Divorce, Affairs, & STDs! 'The Golden Girls' Secret Love Lives Exposed
Nov. 21 2017, Updated 1:35 p.m. ET
The Golden Girls — Rue McClanahan, Bea Arthur, Betty White and Estelle Getty — played wholesome pals on camera.
But RadarOnline can reveal that behind the scenes, the ladies led red-hot love lives!
Divorces, STDs, young studs — Bea, Rue & and the rest sure weren't the retiring types!
In real life, Rue was a lot like her man-eating character, Blanche Devereaux — tying the knot six times!
She met her first husband, Tom Bish, in the 1950s, and the two quickly got hitched.
But their marriage soon soured, and when she discovered she was pregnant, Rue hightailed it to her parents' home to have the baby!
Rue — who died in 2010 at age 76 of a brain hemorrhage — saw her husband only once more, after their son, Mark, was born.
She wed an old friend only a few months after her divorce from Bish was final in 1959.
At 56, Rue dated 29-year-old Michael Thornton, and their romance had her acting like a 16-year-old! She'd flirt with male crew members, and came to work drenched in perfume that caused others to say, "Everyone evacuate!"
The "Girls" were friends on the set — and frisky off of it!
Estelle lived with a much younger man — while she was still married!
In 1989, while "The Golden Girls" was still being produced, then 65-year-old Estelle — who played Sophia Petrillo, the feisty 80-something mother of Bea's character — shared a Hollywood apartment with a handsome 30-year-old actor, J. David Krassner.
The two met while appearing in the Broadway production of "Torch Song Trilogy" from November 1983 to June 1984 — a period that Estelle fondly called "the best time of my life."
While Estelle was shacking up wih Krassner, her husband, Arthur Gettleman, was thousands of miles away — running Estelle's family's business in Florida!
The couple married in 1947, and Arthur accepted that Estelle put work before marriage.
"Sometimes I miss her greatly, and sometimes I don't. I'm glad that she's living with someone and not alone," Arthur said at the time.
The couple had two sons, Carl and Barry. Estelle battled both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's before passing away at the age of 84 in July 2008.
Bea married twice, but never had children of her own — after a bout with venereal disease while serving in the Marines!
Although the Maude star denied serving in the armed forces, military records show she enlisted in the Marine Corps in early 1943 at the age of 21.
Bea married a fellow Marine, private Robert Aurthur, while she was in the service, and her military records show a "misconduct report" was filed against her — for contracting venereal disease!
The infection left her "incapacitated for duty" for five weeks in late 1944! Shortly after her first marriage ended in 1950, Bea married director Gene Saks. They adopted two sons in the 1960s.
The couple split in 1978. Bea, who played Dorothy in The Golden Girls, died in 2009 at age 86. Insiders say Bea secretly hated her fellow co-stars and couldn't wait for the show to end.
Bea in 1976 with husband Gene Saks, sons Matthew and Daniel, and her mom, Rebecca Frankel.
Betty revealed her greatest regret two years ago — and it involved Allen Ludden, her husband of 18 years, who died from stomach cancer in 1981.
"I spent a whole year, wasted a whole year that Allen and I could have had together, saying, 'No, I wouldn't marry him. No, I won't. No, I won't leave California. No, I won't move to New York,' " Betty told Oprah. "I wasted a whole year we could have had together."
The 95-year-old Emmy winner — who was briefly married twice in the 1940s — has often gushed about the famed "Password" host.
In 2011, when asked by Joy Behar on The View to choose one decision she'd happily make again, Betty replied: "Marry Allen Ludden. No two ways about that. He was something special."
Betty, who played Golden Girl Rose Nylund, never wed again after Allen's death.
"I had the love of my life," she says. "If you've had the best, who needs the rest?"
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