Bea Arthur hated wearing shoes so much that her contract for The Golden Girls explicitly allowed her to walk around the set barefoot or in fuzzy slippers as long as the cameras only shot her from the waist up.

A closer look

Bea Arthur hated wearing shoes so much that her contract for The Golden Girls explicitly allowed her to walk around the set barefoot or in fuzzy slippers as long as the cameras only shot her from the waist up. Dorothy Zbornak, the pinnacle of sarcastic substitute teacher energy, was secretly padding around a Miami retirement home looking like she just rolled out of bed. It is incredibly on-brand for a television legend to demand maximum foot comfort while delivering devastatingly cynical punchlines to Betty White. Network television used to let actual stars dictate terms about their toes, whereas today’s actors have to endure six months of dehydration just to play a superhero who stands in front of a green screen for three hours a day