GOLDEN GIRLS: La vie et la carrière de Bea Arthur / Life and career of Bea Arthur.
Présentation: (Wikipedia)
Beatrice Arthur, de son vrai nom Bernice Frankel,
est une actrice américaine née le 13 mai 1922 à New
York (New York) et morte le 25 avril 2009 à Los
Angeles (Californie) des suites d'un cancer[1].
Connue pour sa personnalité explosive et sa voix
grave et profonde, Bea Arthur (ainsi qu'elle est le
plus souvent appelée aux États-Unis) a été la
vedette de deux sitcoms extrêmement populaires :
Maude et The Golden Girls.
Beatrice Arthur est née à New York mais a
grandi au Maryland. Elle débute sa carrière au
théâtre dans les années 1940. Elle est remarquée en
1954 à Broadway dans l'adaptation anglaise de
L'Opéra de quatre sous (The Threepenny Opera en
anglais) de Bertold Brecht et Kurt Weill , aux côtés
de Lotte Lenya. En 1956-1957, elle effectue des
apparitions régulières dans l'émission du comique
Sid Caesar, Caesar's Hour.
Toujours à Broadway, elle crée le rôle de Yente dans
Un violon sur le toit de Joseph Stein, Jerry Bock et
Sheldon Harnick en 1964 avec Zero Mostel, puis celui
de Vera Charles dans Mame de Jerry Herman, Jerome
Lawrence et Robert E. Lee en 1966 aux côtés de
Angela Lansbury, rôle qu'elle reprendra au cinéma en
1974.
Mais c'est le petit écran qui la révèle
véritablement au grand public avec le rôle de Maude
Finley dans la série All in the family en 1971. Son
succès est tel qu'elle se voit offrir sa propre
série dérivée (spin-off), simplement intitulée
Maude, diffusée de 1972 à 1978 et qui sera adaptée
en France sous le titre Maguy avec Rosy Varte dans
les années 1980.
Sept ans plus tard, elle décroche le rôle de Dorothy
Zbornak dans The Golden Girls (Les Craquantes en
VF), diffusé de 1985 à 1992. La série qui rencontre
un énorme succès ne s'interromp qu'avec le départ de
l'actrice qui souhaite passer à autre chose. Elle
fait ensuite plusieurs apparitions dans des séries,
notamment Malcolm , puis monte un one-woman show
qu'elle joue à travers les États-Unis.
Elle meurt à son domicile de Los Angeles des suites
d'un cancer[2]. Son décès intervient un peu moins
d'un an après celui d'Estelle Getty, qui incarnait
son espiègle et débridée maman dans The Golden
Girls, alors que les deux comédiennes n'avaient
qu'un an d'écart dans la vraie vie (Beatrice Arthur
étant la plus âgée).
Elle a été mariée successivement au
scénariste-producteur Robert Alan Aurthur et au
réalisateur et metteur en scène Gene Saks dont elle
a divorcé en 1978. Elle a deux fils, Matthew (né en
1961) et Daniel (né en 1964), adoptés durant son
deuxième mariage.
(ENGLISH) Beatrice "Bea" Arthur (May 13, 1922 – April 25, 2009) was an American actress, comedian and singer whose career spanned seven decades. Arthur achieved fame as the title character Maude Findlay on the 1970s sitcoms All in the Family and Maude, and as Dorothy Zbornak on the 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls, winning Emmy Awards for both roles. A stage actress both before and after her television success, she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance as Vera Charles in the original cast of Mame (1966).
Early life
Arthur was born Bernice Frankel to Jewish[1] parents
Philip and Rebecca Frankel in New York City on May 13,
1922.[2] In 1933 her family moved to Cambridge,
Maryland, where her parents operated a women's
clothing shop. She attended Linden Hall High School,
an all girls school in Lititz, Pennsylvania, before
enrolling in the now-defunct Blackstone College in
Blackstone, Virginia, where she was active in drama
productions.
[edit] Theater
From 1947, Beatrice Arthur studied at the Dramatic
Workshop of The New School in New York with German
director Erwin Piscator. Arthur began her acting
career as a member of an off Broadway theater group at
the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City in the late
1940s. On stage, her roles included Lucy Brown in the
1954 Off-Broadway premiere of Marc Blitzstein's
English-language adaptation of Kurt Weill's Threepenny
Opera, Yente the Matchmaker in the 1964 premiere of
Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway, and a 1966 Tony
Award-winning portrayal of Vera Charles to Angela
Lansbury's Mame. She reprised the role in the 1974
film version opposite Lucille Ball. In 1981, she
appeared in Woody Allen's The Floating Light Bulb.[3]
She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1994
portraying the Duchess of Krakenthorp, a speaking
role, in Gaetano Donizetti's La fille du régiment.[4]
[edit] Television
In 1971, Arthur was invited by Norman Lear to
guest-star on his sitcom All in the Family, as Maude
Findlay, the cousin of Edith Bunker. An outspoken
liberal feminist, Maude was the antithesis to the
bigoted, conservative Archie Bunker, who decried her
as a "New Deal fanatic". Then nearly 50, Arthur's tart
turn appealed to viewers and to executives at CBS,
who, she would later recall, asked "'Who is that girl?
Let's give her her own series.'"[5]
That show, previewed in her second All in the Family
appearance, would be simply titled Maude. The show,
debuting in 1972, would find her living in the
affluent community of Tuckahoe, Westchester County,
New York, with her husband Walter (Bill Macy) and
divorced daughter Carol (Adrienne Barbeau). Her
performance in the role garnered Arthur several Emmy
and Golden Globe nominations, including her Emmy win
in 1977 for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy
Series.
It would also earn a place for her in the history of
the women's liberation movement.[6] The groundbreaking
series didn't shirk from addressing serious
sociopolitical topics of the era that were fairly
taboo for a sitcom, from the Vietnam War, the Nixon
Administration and Maude's bid for a Congressional
seat to divorce, menopause, drug use, alcoholism,
nervous breakdown and spousal abuse. A prime example,
"Maude's Dilemma", was a two-part episode in which
Maude's character grapples with a late-life pregnancy,
ultimately deciding to have an abortion. The episode
aired two months before the U.S. Supreme Court
legalized the procedure in the Roe v. Wade
decision.[7] Though abortion was legal in New York
State, it was illegal in many regions of the country
and so controversial that dozens of affiliates refused
to broadcast the episode. A reported 65 million
viewers watched the two episodes either in their first
run that November or the following summer as a
re-run.[8] By 1978, however, Arthur decided to move on
from the series.
That year, she costarred in The Star Wars Holiday
Special, in which she had a song and dance routine in
the Mos Eisley Cantina. She hosted The Beatrice Arthur
Special on CBS on January 19, 1980, which paired the
star in a musical comedy revue with Rock Hudson, Melba
Moore and Wayland Flowers and Madame.[9]
After appearing in the short-lived 1983 sitcom
Amanda's (an adaptation of the British series Fawlty
Towers), Arthur was cast in the sitcom The Golden
Girls in 1985, in which she played Dorothy Zbornak, a
divorced substitute teacher living in a Miami house
owned by Blanche Devereaux (Rue McClanahan). Her other
roommates included widow Rose Nylund (Betty White) and
Dorothy's Sicilian mother, Sophia Petrillo (Estelle
Getty). Getty was actually a year younger than Arthur
in real life, and was heavily made up to look
significantly older. The series became a hit, and
remained a top-ten ratings fixture for six seasons.
Her performance led to several Emmy nominations over
the course of the series and an Emmy win in 1988.
Arthur decided to leave the show after seven years,
and in 1992 the show was moved from NBC to CBS and
retooled as The Golden Palace in which the other three
actresses reprised their roles. Arthur made a guest
appearance in a two-part episode.
[edit] Film
Arthur also sporadically appeared in films, reprising
her stage role as Vera Charles in the 1974 film
adaption of Mame, opposite Lucille Ball. Additionally,
Arthur portrayed overbearing mother Bea Vecchio in
Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), and had a cameo as
a Roman unemployment clerk in Mel Brooks' History of
the World, Part 1 (1981).
[edit] Later career
After Arthur left The Golden Girls, she made several
guest appearances on television shows and organized
and toured in her one-woman show, alternately titled
An Evening with Bea Arthur and And Then There's Bea.
She made a guest appearance on the American cartoon
Futurama, in the Emmy-nominated episode "Amazon Women
in the Mood", as the voice of the Femputer who ruled
the giant Amazonian women. She also appeared in an
episode of Malcolm in the Middle as Mrs. White,
Dewey's babysitter, in a first-season episode. She was
nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in
a Comedy Series for her performance. She also appeared
as Larry David's mother on Curb Your Enthusiasm.
In 2002, she returned to Broadway starring in Bea
Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends, a collection
of stories and songs (with musician Billy Goldenberg)
based on her life and career. The show was nominated
for a Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event.
The previous year had been the category's first, and
there had been only one nominee. That year, Arthur was
up against solo performances by soprano Barbara Cook,
comedian John Leguizamo, and Arthur's fellow student
in Piscator's program at The New School, actress
Elaine Stritch, who won for Elaine Stritch: At
Liberty.
In addition to appearing in a number of programs
looking back at her own work, Arthur performed in
stage and television tributes for Jerry Herman, Bob
Hope and Ellen Degeneres. In 2005, she participated in
the Comedy Central roast of Pamela Anderson.
[edit] Influences
In 1999, Arthur told an interviewer of the three
influences in her career: "Sid Caesar taught me the
outrageous; [method acting guru] Lee Strasberg taught
me what I call reality; and [the original Threepenny
Opera star], Lotte Lenya, whom I adored, taught me
economy."[10]
[edit] Personal life and death
Arthur was married twice, first to Robert Alan
Aurthur, a screenwriter, television, and film producer
and director, whose surname she took and kept (though
with a modified spelling), and second to director Gene
Saks from 1950 to 1978 with whom she adopted two sons,
Matthew (born in 1961), an actor, and Daniel (born in
1964), a set designer.
She primarily lived in the Greater Los Angeles Area
and had sublet her apartment on Central Park West in
New York City and her country home in Bedford, New
York.
Arthur was a committed animal rights activist and
frequently supported People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals campaigns. Arthur joined PETA in 1987 after
a Golden Girls anti-fur episode.[11] Arthur wrote
letters, made personal appearances and placed ads
against the use of furs, foie gras, and farm animal
cruelty by KFC suppliers. She appeared on Judge Judy
as a witness for an animal rights activist, and, along
with Pamela Anderson insisted on a donation to PETA in
exchange for appearing on Comedy Central. [12]
Arthur's longtime championing of civil rights for
women, the elderly and the LGBT community—in her two
television roles and through her charity work and
personal outspokenness—has led her to be cited as an
LGBT icon.[13][14][15]
Arthur died at her home in the Greater Los Angeles
Area in the early morning hours of Saturday, April 25,
2009, at the age of 86. She had been ill from
cancer,[10][16][17] and her body was cremated after
her death.[18]
On April 28, 2009, the Broadway community paid tribute
to Arthur by dimming the marquees of New York City's
Broadway theater district in her memory for one minute
at 8:00 P.M.[19][20]
Arthur's surviving co-stars from The Golden Girls, Rue
McClanahan and Betty White, commented on her death via
telephone on an April 27 episode of Larry King
Live[21][22] as well as other news outlets such as
ABC.[23] Longtime friends Adrienne Barbeau (with whom
she had worked on Maude) and Angela Lansbury (with
whom she had worked in Mame) released amicable
statements: Barbeau said, "We've lost a unique,
incredible talent. No one could deliver a line or hold
a take like Bea and no one was more generous or giving
to her fellow performers";[24] and Lansbury said, "She
became and has remained my Bosom Buddy [...] I am
deeply saddened by her passing, but also relieved that
she is released from the pain".[25]