Series Description

The Designing Women TV show was a 30 minute comedy series on CBS about a women with an "abrasive" personality who runs an interior design firm and her interaction with friends and (mostly) co-workers.

Designing Women Cast

Delta Burke .... Suzanne Sugarbaker Goff Dent Stonecipher
Dixie Carter .... Julia Sugarbaker McIlroy
Annie Potts .... Mary Jo Jackson Shively
Alice Ghostley .... Mrs. Bernice Clifton
Jean Smart .... Charlene Olivia Frazier Stillfield
Meshach Taylor .... Anthony Bouvier
Richard Gilliland .... James Dean "J.D." Shackelford
Priscilla Weems .... Claudia Marie Shively
Hal Holbrook .... Reese Watson
Douglas Barr .... Colonel William "Bill" Stillfield

Designing Women Trivia:

The name of the interior design firm owned by Julia Sugarbaker was, "Sugarbaker and Associates". The exterior of that buiding was actually a Victorian mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas. It was built in 1881 and is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. It even has a name, "Villa Marre".

Delta Burke was fired from the Designing Women cast after the fifth season ended in May of 1991. Her feud with the TV show's producers, "Linda Bloodworth-Thomason" and her husband "Harry Thomason" was fueled by the fact that Delta had gained a considerable amount of weight. Linda and Harry (and others) felt that she had lost her "sex appeal" and urged her repeatedly to lose the weight. By 1995, they put their past differences aside to do a short-lived "spin-off" of Designing Women titled, "Women of the House". Delta Burke reprised her role as Suzanne Sugarbaker. Her fifth husband died and she moved to Washington, D.C. to finish his term as a U.S. Congresswomen.

Being a Designing Women cast member was apparently good for one's love life! Jean Smart met her husband, Richard Gilliland on Designing Women. Dixie Carter also met her husband, Hal Holbrook by playing his girlfriend on the TV show! Ironically, in January of 1990, Charlene & Bill Stillfield had a baby girl on the TV show. This was written into the scripts because, in real life, Jean Smart and Richard Gilliland were having a baby!

Designing Women was canceled near the end of its first season! CBS had moved the TV show's time slot twice in only 5 months! Viewers kept "losing" it. The TV show was a critical and ratings success in its original Monday night time slot. Viewer protests to the cancellation finally won out and the TV show was returned to its Monday night spot for five more seasons. For the seventh (and final) season, it was moved to Friday night.

Designing Women Theme Song

Title: "Georgia On My Mind"

Words Written By: "Stuart Gorrell / Music By: Hoagy Carmichael"

Performed By: "Ray Charles" (6th Season Only)

(This is also the state of Georgia's official song.)

Georgia, Georgia, the whole day through
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind
Georgia, Georgia, a song of you
Comes sweet and clear as moonlight through the pines

Other arms reach out to me
Other eyes smile tenderly
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you

Georgia, Georgia, no peace I find
Just and old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind

Georgia, Georgia, no peace I find
Just and old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind
Just and old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind
On my mind...