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" Oldish and Vital, Bea Arthur Returns to Live Theather"

By: Anita Gates
The New York Times, February 10, 2002

Bea Arthur looked a little tired as she opened the door of her Manhattan hotel suite. She was barefoot, wearing black sweats and no makeup, coughing a little from a cold she was getting over. It was the end of the day, she had just returned from rehearsal, and the trip had not gone smoothly. Although she was born in New York and has lived in the city as an adult, she had forgotten how hard it can be to get a taxi right after the 4 p.m. shift change.

Not that she isn't up to a challenge. "I'm an oldish lady but I'm a very vital lady," she said, sounding exactly like her imposing, tough-as-nails stage, film and television characters.

"I figured since I'm not going to retire because I'm old" — she deliberately raised the volume on that last word — "that rather than wait around for the next great role, which may or may not ever come around again, I thought, well, we'll do this."

Ms. Arthur, 78, is alluding to her show "Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends," which began previews on Jan. 29 and opens next Sunday at the Booth Theater for a six-week run. The show, which she created with the composer Billy Goldenberg, her accompanist, includes some of her favorite songs, some of his favorite songs and some from her past Broadway roles. Mr. Goldenberg, who shares the stage with Ms. Arthur, occasionally speaks up, but mostly he keeps a low profile at the piano.

The show was called "And Then There's Bea" when it toured 31 American cities last year. This was, presumably, to remind people of the musical refrain "And then there's Maude" from the theme of the television series that first made Ms. Arthur nationally known.

"Maude," Norman Lear's sitcom about a Tuckahoe housewife with liberal politics, an imposing manner and a talent for withering bons mots, ran on CBS from 1972 to 1978. From 1985 to 1992, she starred in another hit comedy series, "The Golden Girls," about four women of a certain age living together in Florida. Ms. Arthur won Emmy Awards for both shows.

"As I say in the show, I really feel as if I've spent the majority of my adult life in that little box there," she said, pointing to the television set and sipping a vodka on the rocks. She never again wants to do more, she emphasized, than the occasional guest appearance on television. Her most recent one, as the world's most terrifying baby sitter on "Malcolm in the Middle," earned her an Emmy nomination.

Actually, just as much of Ms. Arthur's life has been spent on the stage. She did her first Off Broadway play in 1947, played Lucy Brown in a 1953 revival of "The Threepenny Opera" and stole the show as Yente the matchmaker in the original Broadway production of "Fiddler on the Roof." In 1966 she took home a Tony Award when she played Angela Lansbury's best friend in "Mame," the witty, hard-drinking actress Vera Charles (a role she reprised in Lucille Ball's film version). In between television series she starred in "The Floating Light Bulb," Woody Allen's 1981 play at Lincoln Center. But if you want to see Ms. Arthur become passionate about a subject, just suggest that anyone considers television a step down from theater.

"It's very, very offensive to me," she said, her voice indicating the intensity of her feeling. "Someone once accused me of trying to turn the sitcom into an art form, and I really believe that's what I was trying to do."

On "Maude," she said, "we were all theater-trained, we were working with brilliant writers and brilliant directors and brilliant actors, so what was the step down?"

"And if a lot of people say there is one, it's out of fear, I really mean it — fear, fear, fear of failure," she said. "I have seen too many people, brilliant actors, who, once they're told it's comedy, they turn into creatures from another planet. There's no similarity to human beings."

Looking back at the pros and nonexistent cons of committing herself to a series, she said, "Well, I was working and making money and becoming a star." What's not to like?

Ms. Arthur seems pretty satisfied with her present life, too. She lives "really out in the suburbs" in California with her two Doberman pinschers ("They are so sweet; they are so loving"). She and Gene Saks, who directed her in "Mame," divorced in 1978 after 28 years of marriage. They have two sons. One son is a scenic designer who will make her a first-time grandmother in May. The other, who started out in show business as an actor, made a drastic career switch and decided to "take old ugly houses and turn them into things of beauty." She seems very proud of him but slightly amazed that anyone would reject a show business career.

Her own long career is not necessarily the subject of "Bea Arthur on Broadway." Like Elaine Stritch, another septuagenarian doing a one-woman show this season, she mixes musical numbers with anecdotes about life experiences and famous people she has known. Ms. Stritch, whose show has moved to Broadway and is now in previews at the Neil Simon Theater, talks about Marlon Brando, Richard Burton and Ben Gazzara, among others. Ms. Arthur's cast of characters includes Tony Curtis, Mae West, Lotte Lenya and Jerome Robbins. In the show, she sums up Robbins, who died in 1998, as "really a dreadful human being."

"All my life I have found that if I'm in awe of someone's talent, then I cannot believe that they're not gods and goddesses," she said. "But they're all human."

With the possible exception of Lenya. "She was pretty ugly," said Ms. Arthur. "She was a street person, and not a fabulous voice. But she would just stand there and suddenly you saw star quality. I'd never seen anything like it."

Ms. Arthur started to say that she hadn't seen the likes of Lenya since, but she remembered one exception: Mary Martin singing "A Cockeyed Optimist" at a White House gathering during the Reagan years.

"I looked at this woman, and I thought, `God, it's like the lights were on,' " she remembered. "There is something called star quality. It's God-given."

Both Ms. Stritch and Ms. Arthur toss out a few strong four-letter words in their acts, but Ms. Arthur's includes several jokes that can be described only as raunchy.

"Listen, so there's some ribaldry," she said. "I love that word, ribaldry. It's not done for any particular reason."

But didn't some of those jokes — like the one about the nun in the taxi — upset audiences in some parts of the country?

"I did it in Lynchburg, Va., and they adored it," Ms. Arthur said. "But I'll tell you what they didn't like — when I talked about Vermont passing the civil unions bill, granting legal recognition to same-sex couples, which I think is wonderful. And there in Lynchburg we got boos." She imitates the sound of long, insistent booing.

This reminded Ms. Arthur of the discrimination, especially racism, that she saw while growing up in Maryland. Talking about her hometown of Cambridge reminded her of how she had almost spent her life: as a medical technologist. "I was growing up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and I used to date guys from the University of Maryland Medical School." So a job there had its attractions.

After one season interning at the local hospital, she decided this was not the career for her. She soon headed for New York to study drama at the New School for Social Research.

"I always wanted to be — not an actress — but I always wanted to be a very tiny blonde starlet," Ms. Arthur said. "Like June Allyson."

Anatomy being destiny — she is 5 feet 9 1/2 inches tall — that didn't work out, but her career managed to flourish. If Ms. Arthur needed any reassurance of that, the tour was it, though it had its perilous moments. Last April, at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Ms. Arthur finished a song and intended to walk off into the wings. Instead, because the stage's design was an unusual one, she walked — well, fell — right into the orchestra pit.

"That was a ghastly experience," she said. "I was in such shock that they brought me back and put me onstage and I really didn't know how hurt I was until the following morning." She did get a huge round of applause, however, and her sprained foot is now back to normal.

Being around Ms. Arthur is a reminder of just how reassuring it was to have a no- nonsense, fearless feminist in prime time. When a guest suggested that women over 40 had trouble getting good film roles, Ms. Arthur said that she believed the women who weren't doing a lot of films now were just being selective. She talked about particular roles that she loves: Mama Rose in "Gypsy" — she saw the very first run- through of the show, with Ethel Merman in the role, back in 1957 — and the lead in "Ballroom." She brought out the lyrics to "The Chance to Sing," a song toward the end of her show about the brevity of life and the beauty of the moment.

Somewhere around this time Ms. Arthur's doorbell rang. It was a woman from housekeeping, ready to turn down the bed and place a chocolate on the pillow. Ms. Arthur declined the turndown service but liked the look of the chocolates. At one point, she and her guest asked about taking the entire box, but they settled for four or five pieces each. A real professional knows when it's time for a little binge.