BEATRICE ARTHUR SAYS THERE'S
A LOT
OF HERSELF IN "MAUDE"
by Anthony La Camera
Any similarity between belated TV series
star Beatrice Arthur and her title role in the hit CBS series, "Maude,"
is not at all coincidental. There is a lot of Beatrice Arthur in Maude,
and vice-versa.
"I think she's me," Beatrice said about her compulsively liberal, sometimes overwhelming television character, "except that I see her as a larger-than-life figure who lives in today's world and tries to cope. "She's a great believer in fighting city hall, in battling petty injustice. After all, is everybody like Irene Dunne? "As for myself, I guess I'm so liberal that I tend to go overboard, except that I'm not really an activist or crusader. My feelings go to animal welfare. "I don't buy Women's Lib. I've always considered myself Women's Lib. I'm so adjusted." Right now, the direct and Maude-like Beatrice Arthur is adjusting to a new status which she never sought in the first place. A 25-year veteran of show business, she suddenly finds herself a full-fledged TV star whose name and face have become known to millions. You may be sure she can handle it.
The New Year-born Beatrice, who has been married to stage-movie director Gene Saks for 22 years, decided long ago she would do only what she wanted to do, theatrically, after her husband became successful. There was a time, after four years of marriage, when she didn't bother to work at all. "I hadn't progressed very far in those days, anyway," said the drama-trained Beatrice. "What is so strange to me is that I ended up here in Hollywood and on television. "After all, I'm five feet nine-and-a-half in my stocking feet, and I have a deep voice. When I went to drama school in New York, only my teacher thought of me as a leading lady. "I couldn't get a job as an actress, then bombed as a singer making like a Lena Horne in small clubs. I took myself very seriously, thinking of myself as a leading woman who couldn't get a job. "I've long since learned that I'm an anti-heroine type, not a sex symbol. I'm not the beautiful Donna Reed mother-type married to the most handsome man." It was her comedy performance in the off-Broadway "Shoestring Revue" of the mid-1950s that turned things around for Beatrice. Norman Lear, then associated with "The George Gobel Show" and now executive producer of "All in the Family" and "Maude," saw her in the stage revue and signed her as a regular on the Gobel series, which only lasted a few more shows. She and Lear became friends, however, and he thought of her often in terms of a television role.
The role materialized more than a decade later--specifically, last season. When Lear learned she was going to the West Coast for a weekend, he had an "All in the Family" script written for her in the role of Edith Bunker's cousin Maude. It went over so well that CBS asked for a second guest appearance which would take the form of a series pilot, and that one went over even more strongly. Until her television success, Beatrice Arthur's name was known mainly to theater-goers. She had featured roles in such diverse New York vehicles as "Three Penny Opera," "Seventh Heaven," "Nature's Way," "Ulysses in Nighttown," "Chic," and "Fiddler on the Roof," as well as "Shoestring Revue." Her biggest triumph was in the part of brassy Vera Charles in "Mame," which won her a Tony award.
Beatrice also appeared in a few other TV programs like "The Steve Allen Show," "The Jack Paar Show" and "The Sid Caesar Show" and in such movies as "That Kind of Woman" and "Lovers and Other Strangers," but it took "Maude" to bring her widespread public recognition. She and Saks now live with their two sons, Matthew, 11, and Daniel, 8, on the West Coast, where--because of the "Maude" schedule--she no longer can indulge quite so much in such hobbies as gourmet cooking, gardening and reading. She's not complaining. |
*article from the Boston Sunday Herald Traveler-Advertiser, October 29, 1972
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