When
Beatrice Arthur exploded into small-screen stardom as the title lusty-lunged
liberal in CBS' "Maude", she was hailed as a fresh addition to the
TV scene, a recruit from the Broadway stage who had made a devastating
impact as Archie Bunker's kin-by-marriage in a couple of "All in the
Family" guest stints.
Bea (real name Bernice) herself contributed to that myth. She told
one New York interviewer two Augusts ago: "I'm a newcomer to television."
As a star maybe. But this tall (5-feet-8), imposing Queen Bea was
no video virgin. She was an alumna of TV comedy routines with Sid
Caesar, George Gobel, Art Carney, Steve Allen and Wayne & Shuster.
"I wasn't
really a 'second banana' in those days," she says. "Maybe a fourth
banana. What I got mostly wasn't real featured parts, only 'under
five-liners.'
"I've
been around for a thousand years and done some outrageous things,
even a somersault in an off-Broadway revue. I guess I've done everything
but stag movies and rodeos!
"It
was Caesar who found me for TV. He already had his 'family' set up,
but he hired me for bits and pieces.
"In
one show Caesar and his wife--it was Janet Blair that season--invited
his boss and the boss' wife--I was the wife--to dinner. Everything
was cooked with wine, and we all got loaded.
"I was
with Carney once as his wife when he came home loaded, and now--in
'Maude'--I have Bill Macy as a husband who's a reformed drunk. Hmmm!
"The
Wayne & Shuster stuff was all done in Canada for 'The Ed Sullivan
Show' and they always gave me the 'goodies' like The Weather Lady,
mainly strong, forceful women.
"I loved
it! I always thought I was the best thing on every show, and I worked
with nice people and they adored me.
"My
favorite thing was one of Sid Caesar's funniest shows, an hour-long
play.
"Sid
and Janet were a famous dance team. The more successful they became,
the more he ate. When they finally played the Palace, he was so huge
that the audience laughed him off the stage. So he waddled into the
dressing room and said to Janet, "I told you not to wear that dress!"
"The
team split up and Sid was reduced to working in a dime-a-dance joint.
I played a WAVE who came in and propositioned him, and he said, "You
sailors are all alike!'
"I made
no memorable 'goofs' in those days of 'live' television, but I never
had that much to do anyway.
"On
the Gobel show it was different. There I really was a second banana.
That's where I first worked with Norman Lear (who, with Bud Yorkin,
runs Tandem Productions, which turns out 'Maude,' 'All in the Family,'
'Sanford and Son' and 'Good Times').
"He
had become writer-producer and he asked me to be a 'regular.' By then,
1959, the show had had it, it was the last year, and I appeared maybe
five times.
"I didn't
think of myself in those days as a comedienne. I still don't. I consider
myself a damn good actress who happens to have a comic flair.
"All
the time I was doing those TV shots, I was working as an actress,
off-Broadway and with the Actors Studio. I was always able to practice
my craft.
"As
a performer I took myself very seriously, both in real life and in
the theater. I saw myself as Clytemnestra, largely because my training
in theater was at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School with Erwin
Piscator, from Berlin with 'epic theater' concepts.
"I was
much younger, of course, thinner, but very tall, with a deep voice,
and he cast me as all the great classic heroines.
"We
had a repertory theater that gave three performances every Saturday
and Sunday, but when I got out of school and tried to find work on
the Broadway stage, who cared if I had played Clytemnestra, Gertrude
and Lysistrata?
"So
I tried to work as a night club singer. That was during the era when
all girl singers were trying to emulate Lena Horne. I had this deep,
sexy voice, so I could always get jobs--but then I didn't know what
to do with myself.
"I couldn't
even say, 'Thank you for your applause' between songs. After three
dreary numbers, it was 'So what?'
"Julius
Monk, as he was firing me from the Ruban Bleu, said, 'Why don't you
do songs from a comic point of view, instead of songs about how your
man's gone now and you're going to kill yourself?'
"Shortly
after that, in 1953, came my first big chance--in 'The Three Penny
Opera,' with Lotte Lenya. I was hired to do a song by myself--'The
Barbara Song," about a lady who kept her virture. I thought it was
very sad, but the audience died laughing.
"That's
when I realized that if the lines are funny and you do them straight,
that's comedy.
"Then
came a Broadway show that didn't get to Broadway, my first professional
job, when I joined Equity, as a standby for Tallulah Bankhead in 'The
Ziegfeld Follies.'
"Tallulah
adored me. She called me 'the Divine Beatrice,' but that was merely
because any time a sketch came along that she didn't want to do, she'd
throw it to me.
"She
once told me that I could never be a star of her magnitude. 'You have
the talent,' she said, 'but it's a matter of bone structure.'"
Bone
structure or not, Bea Arthur is now indubitably an instantly-recognized
star.
"The
whole entertainment business has changed," she opines. "Here I am,
the so-called 'anti-heroine,' as opposed to the beautiful lady who,
even if she's older, dyes her hair.
"We
all have our nuttinesses, one way or another. Mine happens to be about
scripts--'You cannot send a kid like me up in a crate like that!'"
That
reflects Bea's conviction that it's the writers, not she, who make
the studio and home audiences chuckle. Or so she says. Now.
However,
just as she told one interviewer she was a TV newcomer, she told another:
"I used to make my friends laugh by imitating Mae West, and at school
I was voted the wittiest girl in class."
"And
then there's Maude!" proclaims the series' opening theme. But long
before Maude was an uninhibitedly outspoken, wisecracking Bea Arthur.
