Before The Golden Girls, There Was Maude
Bea Arthur’s two sitcom divas were so different — and eerily similar.
In one of the early episodes of The Golden Girls, the 1985-1992 Sex and the City forerunner set in Miami instead of New York, Dorothy Zbornak (Beatrice Arthur, as the Carrie Bradshaw of the bunch) said something that’s stayed with me all these years. She and her BFFs, Blanche Devereaux (Rue McClanahan) and Rose Nylund (Betty White) were sitting around the kitchen table (of course) talking about the challenges of growing older.
Dorothy acknowledged that she was at an age (55 when the series began, though Arthur was 63) when 40 actually seemed young. Despite her tone of weary resignation in that scene, most of the time, Dorothy seemed pretty comfortable in her vintage skin.
How far Arthur had come in a decade. In 1975, as Maude Findlay, her iconic character on the ’70s sitcom Maude, she spent all of season four, episode nine (“Maude Bares Her Soul”) lamenting her uneasiness over her impending 50th birthday during a monologue session with her therapist.
