Top Ten Anniversary: Female TV Leads

Top Ten Leading Female TV Characters

Continuing our celebration of one decade of Poseidon's Underworld, we now turn to our all-time favorite leading female characters on television. Again, there aren't likely to be many surprises since these ladies have most all been featured here one way or another over the course of this blog's history, but we're using the occasion of our ten year anniversary to create some Halls of Fame, if you will. Interestingly, my tastes seem to run to the polar opposites, very good gals or very bad! The ladies are listed alphabetically according to their characters' first names.

ABBY EWING of Knots Landing -- Donna Mills was brought in after the show had already been airing for one season in order to shake up the famous cul-de-sac. One can safely say she did so! That Mills was known for playing put-upon victims and soft romantic heroines helped make the whole thing that much more dynamic. Abby arrived as a middle class single mother that the other women felt they could trust, but she was soon unveiled as a man-eating, money-hungry vixen who let almost nothing prevent her from reaching her high-flung goals. Yet, there was also a vulnerable motherly side that kept the character balanced. Mills, and her stunning eyes, made an indelible impression.

ALEXIS CARRINGTON COLBY of Dynasty -- Much like Ms. Mills above, Joan Collins was brought onto Dynasty after its brief initial season in order to add conflict to the show. From the very start, Collins strove to have input into the character's presentation from the style of clothing she wore to the insertion of sarcastic humor amid all the turmoil. The result was an international sensation. In the process, real life businessmen wondered whether they ought to have discarded their first wives so cavalierly lest they return to the fray, scorned and ready to wield their own power. Collins also, along with costar Linda Evans, made cat-fights into a much-adored spectator sport among prime-time soap opera buffs. For my own part, Collins work on the show crystallized an already fervent adoration of her that began when I was a tyke and continues to this day!

BLANCHE DEVEREAUX of The Golden Girls -- When this sitcom was put together, the producers gathered a positively perfect cast of ladies. Ironically, Rue McClanahan was initially hired to play ditzy Rose while Betty White had been tagged for the outrageously sexual Blanche. The two wisely opted to swap roles, playing against their established types, and the rest is history. To me, Blanche was always funniest in the first four years or so of the series, when McClanahan was actually less overtly attractive and shapely and the character wasn't written as severely bitchy as she later emerged. Somehow that made her antics more amusing. All of her saucy remarks were delivered in a hooty accent that the director of the pilot wouldn't allow the actress to use, but thankfully she was able to utilize it thereafter.

JAIME SOMMERS of The Bionic Woman -- Lindsay Wagner guest-starred on The Six Million Dollar Man as an old girlfriend of Lee Majors who is severely injured and repaired with bionic parts, but then dies when her body rejects them. Wagner, however, was so popular in the two-part episode that a series all her own was built for her, revealing that she hadn't truly died. Wagner's innate charm and down-to-earth style made the superheroine relatable and believable (and, like any idealistic heroine, Jaime was humane and just.) Legions of little girls (and not a few boys!) duplicated her hand-to-the-ear gesture on the playground, pretending to be able to hear faraway events. I know I also, even at sixteen, hardly put my foot out of a car without thinking of the time she stopped one from rolling away with her bionic leg!

JENNIFER HART of Hart to Hart -- "This is Mrs. H. She's gorgeous!," said Max, the Hart's chauffeur and Man Friday as Stefanie Powers' face appeared in the opening credits of this stylish mystery series. Sometimes chemistry just soars off the charts between people and such was the case when Powers was paired with Robert Wagner as two wealthy socialites whose lifestyle somehow always places them in the proximity of a crime, usually a murder. Having toiled in an endless string of movies and TV shows, Powers really found her wheelhouse with Jennifer, who had the most distinctive way of calling out, "Jonathan!" to her husband. Actually, everything she said and did, each expression, was distinctive and also intoxicatingly captivating. Ten years after its five-season run, the duo returned for a series of eight popular TV-movies.

KELLY GARRETT of Charlie's Angels -- Jaclyn Smith (one of only two ladies here who hasn't received a tribute of her own, though it's often been considered) came to the trendsetting and wildly popular detective series with the least experience (and third-billing.) Her good girl private eye, ever earnest yet firm when necessary, won audiences over and led to her becoming a household name. Smith is the only Angel to have stayed for all five seasons of the show, which means that she is the only one who appears in all cast photos no matter the line-up. She stayed the course and achieved top-billing, then parlayed her fame into a plethora of successful TV-movies and miniseries. We always know that Kelly will do the right thing, whatever the cost.

MAUDE FINDLAY of Maude -- We adore Dorothy Zbornak of The Golden Girls, but practically every off-the-cuff insult or slow-burning grimace was taken for a test drive first on Maude. With All in the Family's staggering success featuring a far-right character like Archie Bunker, Norman Lear took the other tack and looked for comic gold in a far-left character with Maude. It's safe to say that TV viewers never saw anyone quite as outspoken or as aggressively opinionated as Maude, but even during the most controversial and touchy subjects, Bea Arthur delivered comedy with gusto. Her habits of saying people's names twice ("Oh, Walter, Walter...") or exclaiming "God'll get you for that..." were trademarks of the show. And though TV certainly became ever more topical and permissive, I just don't think anyone could ever top Ms. Arthur when it comes to an aggravated insult or even a startled gaze.

SABLE COLBY of The Colbys -- No dramatic TV character ever caught my attention more than Stephanie Beacham as Sable. Among the least known of a star-filled cast, she came out punching and swiftly became a standout, be it tangling with her craggy sister-in-law Barbara Stanwyck or with her actual sister Katharine Ross. Critics claimed that Beacham was merely playing an Alexis wannabe, but the characters were actually distinctly different. Alexis hadn't been able to cope with her husband's emotional and physical absences and turned to other men. Sable lived completely for her husband and family and was steadfastly faithful to him even though he inexplicably carried a torch for her dreary sister Ross. (Sable's history was unduly tampered with later on Dynasty.) Beacham imbued every line of dialogue with supreme weight and always looked eye-popping. The day she finally granted husband Charlton Heston his divorce ought to have garnered an award nomination, but by then the show was close to cancellation. To this day, youtube is filled with all of Sable's scenes strung together and they remain the principle merit of the show.

VICTORIA BARKLEY of The Big Valley -- The very definition of upstanding, Victoria (as portrayed by Miss Barbara Stanwyck) was the moral compass of the whole region near Stockton, California and the guiding force of its most prominent family, The Barkleys. Stanwyck made it clear from the start that she wasn't going to fret around the house in crinoline while the boys went out to fight. She played with a longer wig and plenty of dresses for one season before shifting to an anachronistic shorter 'do with more trousers and gauchos (not to mention false eyelashes!) She performed with gusto, hurling herself into all sorts of rigorous stunts while always somehow retaining a ladylike image (and behind the scenes running herd on her gaggle of young costars, making sure they behaved professionally!) I probably learned more about discerning right from wrong through Victoria Barkley than from anyone else in my own real life.

WONDER WOMAN of Wonder Woman -- If I approached the new Wonder Woman (2017) movie with apprehension, it's because I already had "my" Wonder Woman, the glorious Lynda Carter. (For the record, I did enjoy Gal Gadot and, for the most part, the movie.) No one will ever, in my opinion, match Carter for that combination of luminous beauty, altruistic innocence and iconic inhabiting of the famous character. It was just a perfect marriage of actress and role, though it must be said that the series itself was never up to snuff, writing-wise, with the performance Carter was providing. Oh, and if you think kids on the playground imitated Jaime Sommers, think about how many slinked towards a secluded spot and then reenacted Carter's legendary twirling transformation from Diana Prince into the red, white and blue heroine!

Bonus Pic

I just had to share this clipping I found while searching for the right photos of these ladies. I couldn't agree more with the text on it. I've watched a lot of TV over the last half-century and no one ever knocked me out the way Ms. Beacham did!

Golden Rendevous?

Life continues to get in the way of my working on this blog, but it's always a goal of mine to get to it, trust me! In the meantime, here's a quickie. Actually a quickie in two ways! Ha ha!

During season eight of Dynasty, Jeff Colby (played by John James), having burnt through almost every available female on the show except for Krystle and Alexis, turned his attentions to Sammy Jo (played by Heather Locklear.) What was initially a ski trip with their two boys, who were cousins, started to flicker into more.

James and Locklear later found themselves on a little trip to L.A., ostensibly part-business but with time for a seaside stroll. This stroll then turned playful, then romantic.

And... before you know it they've done the deed (according to the episode, at The Beverly Hills Hotel!)

The next day, James has to leave in a hurry back to Denver to help with Blake Carrington's campaign for governor along with other interests, but Locklear speaks to him on the phone.

So why do we give a shit?  LOL  Well, it's just that this room at the "Beverly Hills Hotel" seemed to have some remarkably familiar wallpaper. In fact, it was so familiar that we just HAD to do some digging and see if it was the same as another famed boudoir...

Turns out it is practically identical to that of Miss Blanche Devereaux's on The Golden Girls! In Blanche's room (as played by Rue McClanahan), the wallpaper is cut out and formed as a mural of sorts above the hotbed of action.

She scores points, though, (or is that the wrong term when referring to something so putrid?!) for having coordinating bedding and draperies, something the "Beverly Hills Hotel" wasn't able to accomplish!

It's a toss-up which bedroom saw more action over the years, the California hotel room or the bedroom of one of Miami's most eligible middle-aged widows!

Of course, die-hard Golden Girls devotees will immediately recall the Christmas episode in which McClanahan's Blanche gave each of her three roomies a homemade present for the ages... "The Men of Blanche's Boudoir!"

As an in-joke, the calendars contained semi-clad photos of real crew members who worked on the series and Betty White, Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty weren't given the actual props to view until the filmed dress rehearsal in order to record their true, amusingly-startled reactions to the photos. This one, for example, is of two guys who wrote: "To Rue, We wanted to take the towels off for you, but we didn't know how the others would react. Sooooo use your imagination!"

Too bad John James wasn't able to "check in" to Blanche's boudoir, but in this particular episode of Dynasty, he came close!

White Supremacy

There’s a bit of a frenzy going on these days with our featured actress Miss Betty White. Despite the fact that she’s pushing 90, she is every bit as popular as she ever was and, as a result, the public basically cried out that she MUST be a guest host on Saturday Night Live. The producers took heed of this grassroots movement and she will do the honors on May 8th. It will be the first time I will have bothered to tune into the program in years.

Betty White was born just that, Betty Marion White, not Elizabeth, in Oak Park, Illinois in 1922 to doting parents. They didn’t have a tremendous amount of money, but they had affection, humor and always a collection of dogs in and around their home. Eventually, they moved to Los Angeles and Betty was raised in the shadow of the major Hollywood Studios. However, after briefly considering opera, she had goals of being a writer rather than an actress until she wrote a play for school, cast herself in the lead and was bit by the bug.

Shortly after high school, she took part in an early television broadcast, one that, according to her was like “science fiction” as the signal was delivered all the way from the 6th floor of a building to the ground! During WWII, Betty served in a volunteer organization, complete with uniform, displaying the type of sacrifice and dedication to home and flag that is all but extinct amongst a great many of the people who live in the US now.

Not long after the war was over, Betty was married twice briefly, both times unsuccessfully, knowing in her heart that a career was what she really craved more than housework or children. These failures, in her eyes, would put her off the notion of marriage for a long time.

Now single, Miss White started working in television on a local (L.A.) level, often logging 33 hours a week as a live TV hostess! Think about that… She practically lived on TV and this doesn’t count any of the prep time beforehand or even the additional variety show that she worked on every weeknight for a time! Always a multi-tasker, she continued to do informational programming (including the production end, in which she was a female pioneer) even as she was granted her own sitcom Life With Elizabeth.

Life With Elizabeth ran from 1952 – 1955 and was eventually syndicated nationally, giving her a far broader audience than she had enjoyed while working endlessly on the Los Angeles station. It’s almost impossible to count how many hours of TV White delivered while appearing as a sitcom actress, a variety and talk show hostess, a game show panelist and even the commentator for the Tournament of Roses Parade.
Not one to pigeonhole herself, she even won a role in formidable director Otto Preminger’s 1962 film Advise and Consent, as a female senator. Still, during the bulk of the 60s, White was a game show staple, appearing on To Tell the Truth, What’s My Line? and, most importantly, Password. Betty has appeared on every incarnation of Password right up to the crappy recent one with Regis Philbin in which she helped a contestant win $100,000! Through Password, she would connect with the man who became the great partner of her life, the original host of the show Allen Ludden.

Due to her two previous divorces, it took a lot of needling to get Betty to take the plunge again, but she did and it resulted in almost 18 blissful years of marriage for her. She and Allen forged a family with his three children from a deceased wife and a home full of various dogs, which Betty has never been without. Soon, she converted Allen into an animal lover as well and they appeared together on her 1971 series The Pet Set and, later, on The Liar's Club. The couple also worked together in stage productions around the US, notably Critic’s Choice and Guys and Dolls.

Betty became a frequent guest on Match Game as well and could always be counted on for clever answers, often with a sly double meaning. She was never, ever vulgar, but very knowing, amusing, vivacious and sharp. Occasionally, her well-known adoration of animals would become the brunt of a joke and she would feign (or maybe not feign!) horror. One episode had her playfully doing the start of a striptease while bump ‘n grind music played. She traded barbs with pal Brett Somers and almost became a sort of honorary fourth regular on the six-person celebrity panel.

Ludden and White had a strong friendship with network executive Grant Tinker and his wife, TV superstar Mary Tyler Moore. They regularly dined together, played games and so on. When some of Moore’s costars from The Mary Tyler Moore Show were preparing to spin-off into their own successful series, there would a void left on the program, so they decided to integrate another character. Producers decided to go for a “Betty White type,” but one in which the effervescent, cheery outward persona actually hid a devious, egocentric and sexually voracious inner self. Finally, when casting such a role became more of a trial than the powers that be anticipated, Moore asked them why they didn’t just ask BETTY WHITE!
Betty appeared on the show, sporting hair much lighter than she’d worn it in the previous couple of decades, and was an instant smash. She played Sue Ann Nivens, a happy homemaker personality who did on air demonstrations of cooking and crafts while delighting in cheerily deriding Mary’s character, emasculating Murray (played by Gavin MacLeod) and flirting heavily with boss Lou Grant (Ed Asner.) One memorable episode had MacLeod playing dress dummy for a wedding gown, enduring everything he could until finally he plopped White ass-first into the wedding cake meant for the segment. White, as only she could, took it like a trooper, licking her finger and stating that it could have used more vanilla.

This series went out on a very high note and could have continued for years longer, but Moore wished to stop it before the success was bled dry and the creative juices had a chance to grow stagnant. The final episode involved the primary cast, including White tearfully hugging one another goodbye while shuffling across the floor en masse to the box of Kleenexes that was nearby. White was sad to see such a plum role end, but she was nominated for an Emmy three times and won twice!

Like most of the other people from that series, she was quickly given her own show with the wildly creative title The Betty White Show. She played the unlikely part of a TV actress starring on a police series called “Undercover Woman.” Her costar was John Hillerman, who would later go on to success as the employer of Magnum P.I. Her Moore costar Georgia Engel appeared in this series as well. Though Betty always gave (and gives!) 110% to any project, this cheap-looking, unfunny show died a pretty quick death.

On the subject of death, Betty’s soul mate Allen Ludden died of cancer in 1981, robbing the couple of a lot of fun years ahead. White has scarcely had a slow moment in her career, but for a little while did limit her projects before diving back in to the work she adored, work she knew would keep her sane during this unhappy time.

In 1983, White became the first woman to win an Emmy for hosting a game show, the short-lived series Just Men! It featured two female contestants being asked to guess details about seven male celebrities who were present on the set with correct answers providing keys, one of which would open a new car!

White had been a frequent guest star on the wildly popular The Carol Burnett Show, sometimes appearing in the “Family” sketches as Eunice’s uppity sister Ellen. Later, when Vicki Lawrence began the series Mama’s Family (without the character of Eunice), White appeared quite a few times as Ellen, even working a little bit with Rue McClanahan, who played Lawrence’s sister Aunt Fran for one season. These two actresses would soon be reunited in a far greener pasture.

Susan Harris, who had written the popular series Soap and had contributed episodes to such acclaimed series as All in the Family and Maude, came up with a pilot script for an unusual series focusing on four older women, all either widowed or divorced, who cohabitate in a house in Miami, Florida. Called The Golden Girls, White was brought in to read for the sassy, sexy, southern belle Blanche, a character well within the range she had shown previously, in fact almost a combination of Sue Ann and Ellen. McClanahan, likewise, was cast in the role of Rose, a variation on the ditz Vivian she had portrayed on Maude.

She won the part, but right before the pilot was filmed, the director suggested that White and McClanahan switch roles in order to play against type and mix things up. This thrilled McClanahan who was dying to play Blanche, but confused White who felt she didn’t “get” Rose at all. Harris explained the part to her, giving her key information on how to play the role and from then on she soared. Her endearing naiveté and loony St. Olaf stories kept audiences screaming. In the attached photo, do we think Blanche could get the dang kitchen cabinets fixed a little better??

The Golden Girls ran for seven seasons and White was nominated for an Emmy every one of them. She won the first time she was nominated and though eventually all four of the stars received an Emmy apiece, the fact that she won before top-billed Bea Arthur seemed to cast a pall over things according to White’s autobiography. Rumors have persisted to this day of a feud between the two ladies with hearty evidence on both sides (that there was or wasn’t one.) Their styles of acting and interacting with the studio audience were vastly different, causing some degree of tension. As the show progressed, they had less and less interaction onscreen and, later, White and Arthur frequently declined to participate in videographies of one another or mention each other beyond a brief sentence. (Don’t let the crafty editors of Intimate Portrait fool you. Betty’s clips in Bea’s portrait were lifted from her own and have no mention of Bea at all in them.) Yet Arthur always refused to leave for lunch unless White was ready to come as well and insisted that she sit with her.

For my part, I think they were just too different to fully get along and also had incompatible feelings regarding their work. Bea always had to be lured into things, often preferring to stay home, and was quick to move on while Betty was a trooper and a workhorse, always ready to keep things going forever. They seem to have buried whatever hatchet may have been present when they, with Rue, accepted an award from TVLand in 2008, though perhaps they just grinned and bore it for the fans’ sake. It’s sad to think of these two disliking one another because I adore them both.

The show was a stunning success, spending five of its seven seasons in the top ten and gaining legions of fans, even after cancellation, due to the endless, multitudinous reruns, primarily on Lifetime TV (and later on Women’s Entertainment and Hallmark, in increasingly butchered versions.) When, like Mary Tyler Moore, Arthur decided to depart the series while it was still a reasonable success (and it, like Moore, went out with a memorable tear-filled hugfest), White, McClanahan and Estelle Getty made the unwise decision to try to continue in the utterly horrendous The Golden Palace. Not only was the dynamic destroyed by the absence of Arthur’s dry character, but also the setting was entirely new (and inane.) It was cancelled after limping along for most of a season.

In the wake of this memorable role, White stayed busier than ever before. Not only did she continue volunteering at The Los Angeles Zoo, but tirelessly helped with other animal welfare organizations as well. Career-wise, she sought all sorts of roles that would help shake off the looniness and less-than-bright qualities that she displayed so well as Rose. She turned up in the Morgan Freeman-Christian Slater action flick Hard Rain. She and Red Buttons worked as a couple in the Bruce Willis-Michelle Pfeiffer film The Story of Us.

Then she blew the lid off of her image as a foul-mouthed, cranky farmwoman in the giant crocodile thriller Lake Placid. This was followed a few years later by her portrayal of a snooty, racist neighbor in the Steve Martin-Queen Latifah comedy Bringing Down the House. Along the way have been countless guest appearances on popular series, comedic dramatic, talk and even stints on daytime soap operas such as The Bold and the Beautiful, on which she played Susan Flannery’s troublesome mother. She’s been nominated for five more Emmy’s since the end of Girls, winning once more for a flamboyant role on The John Larroquette Show.

Miss White was always noted for her comic gifts and her effortlessly accessible persona. Her quick wit (aided by a lifetime of games and a mastery of words) was hard to top. Besides this, however, she possesses an unheralded gift for drama as well. During Girls, for example, she was called upon occasionally to illustrate some sensitive social situation or issue and was always top-notch, able to elicit emotion, even tears, from viewers.

Her career has been a startling, stunning success, but she is STILL on the go! She had a featured role in Sandra Bullock’s popular film The Proposal, still making audiences howl as she searched her old wedding dress, with Bullock in it, for the breasts, comparing the task to an “Easter Egg Hunt!” Bullock had the honor of presenting Miss White with a Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award earlier this year and White was, again, sharp as a tack, hilarious, humble, mischievous, witty and somehow poignant.
Now comes the announcement that not only will she be hosting SNL, but she’s also about to costar in yet another sitcom! She will be playing the snappy, combative housekeeper to a threesome of L.A. transplants living in Cleveland. The TVLand series Hot in Cleveland (of which ten episodes have been ordered) stars Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick and, while it may not look entirely promising, one thing is positive. Betty White will make every moment of hers count.

Miss Betty White IS television. She’s literally been there from the start and taken part in virtually every type of production possible. What’s really amazing is that she was already 28 years old when she started to really get going. Had she not taken time off for civic duty and marriage, she could have (and surely would have) accomplished even more, though what she did do was more than any other human could dream of.

Do yourself a favor when you find you have the time and watch her Archive of American Television interview (presented in several sections on youtube.com.) Part one is linked below. This lady, my friends, is a national treasure!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QqbgF1DtEw

You'll Rue Today!

Despite a lengthy (and quite varied) career on stage, in television and in films, Miss Rue McClanahan, whether she likes it or not, is most likely to be remembered for her work as Blanche Devereaux on The Golden Girls.

Hailing from Ardmore, Oklahoma (where her birth name was Eddi-Rue McClanahan), she spent many years weighing whether to pursue an acting career, which she craved, or stay a full-time mother to her young son and settle for running a dance studio. Her son, from a brief late 1950s marriage, was shuffled back and forth from McClanahan’s parents house in her home town to wherever (frequently New York City) her acting career took her in those lean early days.

She won parts in low-budget feature films with names like Five Minutes to Love, Angel’s Flight and Walk the Angry Beach and worked intermittently on the stage (sometimes rubbing elbows with future stars like Dustin Hoffman, pictured here.)

All along, she took on any and all types of roles from musicals to comedies to dramas. In 1970, she took on a limited run role on the daytime soap opera Another World, playing a pediatric nurse with eyes for her young twin patients’ father. Even though she was meant to be a villain (her character was slowly poisoning the wife who stood in her way!), she received plentiful fan mail and her role was extended beyond its initial conception.

Everything changed for her, though she couldn’t quite know it right then, when Norman Lear spotted her on stage and cast her as half of a swinging couple (with Vincent Gardenia as her husband) who head to an unknowing Archie & Edith’s house on All in the Family for a night of wife-swapping naughtiness. That gig led to Rue being cast as Bea Arthur’s ditzy, but well-meaning friend Vivian on Maude.

Vivian was not a regular during the first season, appearing only a few times, but once the considerable chemistry between Bea and Rue was revealed, she came on board the series, marrying neighbor Arthur Harmon (Conrad Bain), and remained with it until its cancellation. Maude gave Rue primo exposure and included many zany situations for her. She performed in 100 episodes of the popular show and it only came to an end because Bea Arthur didn’t wish to continue any longer.

Norman Lear then developed a comedy series specially for Rue called Apple Pie. She was very pleased with the concept (concerning a lonely Depression-era woman who advertises for a ready-made family in the newspaper and opens her home to them), but the series was caught in the mire of an executive changeover and given no support, being cancelled after only two episodes had aired.

The next several years were kept busy through TV movies, sporadic features, and many guest-starring appearances on popular shows like Lou Grant, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Trapper John, M.D. and Newhart, among others. It was then that she was offered a co-starring role with Vicki Lawrence in a series based on ‘Mama’ Thelma Harper, made famous on The Carol Burnett Show. McClanahan was to portray Harper’s feisty, fiery sparring partner on Mama’s Family. However, in between the contract-signing and filming, the creators decided to introduce the flouncy, mouthy, confrontational character of Naomi (played by Dorothy Lyman) and Rue’s character of Aunt Fran was augmented into a dithering, meek idiot. Betty White appeared from time to time on this show as haughty Ellen, but the two didn't become particularly close then.

McClanahan’s heart was no longer in the project in the wake of the drastic changes and she welcomed the chance to exit after 24 episodes. Fortunately, for her, the signature role of a lifetime was coming available not long after and she was free to take it.

Miss McClanahan was given a copy (dog-eared, according to her) of a pilot for a sitcom about three older, single ladies living together in Miami, Florida. The series, called The Golden Girls, contained a role she wanted to play very badly - Blanche - but the producers, having seen her essay goofballs such as Vivian and Aunt Fran, wanted her for Rose! Betty White, who had been a smash on The Mary Tyler Moore Show as the sexually suggestive Sue Ann Nivens, was in line to play Blanche.

It wasn’t until someone in the casting process suggested a switch that Rue would get to sink her teeth into Blanche and the roles would be swapped. This left Betty White reeling (briefly!), but she soon got a grip on Rose and made her an equally indelible character as well. After some nudging, Bea Arthur was coerced into taking the role of Dorothy and the star trio was set. Estelle Getty, who had wowed audiences in the play Torch Song Trilogy, had already been hired to play Dorothy’s stroke-ridden, take-no-prisoners mother in a recurring role, but once the pilot was shot, it became clear that all four ladies needed to appear together in every episode. (Thus, Coco, the gay male housekeeper, was swiftly written out of subsequent episodes without explanation.)

In an odd bit of lunatic decision-making, the director of the pilot episode, Jay Sandrich, refused to allow McClanahan to use the inimitable southern accent that has since become a hilarious piece of TV history. So we were robbed of hearing the “true” Blanche in what was an uproarious start to the series. Incidentally, Sandrich returned to direct Girls only one other time in what is widely regarded as the show’s nadir: the piggyback pilot for Empty Nest that included Paul Dooley and Rita Moreno hijacking the show to set up their own series. It eventually came about with a heavily augmented cast and scenario.

The first four or five seasons of this show rank among the all-time funniest programs that ever aired on TV. The mix of actresses/characters was top-notch, the stories were both hysterical and yet touching and the dialogue teemed with unbelievably clever and humorous dialogue. Not long after director Terry Hughes departed (long referred to as “The Fifth Golden Girl”) to concentrate on a feature film career, the tone of the show gradually shifted and it became far more arch, knowing, crass and silly. There were still magic moments to be had (and certainly the two-part finale was sensational as well as touching), but things had veered a bit too far off course for this viewer’s satisfaction. (Sophia jumping off the roof of a mansion into a pile of leaves? Miles having been in the witness protection program all along? The list goes on…)

It didn’t help that each of the actresses actually began to look progressively younger and more fit as the show wore on instead of the other way around! Blanche’s vain attitude and self-indulgence was far more hilarious when it was obvious that she didn’t fit her own descriptions of herself. Once Rue genuinely started to look sensational, her caustic remarks took on an unwelcome edge. Likewise, Rose got to be extra idiotic, Dorothy indulged in some needlessly goofy scenarios and Sophia was far too “in on the joke” and didn’t resemble her character as initially conceived at all. Once again, Bea Arthur decided to depart the show, but, thankfully, each actresses managed to snag an Emmy apiece.

Rue’s Emmy speech was memorable in that she recounted the way that casting directors had encouraged her to give up any hope of a film & TV career because she wasn’t photogenic. It was a poignant and memorable moment for her and her fans.

The remaining ladies took part in a horribly misguided spin-off of The Golden Girls called The Golden Palace. By now, the chemistry was almost completely drained (the trio was often referred to "a table with one missin leg") and it was quietly cancelled after one season.

Rue, however, remained busy. She portrayed The Mother Superior in televised productions of Nunsense and Nunsense 2: The Sequel and had a string of well-received TV movies called Children of the Bride, Baby of the Bride and Mother of the Bride. Though she had made some brief forays onto Broadway early in her career, she had two notable projects later on in which she was featured as a “name,” a revival of The Women and a stint in Wicked, both, of course, featuring her in showy supporting roles. In a bit of startling casting against type, she portrayed a severely wounded military academy instructor in the sci-fi, CGI extravaganza Starship Troopers!

A treacherous and debilitating battle with breast cancer came her way in the late-90s, but she licked it with her by-now customary determination and aplomb. This, and her career and marital exploits, was examined in her autobiography My First Five Husbands. McClanahan has said that it took some getting used to for her play the man-hungry Blanche Devereaux. However, she revealed herself to be no slouch at landing men throughout her life (she is currently on hubby number six and Bea Arthur was quoted as having said, “Rue always puts on a great wedding!”), even taking part in a steamy affair with a pre-fame Brad Davis of Midnight Express. A lifelong animal lover (and tireless advocate for them and for other charitable causes), she also related some of her feelings in that area.

In 2008, a shockingly heavy and bloated-looking McClanahan appeared in twelve episodes of the cable series Sordid Lives, a prequel to the chicken-fried play and movie of the same name. Though it wasn’t always easy to see the formerly vivacious and sassy actress in a part like this, she retained her sense of comic abandon, her character enjoying a late in life love affair with a neighbor who had no legs!

Anyone who enjoys Rue and who has a couple of hours to spare should check out her zesty, candid and amusingly snarky Archive of American Television interviews, presented in 5 parts. Her entire career is recounted and she pulls no punches in discussing the projects and personalities she dealt with and/or enjoyed over the decades. She’s delightful throughout, practically giving a performance of a sort, though she’s clearly shooting from the heart and why not?!

She does lament to a degree the fact that she has played hundreds and hundreds of roles in her life and yet will always be “Blanche,” but what a role to be remembered for, and ultimately, she understands that. It’s not possible to add up the laughs she’s given me over the years through her work as that character.

http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/rue-mcclanahan