Filed under: Clippings
Beatrice Arthur, the larger-than-life actress who scored on Broadway as the original matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof and the hard-drinking actress in Mame before she went on to star in the groundbreaking ’70s TV series Maude and, in the ’80s, the beloved sitcom The Golden Girls, died early Saturday morning. She was 86.
Dan Watt, a spokesman for Arthur’s family, told the Associated Press that the star had been suffering with cancer, though he did not specify what kind. She died peacefully at her Los Angeles home with her family by her side, said Watt, who remembered Arthur as “a brilliant and witty woman.”
Maude, which debuted on CBS in 1972 (and ran until 1978) was a spin-off of the hit All in the Family. As the liberal cousin of archconservative Archie Bunker’s wife Edith, the much-married Maude wasn’t afraid to broach such controversial (especially for TV at the time) topics as abortion and civil rights.
Golden Girls, a popular NBC Saturday-night staple from 1985 to 1992, featured Arthur as the outspoken Dorothy Zbornak, who shared a Florida home with three other women, including her mother, played by Estelle Getty – who died last July, at 84. The other stars were Rue McClanahan and Betty White.
New York Origins
Born Bernice Frankel in New York City but raised in Maryland, where her parents ran a women’s clothing store, Arthur debuted on the Off Broadway stage in New York in the 1940s, with her Broadway musical triumphs – though her singing voice was deep and scratchy – in the mid-’60s.
Married and divorced twice, Arthur took her stage name (in part) from her first husband, the screenwriter, director and producer Robert Alan Aurthur, whose credits include the Bob Fosse film All That Jazz. With second husband, Mame director Gene Saks, she adopted two sons, Matthew, 47, and Daniel, 44. They survive her.
Of her powerful stage and TV persona, which often found her cast in the same sort of role, Arthur once said, “Look – I’m 5-feet-9, I have a deep voice and I have a way with a line. What can I do about it? I can’t stay home waiting for something different. I think it’s a total waste of energy worrying about typecasting.”
Wow. I really hated getting this news. I loved Bea Arthur SO much. From the first time I saw her on All in the Family, to her own spinoff series, Maude, which I LOVED. And, of course, from her work on The Golden Girls. She had a delicious way of delivering flat, sardonic lines that would often leave her victim obliterated. It never failed to make me laugh out loud. I realize she was the “go to” lady for jokes about masculine women, but I never thought of her in that way. I just thought she was so damn funny. I am very saddened by her passing. She brought some much-needed laughter into my life on more than one occasion and I will miss her.
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Thank goodness for Bea Arthur and the Golden Girls, if not for shows like that and the People’s Court, etc. my summer’s as a junior higher would have been even more dismally dull
Comment by Nomad April 27, 2009 @ 1:22 pm