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Bea Arthur

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Beatrice Arthur
File:BeaArthur B25064 150x200.jpg
Beatrice Arthur Performing On Broadway.
Born
Bernice Frankel
Other namesBea Arthur

Beatrice Arthur (born May 13 1922) is a two-time Emmy Award-winning and Tony Award winning American comedian, actress and singer. In an ongoing career spanning six decades, Arthur is perhaps best remembered for her trademark role as the title character, Maude Findlay, on the 1970s sitcom Maude, and for playing Dorothy Zbornak, the divorced substitute teacher on The Golden Girls.

Biography

Early life

Born Bernice Frankel in New York City on May 13, 1922, she soon moved to Maryland where her father, Philip, operated a women's clothing shop. After attending the now-defunct Blackstone College in Blackstone, Virginia, Arthur became a medical technologist before World War II. She also served in the U.S. Marine Corps.[1]

Theater

Arthur began her acting career as a member of an off Broadway theater group at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City in the late 1940s. On stage, her roles included "Lucy Brown" in the 1954 off-broadway premiere of Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, "Yente the Matchmaker" in the 1964 premiere of Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway, and a 1966 Tony Award-winning portrayal of "Vera Charles" to Angela Lansbury's Mame (she recreated the role in the unsuccessful film version opposite Lucille Ball in 1974). In 1981, she appeared in Woody Allen's The Floating Lightbulb.

Television

In 1972, Arthur was cast as the title character in the television series Maude. She played Maude Findlay, an outspoken liberal living in the affluent community of Tuckahoe, Westchester County, New York, with her husband, Walter (Bill Macy) and divorced daughter Carol (Adrienne Barbeau). The show was a spinoff from All in the Family, on which Arthur had appeared a couple of times in the same role, playing Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton)'s cousin, a feminist, and antithesis to the bigoted, conservative Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor), who described Maude as a "New Deal fanatic".

In 1985, she was cast in the television series The Golden Girls on which she played Dorothy Zbornak, a divorced substitute teacher living in a Miami, Florida home owned by Blanche Devereaux (Rue McClanahan). Her other roommates included widow Rose Nylund (Betty White) and Dorothy's Sicilian mother, Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty). Getty is actually a year younger than Arthur in real life, and was heavily made up to look significantly older. Dorothy had an acidic sense of humor and was prone to making witty and sarcastic wisecracks, often directed at the man-hungry Blanche or naive Rose.

Later life

After Arthur left The Golden Girls, she has made several guest appearances on television shows and even organized and toured with her one-woman show. She made a guest appearance on American cartoon Futurama, in the Emmy-nominated episode "Amazon Women in the Mood" as the voice of the Femputer who ruled the giant Amazonian women.She appeared in an episode of Malcolm in the Middle as Dewey's unfortunate babysitter. She was nominated for a guest-star Emmy for her performance. She also showed up unexpectedly as Larry (Larry David)'s mother on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

In 2002, she made a triumphant return to Broadway starring in Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends, a collection of stories and songs (with musician Billy Goldenberg) and based on her life and long career. The show was nominated for a Tony award for Best Special Theatrical Event, but lost to Elaine Stritch At Liberty.

Arthur was married twice, first to Robert Alan Arthur, an author, whose surname she kept, and second to director Gene Saks from 1950-1978 with whom she adopted two sons, Matthew (born 14 July 1961), an actor and Daniel (born 8 May 1964), a set designer.

She primarily lives in the Greater Los Angeles Area and has sublet her apartment on Central Park West in New York City and her country home in Bedford, New York.

  • Arthur is referenced on the Beastie Boys track, "Boomin' Granny" (found on their "Jimmy James" single) with the lyrics " Well you're a Golden Girl, just like Bea Arthur, just turn down the lights so we can go farther"[2]
  • Arthur was seen throughout the 1980s in Canada as a regular character in television commercials for Shoppers Drug Mart, a popular Canadian chain of pharmacies.
  • Arthur is referenced in the Simpsons episode "Homie the Clown" when, during a joke about how Krusty has been spending his money rampantly, he demandingly asks his agent "Did you send those thousand roses to Bea Arthur's grave?"
  • Arthur is referenced in the song "California" by singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright on his 2001 album, Poses, with the lyric, "I don't know this sea of neon / Thousand surfers, whiffs of freon / And my new grandma Bea Arthur".
  • During "on-stage" banter following the theme song on the Family Guy: Live in Vegas CD, Peter Griffin states that the sound stage on which Family Guy is shot (an in-joke that the characters on the show are actually real people who portray themselves on the show) is the same as the one used for The Golden Girls, and that one night, when everyone was prepared to begin filming, Bea Arthur was nowhere to be found. The producer of The Golden Girls supposedly ran in and told everyone to cancel the shoot because Bea Arthur was in jail for exposing her penis to traffic after drinking too much. Brian then asks, "How can Bea Arthur have a penis?", to which Peter responds "Uhh ... a special permit?". This is not the first reference to Arthur's having a penis - at the 1999 Friars Club Roast for Jerry Stiller comedian Jeffrey Ross made a similar reference.
  • The Marvel anti-hero Deadpool often references Bea Arthur during his banter.
  • In 1991, artist John Currin launched his career on a realist, if imaginary, portrait "Bea Arthur Naked." He portrays Arthur from her Maude days looking regal and sitting up straight forward in a facial 3/4 pose. The painting is a bust portrait including her face and realistic breasts from the imagination of the artist. Articles from the time mentioned Ms Arthur was initially unaware of her depiction, however she was unfettered by the news.
  • In the 2001 Family Guy episode "Ready, Willing, and Disabled", after Joe Swanson wins at the Special Olympics an ABC made-for-TV movie is produced starring Bea Arthur as Peter Griffin, alongside Tony Danza (as Joe) and Valerie Bertinelli (as Bonnie Swanson)
  • The band Futuristic Sex Robots have a song called "Don't Make Us Kick Your Ass", which includes the lyrics, "Cause you will be owned when the game concludes, like you spend every round looking at Bea Arthur nudes."
  • In an episode of Garfield and Friends, Garfield sits in a tree picking up two eggs, and as he picks them up he says "You will be breakfast, and you will be lunch". When the mother of the two unborn chicks arrives behind Garfield, he sheepishly places them back in the nest, saying "You will be Beatrice, and you will be Arthur".
  • In the movie Airheads, one of the demands made by the characters to prove insanity was to demand naked pictures of Bea Arthur
  • In the short story "Chicken in the Henhouse" by David Sedaris, he writes "Everyone knows the real voice of reason sounds like Bea Arthur"

Television credits

Theatre performances

Filmography

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Beatrice Arthur.
  1. ^ Carpenter, Dennis, and James Brady. Anyone Here a Marine?: The Marines, the Media, and the Movies. Great Neck, New York: Brightlights Publications, 2004.
  2. ^ Beastie Boys "Boomin' Granny" lyrics
Template:S-awards
Preceded by Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical
1966
for Mame 		Succeeded by

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