Bea Arthur

It can be hard to remember that Bea Arthur was actually a Broadway star. It’s not how we think of her. Sure, she had a Tony for playing Vera Charles in Mame, but who remembers that? I haven’t even seen the movie, where she reprises her role, because if I want to watch Mame Dennis, I watch Rosalind Russell. But Bea Arthur was also the original Yente in Fiddler on the Roof, she was Tallulah Bankhead’s understudy in the Boston run of the 1956 Ziegfield Follies, and she was Lucy Brown in a 1954 production of The Threepenny Opera. She even made a debut at the Metropolitan Opera in La Fille du Régiment, admittedly in a non-singing role.

Other details of her life are less surprising. She was born in Brooklyn to a Jewish family; her birth name was Bernice Frankel. In school, she earned the title “Wittiest Girl.” During World War II, she was one of the first women to enlist in the United States Marine Corps Women’s Reserve. Initially a typist, she put in for a transfer and became a truck driver and dispatcher. At the end of the war, she was honorably discharged as a staff sergeant.

She became a lab technician after the war, but during her internship, she decided it wasn’t what she wanted, and she went to New York and The New School, enrolling at the School of Drama and the Dramatic Workshop. She started on the stage, performing in Lysistrata. Her first television appearance was around this time, on the DuMont—and therefore mostly lost—series Once Upon a Tune, which if I’m reading things right seems to have been presenting musicals in shortened forms for TV.

She did some television over the early years, including a musical production of O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi,” but it wasn’t until 1971 that she really became a TV actress. Norman Lear approached her personally to play Edith Bunker’s cousin on an episode of All in the Family. She impressed CBS executives so much that Maude was spun off into her own show. It was a deeply controversial series, covering topics such as gay rights, mental health, and, famously, abortion. And it made Bea Arthur a household name.

And we could keep talking, of course. Her movie career. The Golden Girls. Her one-woman shows late in life. But let’s spare a moment to talk about her advocacy, in particular how she embraced the love of the queer community and gave it back. Arthur in particular fought for queer youth and the problem of homelessness in that community. She gave money to the Ali Forney Center, which helps queer homeless teens in New York City. She was appalled that people would kick their kids out just for being gay or trans, and so should we all.