Thank you for Bea-ing our friend.
“Golden Girl” Bea Arthur, a New York City native with a storied Broadway and television career, died at her Los Angeles home yesterday of cancer. She was 86.
An Emmy Award-winning actress with a deep, distinctive voice and regal, 5-foot-9 frame, Arthur was known to the TV generation for her groundbreaking roles in the 1970s sitcom “Maude” and later as the sarcastic Dorothy Zbornak in the 1980s hit sitcom about four retired women, “The Golden Girls.”
“I feel so relieved that she’s out of discomfort,” fellow “Golden Girl” Rue McClanahan told The Post. “She taught me how to do comedy 37 years ago when we were doing ‘Maude.’ She knew how to go out on a limb; she knew how to take a chance.”
Arthur would joke at the way her career exploded later in life, once television discovered her in her ’50s, McClanahan recalled.
“She’d say, ‘The only thing I’m mad about is that it came so late.’ ”
Arthur earned a degree as a medical lab technician, but found acting more enticing, enrolling in a drama class at the New School and supporting herself with nightclub singing.
She soon turned to the stage, originating the role of Yente the Matchmaker in the hit 1964 production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
The highlight of her Broadway work came in her Tony Award-winning portrayal of Vera Charles in the 1966 production of Jerry Herman’s “Mame,” co-starring Angela Lansbury.
“I adored this woman,” playwright Herman told The Post yesterday. “She was just one of a kind and there will never be anything like that again.”
Arthur, a mother of two, began her illustrious television run with an appearance on the classic comedy series “All in the Family,” as Edith Bunker’s outspoken, liberal cousin, Maude Finley.
The popular character was spun off in the groundbreaking “Maude,” in which Arthur portrayed a liberated woman who became a standard-bearer for a growing feminist movement.
Suddenly, the middle-aged woman was TV’s “It” girl. “I was already 50 years old. I had done so much off-Broadway, on Broadway, but they said, ‘Who is that girl? Let’s give her her own series,’ ” she said.
Arthur is survived by two sons and two granddaughters.
Additional reporting by Michael Riedel
kboniello@nypost.com