Bea Arthur Has the Best of Two Worlds

By Charles Witbeck
From The Chicago Tribune TV Week, August 7-13 1977

Ten years ago it would have been unthinkable to build a TV series around an outspoken, multidivorced, superliberal dynamo like Maude Findlay, but thanks to Norman Lear’s daring and Beatrice Arthur’s impeccable characterization, “Maude” will be starting its sixth season on CBS this fall.

“I think we’ve broken some new ground on the series and we definitely made a few waves, but our show appears to have staying power,” said Beatrice Arthur.

“Of course, I’m wondering how much longer we can keep it up. Many of my friends ask me how I can keep on playing Maude after five seasons and I tell them I could go on playing the show virtually forever, however long that is in the life of a TV series.”

Beatrice Arthur was a successful Broadway actress, having won raves for her performances in such musicals as “Mame” and “Fiddler on the Roof,” before she ventured into the insecure and often fickle land of television.

When she agreed to play Maude for the first time in a segment of “All in the Family,” she had no idea what was in store for her. Maude clicked with the audience in her “Family” guest spot and Norman Lear wasted no time in getting “Maude” her own show.

The series was deceptively simple on the surface, presenting an Auntie-Mame type who engaged in a weekly battle of the sexes with her husband, while hoisting her feminist banner high above the roar of the confrontations. However, upon closer examination, amid the shouting matches, Maude and company were also grappling with such hard-hitting realities as alcoholism, abortion, infidelity, nervous breakdowns, and menopausal trauma.

TV situation-comedies have come a long way since the days when Lucy and Ethel labored over a candy factory assembly line gone wild.

In private life, Maude Findlay and Beatrice Arthur part company. A gentle and almost shy actress, she is a homebody at heart. Although she and her husband, director-actor Gene Saks, are among Hollywood’s social elite, they seldom venture out to parties. Bea, as she is affectionately called by most of her coworkers, prefers tending her garden and seeing to the needs of her husband and two teen-aged sons, Matthew and Daniel.

The actress says she has the best of all possible worlds. At home, she’s primarily a mother and wife, while at work, she’s a crusader, a political activist and ultra-feminist, a conservationalist, and whatever else the writers on “Maude” come up with.