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This article is about the television show of this title. For the 1934 film of this title, see Designing Women (film). For the 1957 film with a similar title, see Designing Woman.
Designing Women is an American television sitcom that centered around 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 writer
Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who wrote many of the episodes in the show's initial seasons.
Premise
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), and the sweet-natured but somewhat naive office manager Charlene Frazier Stillfield (
Jean Smart) were initial investors. Anthony Bouvier (
Meshach Taylor), a former prison inmate who was
falsely accused and convicted of a robbery, was the only man on staff and later in the series became a partner. Bernice Clifton (
Alice Ghostley), an absent-minded friend of the Sugarbaker matriarch, also appeared frequently.
Casting
Main cast
Recurring cast
Notable guest stars
- Dolly Parton guest starred as herself, appearing in Charlene's dream as her Guardian Movie Star, in a double episode that aired January 1, 1990, entitled "The First Day of the Last Decade of the Entire Twentieth Century."
- Gerald McRaney made a couple of appearances playing Suzanne's ex-husband, novelist Dash Goff. He and Delta Burke would subsequently marry.
- Sherman Hemsley and Della Reese portrayed the Toussaints (Anthony's in-laws) in a 1993 episode.
- Kim Zimmer played Charlene's cousin Mavis Madling, who was a victim of spousal abuse in the episode "The Rowdy Girls".
Cast departures
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.
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.
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). Ivey's presence brought a new and well-rounded element of intelligence and humor to the show. B.J. was presented as a friend of Julia 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 series finale, concluding with an hour-long special 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.
Annie Potts announced in 1993 that she would leave the show after the seventh season; however, this turned out to be the show's last season, so there was no need for her character to be replaced.
Ratings, timeline, and cancellation
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 appeared in a pilot for
ABC in the prior season.
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 time slot, CBS 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.
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.
[Brooks, Tim and Marsh, Earle, "The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable Shows 1946–present," 7th edition] However, with CBS's move of the show to
Friday night in the fall of 1992, the ratings dropped and the show was cancelled in 1993.
The series' theme song was the
Georgia state song "
Georgia on My Mind". During the first five seasons, the theme was instrumental including a version by trumpeter
Doc Severinsen. 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.
Framework and content
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 homosexuality, racism, dating clergy, 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....was the night....the lights....went out.....in Georgia!" became a fan favorite. (In the reunion special for the show, the cast remarked that the speech is often recited word for word in gay clubs and bars.) 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.
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.
Episodes
DVD releases
Shout! Factory has released the first three seasons of
Designing Women on DVD in Region 1.
| 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
|
| TBA
|
In 2003,
Sony Pictures released
The Best of Designing Women, a single disc DVD featuring five episodes: "Designing Women (Pilot)", "Killing All the Right People", "Reservations for Eight", "Big Haas and Little Falsie" and "They Shoot Fat Women, Don't They?".
Political views
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. One episode revolved around Julia getting 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).
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 function for
Habitat for Humanity at which the Carters were to appear. She is later very flattered to discover that the Carters have sent her flowers and an invitation to meet privately to thank her for her support of Habitat.
Other appearances
[
] July 2, 1988, featuring the cast of
Designing Women]]
- From 1991 to 1992, CBS aired reruns of Designing Women on its late night schedule at 3 a.m. (EST).
- Designing Women was rerun on the Lifetime cable network for over a decade. Despite its popularity, the show left the network on August 4, 2006.
- A 90-minute retrospective special, The Designing Women Reunion, aired on Lifetime on July 28, 2003, reuniting Burke, Potts, Smart, Carter and Taylor in which they shared memories from their time on the series, and also featured interviews with the Thomasons and various writers.
- The series started on October 2, 2006 on Nick at Nite, however it quickly left and later appeared on its sister network TV Land, airing at various late-night and morning times occasionally until the network lost the rights to air the show in 2008.
- The series also aired on ION Television in 2007, Mon-Thurs at 7:00 & 7:30 p.m. ET. [1] As of 2010, Designing Women is not seen on national television in the United States.
- Burke did a guest spot on two episodes of Annie Potts' subsequent series Any Day Now in 1998 and 1999.
- Burke and Carter reconciled and later reunited when Burke guest starred on Carter's subsequent series Family Law in 2002.
Discrepancies
- A number of changes to Julia Sugarbaker's house were seen over the years. During the pilot, the entry foyer had a closet and the main stairway was separate; in subsequent episodes, the closet was eliminated, and the stairway opened up onto the foyer. The pilot had a fireplace/woodstove near Mary Jo's desk and after the pilot it disappeared. The door behind the kitchenette to the left of the set was sometimes described as leading only to a store room, and at other times, was said to lead to the storeroom, as well as Julia's kitchen and dining room. (The dining room was shown in a couple of episodes.)
- During the pilot, Julia, Suzanne and Charlene addressed Mary Jo as "Jo", but for the rest of the series, they called her "Mary Jo".
- Sugarbaker was presumably Julia's maiden name (as it was also Suzanne's name), though she was often incorrectly addressed as "Mrs. Sugarbaker".
Opening credits
- During the first two seasons, photos of the four principals were shown along with groupings of items that depicted their characters (Suzanne's beauty crown and pageant clippings, Julia's elegant Wedgwood tea set and a photo of her son; a photo of Mary Jo's children, and her interior design sketches; Charlene's adding machine, her cat and a publicity photo of Elvis). Music was an instrumental of "Georgia on My Mind", performed by Doc Severinsen. (Meshach Taylor was not credited as a regular cast member, only appearing in the closing credits of episodes in which he appeared.)
- Seasons three, four, and five also featured a Doc Severinsen recording of "Georgia on My Mind", though a jazzier version than the previous recording. Glitzy head shots of the actors were used, with Meshach Taylor appearing as a regular cast member.
- Season six (the first season without Burke and Smart) featured the cast members, elegantly dressed, gathered around a piano, as Ray Charles performed "Georgia on My Mind".
- During season seven, the opening credits were eliminated, with just a few bars of "Georgia on My Mind" playing, as "Designing Women" and the names of the actors quickly scrolled across the bottom of the screen at the beginning of the first scene. The episode names were not displayed on-screen either.
Footnotes
reflist
