Bea arthur
1922-2009
“In sitcoms, the women are so beautiful, understanding, and well-bred. They have humor, but display it with a twinkle of the eye and not a guffaw. There’s no juice in that for me”
Guess what I learned today! BEA ARTHUR WAS A MARINE. For really real, she served in the U.S. Marine Corps during WWII. She enlisted at the tender age of twenty, just 5 days after they began enlisting women. She was Staff Sergeant by the time she was honorably discharged to attend drama school. I’ll bea darned.
Before today, I only knew Bea Arthur as the baddest ass Golden Girl. I’ve never seen her show Maude, but reading about her role really made me want to. It was apparently as progressive as the Golden Girls was, which is saying a lot. Her Golden Girls character, Dorothy, was written for a “Bea Arthur type”, and apparently they had a whole lot in common.
Bea was a progressive, liberal woman who fought for women’s rights, animal rights, and LGBTQ rights. She was an avid PETA activist, even testifying before a Senate committee to ban the production and sale of foie gras in the state of California. She raised money for AIDS research and one of her very last performances ever was a one-woman show to raise money for the Ali Forney Center, which is dedicated to protecting LGBTQ youths from homelessness.
Bea and the characters she played were all badass women ahead of their time, fighting sexism and ageism with side-splitting humor and grace.
Thank you, Bea Arthur.