IN MEMORIAM: BEATRICE ARTHUR 1922 - 2009

reports
Golden Girls star Bea Arthur dies at 86

Preserved from Yahoo! News
Reuters
electronic scrapbook entry for 26 April 2009
By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Emmy Award-winning actress Bea Arthur, best known as star of the hit TV comedies Maude and Golden Girls, has died at age 86, entertainment news websites reported on Saturday.

Arthur, a longtime stage actress whose comic timing and deadpan delivery were a perfect fit for her sharp-tongued roles on the two series, died of cancer at her Los Angeles home, celebrity website TMZ reported.

Representatives for the actress, who won best-actress Emmys – America's top television award -- for "Maude" and "Golden Girls," could not immediately be reached for comment.

"Thirty-seven years ago she showed me how to be very brave in playing comedy," one of Arthur's co-stars, Rue McClanahan, told TMZ in a statement. "I'll miss that courage and I'll miss that voice."

Born Beatrice Frankel in New York on May 13, 1922, Arthur began performing in college and appeared in Broadway and off-Broadway roles, winning a Tony Award opposite Angela Lansbury in Mame.

In the early 1970s, Arthur appeared on the groundbreaking television comedy All in the Family as Edith Bunker's fiercely liberal cousin Maude. Producers who saw gold in the role quickly devised a spinoff for the character.

"Maude" debuted on CBS in 1972 and became one of the top-rated sitcoms on U.S. television during its six-year run.

In a two-part episode that aired in November 1972, the show stirred protest and controversy when Maude decided to have an abortion because of her age. The procedure was legal in New York state, where the show was set, but not nationwide.

Two months later, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in its landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

Arthur followed with "Golden Girls," an unlikely hit from 1985 to 1992 that featured four female retirees living together.

Central to the popularity of "Golden Girls" was the comic interplay between Arthur's character and her mother, played by Estelle Getty -- who in real life was a year younger and who also won an Emmy for the show.

Getty died last July at the age of 84.

According to CNN, no funeral services had been planned for Arthur. She is survived by two sons and two grandchildren, and family members have asked that in lieu of flowers donations be sent to two of her favorite causes, the ArtAttack foundation and the animal rights group PETA.

"People have lost one of the greatest comic actresses of all time and animals have lost one of their all-time greatest defenders," Dan Matthews, PETA senior vice president, said in a statement.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

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FOR THE RECORD
Here are Beatrice Arthur’s credits on Broadway plays:

Lysistrata (1947)
The Dog Beneath the Skin (1947)
Yerma (1947)
No Exit (1948)
The Taming of the Shrew (1948)
Six Characters in Search of an Author (1948)
The Owl and the Pussycat (1948)
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1949)
Yes is for a Very Young Man (1949)
The Creditors (1949)
Heartbreak House (1949)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1951) Carol Channing’s big hit.
Personal Appearance (1951)
Candle Light (1951)
Love or Money (1951)
The Voice of the Turtle (1951) Vivian Vance was also in it.
The New Moon (1953)
The Threepenny Opera (1954) Kurt Weill’s great hit.
What's the Rush? (1955)
Shoestring Revue (1955)
Plain and Fancy (1955)
Seventh Heaven (1955)
Mistress of the Inn (1956)
The Ziegfeld Follies (1956) The last one.
Nature's Way (1957)
Ulysses in Nighttown (1958)
The Gay Divorcee at the Cherry Lane (1960)
A Matter of Position (1962)
Fiddler on the Roof (1964) as the first Yenta “The way he sees and the way she looks, it is a perfect match.”
Mame (1966) “That was Helen Hayes.”
The Floating Lightbulb (1981)
La Fille du Regiment (1994)
Bermuda Avenue Triangle (1995-1996)
Angela Lansbury - A Celebration (November 17, 1996) (benefit concert)
After Play (1997-1998)
Strike Up The Band (2000)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Westport, CN (July 28–30, 2000)
And Then There's Bea United States Tour (Apr 24, 2001 – Jan 13, 2002)
Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends Manhattan (Jan 29 – Apr 14, 2002)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Santa Fe, NM (September 24, 2002)
And Then There's Bea Melbourne, Australia (Oct 15–27, 2002)
And Then There's Bea Sydney (Oct 29 – Nov 10, 2002)
Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends Toronto OT (Nov 20 – Dec 2002)
And Then There's Bea Johannesburg, South Africa (Aug 12–24, 2003)
And Then There's Bea Cape Town (Aug 26 – Sept 7, 2003)
Bea Arthur at The Savoy London (Sept 15 – Oct 18, 2003)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Los Angeles (Jan 31 – Feb 1, 2004)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Saugatuck, MI (May 22–23, 2004)
A Celebration of Life Washington, D.C. (May 26, 2004)
Bea Arthur at the El Portal North Hollywood, CA (Aug 5–8, 2004)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Provincetown, MA (Aug 21, 2004)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Columbus, GA (Oct 30, 2004)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Nyack, NY (Mar 4 – 6, 2005)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Fort Wayne, IN (Apr 17, 2005)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Mount Pleasant, MI (Apr 19, 2005)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Atlantic City, NJ (Jun 3–4, 2005)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Holmdel, NJ (Jun 7, 2005)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Las Vegas (Aug 27, 2005)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Hampton, VA (Sep 16–17, 2005)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Alexandria, VA (Sep 22, 2005)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Geneva, NY (Sept 24, 2005)
Bea Arthur Back on Broadway Manhattan (Nov 21, 2005)
An Evening with Bea Arthur San Francisco (Jan 7, 2006)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Salem, OR (Jan 21, 2006)
Bea Arthur Back at the El Portal North Hollywood, CA (Feb 16–19, 2006)
An Evening with Bea Arthur Scottsdale, AZ (Feb 24–25, 2006)
An Evening with Bea Arthur University Park, IL (Mar 19, 2006)


She was among the brightest comedy stars of television, but she bored easily. As a result, she never realized her most interesting television project.


AND THEN CAME MAUDE

I remember distinctly the episode "Cousin Maude's Visit" broadcast on 11 December 1971, Beatrice Arthur's first time appearance as “Maude Findley” in All in the Family. In those days, Norman Lear videotaped All in the Family in Television City in Hollywood, so she had traveled west from her New York City home base where she was a first magnitude star on Broadway and live east coast TV projects.

Even when she was young, she could nail her comic lines right to the mast.

“In a movie world full of Leslie Howards, Gregory Pecks and Clark Gables, he took Edith to see Buster Crabbe.”

“And for you Archie, cream and wheat with cheese. It’s light, but it binds.”

Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton, and Beatrice Arthur by 1971 all had decades of experience in showbiznia, and their lines bounced delightfully from one to the other.

“I will take one ‘My fellow Americans’ to a thousand ‘let me make this perfectly clear’s.”

The Hollywood TV executives apparently did not know her that well, but they knew talent when they saw it and offered her a sitcom called Maude. All in the Family was Lear’s satire of New York conservatives. Maude was to be the satire of New York liberals.

I remember quite well the infamous 1972 broadcast of “Maude’s Dilemma” as described in admirably clarity by Wikipedia:

Maude had an abortion in November 1972, two months before the Roe v. Wade decision made abortion legal nationwide, and the episodes which dealt with the situation are probably the series' most famous and most controversial. Maude, at age 47, was crushed when she found herself pregnant, and everyone agreed with her that having a baby at her age was very risky and not a wise thing to happen. Her daughter, Carol, brought to her attention that abortion was now legal in New York state. After some soul-searching (and discussions with Walter, who agreed that raising a baby at their ages was not very wise), Maude tearfully decided at the end of the two-parter that abortion was probably the best choice. Noticing the wide controversy around the episode, CBS decided to rerun the episodes in August 1973, and members of the country's clergy reacted strongly to the decision. At least 30 stations dropped the show.[citation needed] Future Golden Girls creator Susan Harris was a writer on the episode.

I have incidentally seen some reports of this episode indicating that the whole thing turned out to be a laboratory paper work reading error, but I do not remember it that way.

This episode also dealt with vasectomies as well. In part two, husband Walter announces, “I’m going to have a vasectomy after golf.”

Maude replies without missing a beat: “It sounds like the name of a play by Noel Coward.”

When it wasn’t obsessing over what Preston Struges euphemistically referred to as "Subject A," Maude could be very funny. It also dealt with the topics of politics, mental health, and alcoholism. Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskoph, Lucy’s great writers, worked as senior writers / producers of Maude.

Today, conventional TV historians remember the abortion episode "Maude’s Dilemma," but forget a 1974 episode in which as the final line of the episode, to bring the house down with a big laugh, Maude calls her husband a son of a bitch. It was the first time I remember that vulgarity used in a TV sitcom for laughs. At CBS, Carroll O’Connor then Beatrice Arthur and Mary Tyler Moore broke down the barriers as to what adult language sitcoms could use for comic effect.

CBS’s great black situation comedy The Jeffersons spun off of All in the Family in 1975. CBS’s other great black situation comedy Good Times spun off from Maude and her first black housekeeper "Florida Evans", portrayed by Esther Rolle. Good Times somehow wound up in Chicago with John Amos, Ralph Carter, and Jimmie Walker. Good Times was actually too realistic to be funny. The Jeffersons I liked better because it was upper class Negro life, a lesson not lost on Bill Cosby when he created The Cosby Show for NBC in 1983.


MS ARTHUR DOES NOT GO TO WASHINGTON

In 1978, Lear had the brilliant idea to make "Maude Findlay" a liberal Democrat United States Representative from Westchester County and move Maude from suburban New York to the District of Columbia and the Maryland suburbs. Arthur, unfortunately, had bored of the role by then, and the series ended with Maude moving to D.C. Supposedly she filmed two episodes of the new series and then left it high and dry. I have, however, never seen a clip of either supposed episode.

Lear tried to resurrect the idea with a young liberal black representative portrayed by John Amos. Amos, famously, did not agree with Norman Lear on various artistic issues. He left Good Times over creative differences with Lear, and he left Onward and Upward over creative differences.
Wikipedia breathlessly describes what happened next

In early 1978, producer Norman Lear felt his long-running comedy Maude was getting stale, so he decided to enliven things by moving the show to Washington, D.C. and making the title character a congresswoman. After two episodes in this new setting, star Beatrice Arthur decided not to continue, and the show abruptly left the air. Lear, however, still believed in the concept, and filmed a new pilot tilted Onward and Upward, with essentially the same script and cast -- except with John Amos (as a black former pro football star running for the United States Congress) replacing Arthur. Creative differences between Amos (who had co-starred in Lear's Good Times) and the producers led to Amos bowing out; the show was renamed Mr. Dooley and finally Mr. Dugan. Cleavon Little (best known as the sheriff in the classic movie comedy Blazing Saddles) was hired as the title character, a fledgling black congressman. The supporting cast, however, remained the same.

Mr. Dugan had been scheduled for a March 11, 1979, premiere, and was heavily promoted by its network, CBS. A special screening for real black congressmen, however, proved to be an unmitigated disaster; many found the show "demeaning" and threatened a boycott of CBS if the program aired. Lear subsequently pulled the plug on Mr. Dugan, saying "we have not yet totally fulfilled our intention for the series."

The series was eventually reworked into the short lived series, Hanging In that aired on CBS in 1979.

Hanging In starred Bill Daly and took place in a University administration building. The whole darn thing would have been landmark funny with Beatrice Arthur in Washington.

I thought Golden Girls was one of the most funny of the NBC sitcoms of the Golden Age of NBC Sitcoms in 1983 - 1994. I did not like Cheers, though I liked Frasier. Cosby I loved. Night Court I loved. Golden Girls could be funny when it did not obsess over Subject A or Blanche Devereaux’s lack of sexual morals. The writers of Lucille Ball sitcom disaster Life with Lucy should have studied the Golden Girls carefully. The main reason to watch Golden Girls was Beatrice Arthur and the way she nailed her comic bon mots.

Eventually she got bored of that sitcom as well and left it.


FOR THE RECORD

I thought the Lucille Ball movie version of Mame (May 1974) was a good movie, not a great one. Beatrice Arthur reprised her role of "Vera Charles" again for the movie version and just about stole the show. At a celebration in honor of Jerry Herman, she joked that Mame was originally supposed to be titled "Vera." “Jerry said nothing could rhyme with Vera. [three beats of a pause ] Sondheim could have rhymed it.”

Beatrice Arthur was one of my favorites, a talent the likes of which we won’t see the likes of which again.