Cindy Fee to Perform at Opening Weekend of THE GOLDEN GIRLS LIVE: THE CHRISTMAS EPISODES

Cindy Fee—the voice of The Golden Girls theme song, “Thank You for Being a Friend”—will perform at the opening weekend of The Golden Girls Live: The Christmas Episodes at BroadwaySF's Curran Theatre (445 Geary St., San Francisco). Patrons attending performances on December 6, 7, and 8 will get the opportunity to see Fee perform the iconic theme song live from the Curran Theatre stage.

San Francisco's most eagerly-awaited holiday tradition—The Golden Girls Live: The Christmas Episodes—will perform a limited engagement from Thursday, December 5 through Sunday, December 22. Tickets for all performances are on-sale now at broadwaysf.com. Group orders of 10 or more may be placed by calling 888-746-1799 opt. 3 or emailing groupsales@broadwaysf.com.

Between 1985–1992, millions of viewers tuned in weekly to the NBC television series, The Golden Girls, bringing the voice of Cindy Fee singing the Andrew Gold song, "Thank You for Being a Friend," to a national audience every Saturday night. The show, and Fee's theme song, became so iconic that even U.S. President Barack Obama released a video of himself grooving to Fee's performance.
 
After The Golden Girls' star Betty White's death in 2021, the popular sitcom and Fee's opening theme song was streamed 384 million times in one week alone. During the COVID-19 "Lockdown TV Phenomenon"] in 2020, Hulu viewers streamed 11 million hours of The Golden Girls in April alone, providing extensive renewed exposure to Fee's performance.  Despite the show's nearly 40-year tenure, The Golden Girls continues to attract a mass audience and Fee remains a fan-favorite.

Now in its 19th year, The Golden Girls Live: The Christmas Episodes takes four drag legends and casts them in two parody Christmas episodes of the uproarious TV show The Golden Girls. Directed by Drollinger, this drag send-up and heartfelt tribute to the characters the entire world has come to know and love features the return of Coco Peru (Dorothy), Matthew Martin (Blanche), D'Arcy Drollinger (Rose), and Holotta Tymes (Sophia). The cast also features Manuel Caneri, Michael Phillis, and Tom Shaw on the piano.

The Golden Girls: Live on Stage started performances in 2006 in the front parlor of a Victorian Mansion in San Francisco's Western Addition. The shows quickly became more and more popular with the shows being performed twice annually—for a month every June and for a month each December. As The Golden Girls became more popular, they moved to larger quarters of sold out-runs at Mama Calizo's Voice Factory and then to CounterPULSE. In 2011 the show moved to the 500-seat Victoria Theatre, where it had enjoyed many great years of sold-out houses.

About The Golden Girls

The Golden Girls TV shows (which began airing 30 years ago) is an American sitcom, created by Susan Harris, that originally aired on NBC from Sept. 14, 1985, to May 9, 1992. It starred veteran TV actors Beatrice Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty. The Golden Girls received critical acclaim throughout most of its run and won several awards, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series twice. It also won three Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy. Each of the 4 stars received an Emmy Award (from multiple nominations during the series' run), making it one of only 3 sitcoms in the award's history to achieve this. The series also ranked among the 10 ten highest-rated programs for 6 out of its 7 seasons. In 2014, the Writers Guild Of America placed the sitcom at No. 69 in their list of the "101 Best Written TV Series Of All Time.”

About Cindy Fee

Cindy Fee is a singer and recording artist. She is best known for performing,”Thank You For Being A Friend", the opening theme song for the Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning sitcom, “The Golden Girls.”
 
Fee started performing professionally at the age of sixteen, working Kansas City area restaurants, clubs, local theaters, and amusement parks. In 1973, Fee became a founding member, along with Eric Bikales, of the Kansas City band Hotfoot and also sang with the jazz group, the Means/Devan Trio.
 
She is married to Robert Landis and has two adult children, Ethan and Rory Landis. Fee frequently performs a genre she calls, "country soul", a combination of Motown and country, and has appeared live at venues including in Nashville, Chicago, Los Angeles, and in Europe.
 
Fee is also a prolific jingle and TV commercial singer. Fee's commercial jingle credits include: for Hoover Vacuum "Nobody Does it Like You”; "Get on Your Pontiac and Ride";] and "What the Big Boys Eat"; from the Wheaties cereal campaign.
 
Fee's voice was also featured in commercials for Chevy Trucks, McDonald's,Miller Beer, Chick-fil-A, Home Depot, Goodyear,Hot Pockets, Barbie, John Deere, NASCAR, Ford, Toyota, Purina, Avon, and American Airlines. Fee's Wheaties and Hoover commercials were awarded Clio awards.
 
Fee also recorded chart-topping records with some of the best-selling music artists of all time. Her discography includes the duet with Kenny Rogers, "I Don't Want to Know Why" from the platinum selling album, What About Me?
 
Fee is also a credited background singer on the album, Kenny Rogers — Christmas which peaked at #34 on U.S. charts and Share Your Love, the Kenny Rogers album that peaked at #6 on U.S. charts.  She also performed as a background singer for Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, and Lionel Richie.] Fee also released her own albums Dancin In My Sleep and Young at Heart, the latter with noted rockabilly guitarist Eddie Angel, founding member of Los Straitjackets. 

Cast Bios:

Miss Coco Peru (Dorothy) has been a household name in the LGBTQ+ community for over 30 years. Coco got her start in the early 90's as a downtown favorite in NYC's cabaret world. Since then, Coco has received worldwide acclaim for her award-winning solo shows and has enjoyed an expansive career in film, television, and digital work.TV: Dead- Paranormal Park (Netflix) Will and Grace (recurring role), How I Met Your Mother, Arrested Development and two stand-up comedy specials on LOGO. Film: trick, To Wong Foo… and the cult classic Girls Will Be Girls. Digital: Madame Coco Knows (Logo), Casa Coco (a monthly streaming show during covid lockdown) and her YouTube videos with over 13 million views.
 
D'Arcy Drollinger (Rose) is the appointed San Francisco Drag Laureate, the first ever position of its kind in the world. D'Arcy is an actor, writer, director, choreographer, producer and entrepreneur. Drollinger is the owner and artistic director of OASIS, voted San Francisco's best nightclub/ cabaret. D'Arcy has written over a dozen original works, including: Bitch Slap, Temple of Poon and Disastrous, as well as the web series Hot Trash. Drollinger's first feature film, Shit & Champagne, became an instant cult classic and is now streaming on Hulu. D'Arcy is the executive director of San Francisco-based nonprofit, Oasis Arts, dedicated to providing access and resources to LGBTQIA+ artists. Other credits include: The Producers (first Broadway production), and Hairspray the Musical (first Broadway production). Drollinger is the creator of Sexitude, the body-positive, age-positive, sex-positive dance experience based in San Francisco.

Matthew Martin (Blanche) a native San Franciscan, has been conjuring many stars of the Silver Screen for years on stage and screen.  He starred as Bette Davis in the film parodies Baby Jane?, Hush Up, Sweet Charlotte and as the nefarious villainess in D'Arcy Drollinger's Sh*t and Champagne, all available on Amazon Prime.  An actor, singer, dancer, director, choreographer and man of many faces and voices, Matthew recently incarnated Joan Crawford in Michael Phillis' comedy The Hand That Rocks the Crawford at Oasis in San Francisco.  Matthew has brought Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Ann Miller, Jane Russell, Susan Hayward, Peggy Lee, Eartha Kitt, Mitzi Gaynor and many other stars to life on stage and screen in Marc Huestis' productions at the Castro Theater and appeared in multiple productions at Theater Rhino with John Fisher.  As Blanche Devereaux, he has loved working with his good friends in The Golden Girls since 2007.
Holotta Tymes (Sophia) a female impersonator with a career spanning almost 30 years cross crossing the country professionally in many large shows including as the comedy star of the world famous finocchios in the 90s until it's closing in 1999, a north beach main stay for 83 years and the longest running female impersonation show in the world. An entrepreneur, she has branched out into several businesses, including owning her own nightclub, club 1220 in Walnut Creek. Holotta started her career, young, working in theater, both on stage, touring as well as writing, directing.  Her credits include voice over work for animated cartoons and commercials. In her teens, she wrote and directed an all male comedy version of Romeo and Juliet called “me and Juliet” she toured for many years in the shows title role of Juliet. Between her love of theater, family, and her beloved yorkies, she finds time to raise funds for the San Francisco aids foundation and the LA gay and lesbian center, proudly a nine-time AIDS Lifecycle rider! Hello riders, hello roadies! 

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