by Diane Holloway

'Amanda's,' door-banging farce, not issue-directed

On the surface, Beatrice Arthur is pretty much what you'd expect--a tall, gray-haired woman, well into middle age, with a voice at least an octave below that of the average man. She looks the part, so you'd expect her to be aggressive, overbearing and abrasive, just like the character she played on Maude for six award-winning seasons.

"I loved her," said Arthur, who was suffering from a cold that knocked her husky voice down another notch or two. "I thought she was a hell of a lady, but I don't consider myself like that at all. I'm not really a 'cause' person. I may take a lot of time thinking about who I'm going to vote for, but once I've made the decision, I don't go out and talk about it."

Arthur is making another assault on series television in a comedy called Amanda's, (8:30 p.m. on Thursdays) a very loose adaption of John Cleese's Fawlty Towers, in which she plays a caustic, crisis-plagued hotel owner. Unlike Maude, the show is not a platform for social or political issues; it is simply a loud, door-slamming farce that is sometimes quite funny.

"With the country in the state that it is now," she said, "people seem to want escapist entertainment. I was looking for non-issues this time. It's a chance to do something zany and fun. I love the outrageous, and this is an opportunity to do that."

Arthur is aware that there are outward similarities between the characters of Maude and Amanda and that some viewers may tune in and think they're watching Maude running around in a hotel. Both women are sardonic, wry and impatient with the company of fools, but Amanda--in her embryonic, pilot stages--does not come equipped with Maude's loveable vulnerability.

"I guess you could call it 'mean humor,'" Arthur said, "but I think it's refreshing to have anti-heroes as opposed to Hi-honey-I'm-home heroes. I don't think because she's a woman I should try to warm her up and make her palatable. We forgave Sgt. Bilko everything he did because he was so damn funny."

We forgave Maude her flaws, too. Audiences loved her so much they didn't want to let her go in 1978 when Arthur decided it was time to call it quits. Producer-creator Norman Lear wanted to spin her into a new situation with a political career in Washington, but Arthur declined, choosing to leave well enough alone.

"Actually, I've done very little work in the past four years," Arthur said. She returned to New York briefly to appear in Woody Allen's play, The Floating Light Bulb, and had her own TV variety special. Reminded that she also drifted through Mel Brooks' disastrous History of the World, Arthur said, "Oh, God, I'd forgotten that. Never trust a friend!"

During her four-year hiatus, Arthur started a slow diet which, by her own understatement, "took off an awful lot of weight." She now looks even taller and most gaunt. Asked if she watched much television, Arthur said she watched old movies and Kojak reruns every afternoon.

"I'll tell you," she said, "I do watch Love Boat in the mornings if I'm home. Why? You know, I don't know. I don't think anybody does."

The issue-oriented Lear comedies such as Maude have now all but faded from the tube, and Amanda's is a totally different kind of vehicle, but Arthur is one of those women who are just nice to have around.

*article from Dayton Ohio Daily News TV Date Book, March 13, 1983