahan in the first two seasons of Mama's Family; Rue playing the role of the uptight, sarcastic, sharp-tongued Aunt Frances Crowley, while White played the role of snobbish, wealthy, and assertive Mary Ellen Harper-Jackson. Additionally, White had previously portrayed the sarcastic, promiscuous, man-hungry Susan Anne Nivens in
According to Paul Junger Witt, the casting team had zeroed in on McClanahan to play Rose and White to play Blanche. However, when White and McClanahan received the scripts, both were drawn to the opposite character they had been chosen for. Per her autobiography, Here We Go Again: My Life in Television, White said "From the script we had read, we knew the strong character of Dorothy, and her brutally frank mother, Sophia. We understand the lustful Blanche. But, I hadn't a clue who Rose was."
The Golden Girls (1985-1992)Empty Nest (1988-1995)The Golden Palace (1992-1993)Dancing in the Dark: Directed by Terry Hughes. With Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, Estelle Getty. Rose feels inferior to her boyfriend Miles, a college professor.
Jan 16, 2022 · For anyone hoping to revisit Betty White’s best moments as Rose in The Golden Girls, here’s a hand-crafted list of some of the definitive episodes for the character, and some of White’s best...
