LOS ANGELES – Emmy award-winning actor Bea Arthur, best known as star of the hit TV comedies Maudeand Golden Girls, has died at the age of 86.
Arthur, a long-time stage actress whose comic timing and deadpan delivery were a perfect fit for her sharp-tongued roles on the two series, died of cancer at her Los Angeles home, celebrity website TMZ reported.
Representatives for the actress, who won best-actress Emmys – America's top television award – for Maudeand Golden Girls, could not immediately be reached for comment.
“Thirty-seven years ago she showed me how to be very brave in playing comedy,” one of Arthur’s co-stars, Rue McClanahan, told TMZ in a statement. “I’ll miss that courage and I’ll miss that voice.”
Born Beatrice Frankel in New York on May 13th, 1922, Arthur began performing in college and appeared in Broadway and off-Broadway roles, winning a Tony Award opposite Angela Lansbury in Mame.
In the early 1970s, she appeared on the groundbreaking television comedy All in the Familyas Edith Bunker's fiercely liberal cousin Maude. Producers who saw gold in the role quickly devised a spin-off for the character.
Maudedebuted on CBS in 1972 and became one of the top-rated sitcoms on US television during its six-year run. In a two-part episode that aired in November 1972, the show stirred protest and controversy when Maude decided to have an abortion because of her age.
The procedure was legal in New York state, where the show was set, but not nationwide.
Two months later, the US supreme court legalised abortion in its landmark Roe v Wadedecision.
Arthur followed with Golden Girls, an unlikely hit from 1985 to 1992 that featured four female retirees living together.
Central to its popularity was the comic interplay between Arthur’s character and her mother, played by Estelle Getty – who in real life was a year younger and who also won an Emmy for the show. Getty died last July at the age of 84.
Arthur is survived by two sons and two grandchildren. – (Reuters)