Biography
Intro
Blanche Elizabeth-Marie Devereaux (née Hollingsworth) was one of the four main characters on the 1985-1992 NBC sitcom The Golden Girls, and its CBS spin-off The Golden Palace. In the pilot episode her last name was given as Hollingsworth, but this was somewhat "corrected" in later episodes by making this her maiden name. Blanche was portrayed by Rue McClanahan.
Early Years
Blanche Elizabeth-Marie Hollingsworth grew up in a small town outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Her parents were the late Elizabeth Ann Bennett Roquet Hollingsworth (1897-1984) and Curtis "Big Daddy" Hollingsworth (1895-1986), the latter a revered man in his neck of the woods. Much to Blanche's dismay, he married a young widow named Margaret Spencer - years after Elizabeth passed on. Blanche was not at Big Daddy's side when he died because she was attending a ball in Miami, but refused to go to his funeral because of an argument with her sister Virginia. Blanche regretted this afterward and resolved to try to rethink her priorities in life. She and Dorothy eventually went to the cemetery, where Blanche said "hi" to her mother and father, and prayed at their coffins. After Big Daddy died, it was revealed that he and Blanche's long-lost African-American nanny, Viola Watkins, had an affair that lasted for fifty years.
Blanche has four siblings: Charmaine Gertrude Hollingsworth, the eldest sister, who infuriates Blanche when she writes a sordid novel that tells about Blanche's sexual life. Virginia Lena Hollingsworth, the prudent and spoiled youngest sister, with whom Blanche shared a mutual loathing. They buried the hatchet when Virginia went into renal failure and Blanche offered her kidney to her sister, but their relationship became strained once more after their argument after Big Daddy's death in which Virginia accused Blanche of being too selfish and self-centered to say goodbye to her own father. Blanche's year-younger brother, Clayton Louis Hollingsworth, whose subsequent revelation as being gay troubled Blanche to some extent; Blanche's reluctance to accept Clayton's sexual orientation nearly cost her a relationship with him. During The Golden Palace, it is revealed that Blanche has a mentally challenged older brother, Theodore "Tad" Hunter Hollingsworth, who had spent most of his life in a Chattanooga Institution. It was once revealed, when she was attempting to gain entry to the DOS (Daughters of the Old South), that she is 1/8 Jewish, her great-grandmother having been a Jewish woman named Rosalind Feldman from Buffalo, New York who married her great-grandfather, Walker Roquet. Blanche also had a visit from her promiscuous niece, Lucy.Menu
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