I sat through the Bea Arthur memorial service at The Majestic Theater today so you didn’t have to. Hosted by Angela Lansbury (who seems convinced that Arthur’s best work was her four minute guest spot on Malcolm in the Middle), the afternoon dragged along, highlighted only occasionally with the flashes of humor that one has long associated with the woman who brought Maude and Dorothy Zbornak to life.Since none of the speakers compared notes, we were treated to endless comments about Arthur’s way with a pause, a silence, and a stare. Adrienne Barbeau tearfully confided to the packed house (save some empty seats in the press section) that Arthur taught her how to hold for a laugh and how to eat a hardboiled egg. Zoe Caldwell told funny stories about their friendship with a misplaced gravity. Rosie O’Donnell sang the Maude theme song. Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller did a silly routine that glanced at Arthur as they cracked jokes about themselves. Dan Matthews, of PETA, had a funny, dirty story involving Arthur and Alec Baldwin.
The big draw, of course, was Rue McClanahan, who once sniffed to me in an interview that Bea Arthur wanted The Golden Girls to be Maude all over again, with her three co-stars “supporting her.” After telling a seemingly endless story about Bea’s generosity after McClanahan’s mother died—a story she had already told soon after Arthur passed away last April—McClanahan started on another story about a post-opening party for Arthur’s 2002 one-woman Broadway show. After telling the audience that Arthur liked her booze (another recurring theme of the afternoon), and passive-aggressively adding that she thought Arthur might have been allergic to it, McClanahan went on to tell how her husband went up to Arthur at the party, thanking her effusively for inviting them, and explaining that he was McClanahan’s husband. “Oh, I love Rue!” McClanahan told the audience she gushed. Then Arthur added, “Betty’s a cunt.”
After that, a montage of scenes from The Golden Girls that included clips of Arthur hitting Betty White over the head with a newspaper or slamming her into a closet just wasn’t the same.
