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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: May 13, 1922
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: How much effort does it require to explain why Bea Arthur is a massively important figure in television history? It’s both the most simply obvious statement in the world, and yet you could spend all day running down her accomplishments. After beginning her career on stage and in film — most notably in both versions of Mame — Bea Arthur was cast as Edith Bunker’s stern cousin Maude on All in the Family. Maude was exactly what the doctor ordered to stand in as the counterpoint to bigoted old Archie Bunker. The success of Maude on All in the Family led Norman Lear to spin the character off to her own marvelously successful TV series, Maude. The show featured some of the most daring TV of the 1970s, touching upon every taboo topic of the era, up to and including the episode where Maude has an abortion.
You think the next thing I’m going to talk about is The Golden Girls, but you’d be forgetting an important event in our cultural landscape. The Star Wars Holiday Special aired in 1978, and the world of science fiction and cabaret singing would never be the same.
BUT ALSO THE GOLDEN GIRLS! It’s impossible to overestimate how brilliant Arthur was a Dorothy Zbornak. The woman defined perfect comedic timing. Every response to Rose’s cluelessness. Every mean jab at Blanche’s trampiness. Every zero-to-sixty explosion of temper. The Earth is going to have its way with us as a species, snow will cover the planet, and in thousands of years, it’ll melt, and the aliens will discover old recordings of The Golden Girls and imagine that the human race was a tougher, meaner, WAY funnier group of people than we actually were.
[Where to stream The Golden Girls]
Two indelible television characters would be more than any other actor could hope to attain, and Bea Arthur had just that. But I’d be remiss in celebrating what would have been her 94th birthday without pointing out two personal favorites. One being her post-Golden Girls appearance on Malcolm in the Middle as a most unusual babysitter. (Apologies for the low-quality YouTube. Shape up, internet.)
And the other is her stint as celebrity spokesperson for Shoppers Drug Mart, second only to Lauren Bacall’s coffee commercials for sheer viewing pleasure.
Happy birthday, Bea Arthur, wherever you are.
