|
|
 |
|
Bea was at midlife before
her acting career took off
of TheColumnists.com
"And then there’s Maude!"
That's the way the theme song used to introduce the character Beatrice "Bea" Arthur played in her first hit TV show when it went on the air in 1972. Nobody knew it at the time, but she was destined to become the reigning queen of the late-blooming TV stars in the very first season of CBS' "Maude."
Arthur, who died April 25 of cancer at
86, was nearly 50 when "Maude" soared to the No. 4
spot in the 1972-73 TV ratings, just a little behind TV's No.
1 program, "All in the Family," where her Maude Findlay
character first appeared.
Bea Arthur was a full-fledged TV star by the time "Maude"
ended its run in 1978, then she reinforced that status with her
second big hit series, NBC's "The Golden Girls," in
which she played Dorothy Zbornak, from 1985-92.
By the time she died at her Bel Air home, surrounded by her sons and her grandchildren, just shy of her 87th birthday, Arthur was without a doubt an enduring icon of TV comedy. And that was not ever in her long-range career plan.
“Broadway was always my goal, that’s
as far as I ever wanted to look,” she told me during one
of our interview encounters. Her TV stardom surprised and delighted
her.
“Look, I had this vision of myself when I was growing up
as the next June Allyson. But I sprouted to five feet nine inches
and instead of a little tweety voice I could boom like a baritone.
So I made adjustments. Another June Allyson I could never be.”
When Arthur finally hit TV stardom, she was ready for it. She
thrived in the demanding medium because she had that all important
ingredient: stage presence.
Born in New York in 1922, she grew up in Cambridge, Maryland
where her family tried to discourage her stage ambitions. An
early, short lived marriage to producer Robert Alan Aurthur gave
her a name change (changed again, slightly, to Arthur).
But early jobs on Broadway proved elusive. Arthur said: “Thank
God for bits!" And she landed lots of "bits,"
working steadily in small parts on such live TV series as "Kraft
Television Theater," "Studio One" and on "Caesar’s
Hour" as a regular with Sid Caesar.
She became one of Caesar’s favorite comedic foils on the
TV series than ran from 1954 to 1956. “He taught me to be
fearless," she said, "to stop quaking if something
fell flat. Besides on live TV it really was all over at the end
of the hour. Nobody has dared like Caesar and his talented writers.
They included Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart all of them
in their twenties.”
And she remembered being called to perform
in the comic skits of Wayne and Shuster on the live Ed Sullivan
show Sunday nights.
“These things went on for 22 minutes! Without any commercial
break! We’d do the Saturday dress rehearsal and normally
that was when Ed would start cutting back on material. They never
cut one of Wayne and Shuster’s routines as far as I can
recall. I can’t tell you the nervous state of doing such
skits live. My stomach was in knots. What if I forgot a line?
I can actually say it never happened.”
I interviewed Frank Shuster several times in his last years and
the Toronto comic who survived partner Johnny Wayne by a decade
(he died in 2002) said, “Bea was irresistible. We always
were asking for her. Of course her height was wonderful for jokes
and that deep voice was magnificent but what started us was her
sheer comic timing. She’d say ‘Hello?’ in her
certain way and the studio audience was in stitches.”
Arthur was 32 when she finally found her first taste of Broadway
fame in a 1954 revival of Kurt Weill's"Three Penny Opera"
co-starring the legendary Lotte Lenya. Then came important parts
in "Plain and Fancy," "Seventh Heaven," "Nature’s
Way" and stardom once more in the original 1964 production
of "Fiddler On The Roof."
In 1966 she opened opposite Angela Lansbury in the musical version
of "Mame," in which their comedy duet "Bosom Buddies"
invariably stopped the show. And Arthur repeated her part as
sidekick Vera Charles in the truly awful 1974 film version starring
Lucille Ball.
“Hated that! Hated it. Angela should have had it but wasn’t
considered a star and Lucy was very big box office. Angela told
me to go ahead and do it, she was that much of a pro. But Lucy
had experienced a skiing accident and her high kicks were done
by a double and the soft focus close-ups of poor Lucy were terrible.
She thought it was the greatest thing she’d ever done and
the critical reaction, which was all negative, just devastated
her.”
Arthur and Ball later cooled as friends when Ball criticized
the randy nature of several plotlines in Arthur’s sitcom
"Maude."
“She wanted Maude to do the splits, have pies tossed in
her face, the shtick she had done for decades. But that
was passe. If Maude were physically abused, it would have stopped
the laughter. Ours was a comedy about social conventions. For
slapstick or low humor, there was the maid, if you get me.”
About her late blooming success as Maude, Arthur explained: “I
was visiting my husband (director Gene Saks) in Hollywood in
1971 and (producer) Norman Lear asked me to do a one shot on
'All in the Family' as the liberal cousin of Edith Bunker.
There were true sparks during taping with Carroll O’Connor
and the character just took off. CBS used the episode as a pilot
and gave Norman a one season commitment. Norman saw the show
as bookends–'All in the Family' was the conservative side,
'Maude' the liberal.”
"All in the Family" spawned "The Jeffersons,"
"Gloria," a later sequel called "Archie Bunker's
Place" and, of course, "Maude," whichin turn begat
"Good Times," But Arthur said she never considered
"Maud" as a spin-off.
“No! I tested on 'All in the Family'
and that was one episode. But right then spin-offs were all the
rage. Norman actually had the idea of spinning off Mrs. Naugatuck
which was crazy.”
When I watched a 1972 taping before a studio audience I was amazed
it all went so smoothly compared to the verbal fights that frequently
erupted during an "All in the Family" taping.
Arthur merely said, “There was a wonderful cast: Bill Macy,
Adrienne Barbeau, Rue McClanahan, Esther Rolle, later Hermione
Baddeley. The scripts were about real issues.
“The abortion show–I got tons of hate mail on that
one. The facelift show was another. We tackled political hot
topics and infuriated a lot of viewers. But they still tuned
in next week to see what sacred cows we’d tackle next.”
Ratings were dropping by 1977, so Lear suggested a career change
for Maude–she’d go off to Congress as a liberal Democract.
“I turned him down. We’d done everything with that
character. I wanted out.”
But Arthur tired of staying at home and unwisely signed for "Amanda's",
a U.S. version of England's "Fawlty Towers." playing
the John Cleese part with an appropriate sex change.
I met her during the ABC press interviews and she was in unusually
bad humor. She explained she was suffering with a bad cold. But
she also suspected she was trapped in a turkey. The show limped
along for four months--February through May of 1983--and Arthur
thought this series would certainly be her last.
Then producer Susan Harris ("Soap") came calling with
another sitcom, "The Golden Girls," which debuted in
September of 1985 and would run for seven smash seasons.
But why would Arthur want to try again after the fiasco of "Amanda’s"?
“Because Susan had written the abortion script and we taped
it without a single change," Arthur said. "I needed
good scripts. We changed everything on Amanda’s.”
Arthur played Dorothy Zbornak, Estelle Getty was her mom, Sophia,
Betty White was Rose Nylund and Rue McClanahan the delightfully
oversexed Blanche. Arthur told me White was originally asked
to play Blanche but thought it was too much like her Sue Anne
character on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and instead
asked for Rose.
“The writing was always amazing," said Arthur. "Susan
Harris wrote 79 (out of 180) scripts. It was pretty racy but
it played as funny because after all this was a bunch of old
seniors. If young women had said such things there would have
been an outcry. I do get bothered when people say Maude and Dorothy
were one and the same. I played them supremely differently.”
After seven seasons Harris proposed a sequel that had the “girls”
moving to run a hotel. But Arthur had once again had it and bowed
out.” Without her the spinoff "The Golden Palace"
lasted one season of dwindling ratings.
When I met Betty White in Toronto during these years, she said,
“You’d never think it, but it’s Bea who is the
nervous Nellie before taping. She’s all wound up because
she’s a perfectionist. But whereas Rue will sail right through
a taping Bea is just a lump of raw nerves.”
When I interviewed Richard Kiley about the 1988 TV movie "My
First Love." he said Arthur was petrified being cast in
a stark dramatic part. “She was wonderful but she kept asking
if she had dropped all Maude mannerisms. She never really relaxed.
It was frightening having to continually placate her. But she
got decent reviews.”
Arthur did guest parts on other shows after "Golden Girls"
left in 1992 and garnered an Emmy nomination as guest actress
in an episode of "Malcolm in the Middle." She also
battled alcoholism and went back to Broadway in a one woman show
called "Just Between Friends." I caught her in Toronto
in 1993 and noticed she was physically diminished.
I also noticed she was very loyal to old friends. When Toronto
TV personality Brian Linehan lost his show, she continued to
treat him to weekends at her home. She’d joke she dragged
herself up in the morning and put on her dressing gown to find
the fastidious Linehan already dressed in his blazer and grey
pants. reading Variety and Hollywood Reporter.
She remained a passionate defender of animal rights and her last
act was to send a letter to an Australian chef condemning him
for using a recipe with foie de grasse, made from the
livers of geese under painful conditions.
Because "Maude" and "The Golden Girls" are
both in constant reruns and also available on DVD, it seems Bea
Arthur never actually left TV.
©2009 by Jim Bawden. This column first posted May 4, 2009.
TO ACCESS JIM BAWDEN'S ARCHIVE OF COLUMNS
ON THIS SITE, CLICK HERE: BAWDEN
ARCHIVE
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Jim Bawden. To send an email, click
here and don't forget to mention Jim's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|