Champagne Wishes and Caviar Schemes

An entry about this primetime soap seems a bit modern coming from Poseidon, but not when you realize that the series premiered almost thirty years ago! If nothing else, this show will go down in TV history as having been one of the most lavishly produced and glamorously appointed series of all time. Laugh if you must, but, in the day these ladies and gents were the end-all, be-all of glamour and no one could wait to see how they'd look each week.
Dynasty began as an almost benign family drama, albeit on a slightly higher scale than most, with Krystle (Linda Evans) leaving her working class life behind to become the wife of Blake (John Forsythe), a powerful oil magnate, while still retaining feelings for her old boyfriend, oil driller Matthew. The one thing that distinguished it was its tentative, yet still daring-for-its-time story of Blake's homosexual son Steven (Al Corley, later Jack Coleman.) Then Blake's first wife Alexis (Joan Collins) came into town at the start of the second season and there was no looking back! The glitz factor kicked in with a major villainess to help deliver it.

The show now had the loggerhead-like battle between Blake and Alexis, which would continue through all the years, often getting more than a little ridiculous. Audiences, for a while, didn't seem to mind, especially during the many raucous catfights between the ladies. Soap operas are never 100% believable and this one was no exception. In fact, it rarely seemed like it was even attempting to be believable, but rather showing a fantasy existence among the wealthy and powerful Carrington clan. The cars, clothing, furnishings, etc... all exemplified a majestic lifestyle that 80s audiences could not get enough of! The following of the show and its stars was almost unprecedented, with people organizing Dynasty viewing parties and the actors being mobbed at public appearances. I was crazy nuts about the show and had to see every episode.

Reviewing it now, decades later, it comes off as gorgeous and occasionally engrossing or amusing, but also very trite, simple-minded and often repetitive (Samples of oft-repeated dialogue -- Alexis: "I'll get you for this Blake if it's the last thing I do...," Blake: "You won't get away with this!," Krystle: "Blake, why won't you let me help you?") Several things dented the show through the years. One was the defection of Pamela Sue Martin as Fallon, the spirited daughter of Blake and Alexis. Even though her replacement Emma Samms eventually found a place in the cast and got into a groove after a bumpy start, the void left by Martin was never truly filled. Another was the entire character of Amanda (Catherine Oxenberg) and the storyline wrought from it. Introducing her was a mistake in the first place and the path her story took (becoming Princess of Moldavia) was the beginning of the end of the show. The year of her wedding (and the resultant massacre) was the highpoint of the series ratings-wise. However, the next year viewers ran away in droves as their two favorite actresses were saddled with ludicrous, pitiful story lines.

In one, Alexis spent her time trying to rescue King Galen and turned in her power clothes for a nun's habit! In the other, Krystle was kidnapped and replaced by a look-alike with a bad southern twang. These dragged-out, horrible stories, drove a stake into the show's heart. (The end of Alexis's had to be scrapped and redone completely due to hate mail!) Still, the show was wonderful for its splendiferous fashion parade and for the witty repartee of the continuously battling characters. If the show didn't have continuity, at least it had some tangy writing and good-looking people. (One of my favorites was the hunkalicious Ted McGinley, who was on for about two seasons as Heather Locklear’s lover.)

In the ninth season when Evans quit, that was close to the final nail in the coffin, even if by then she had gone from a stunning, beloved heroine to a breathy, whiny, sort of non-presence. Then, as part of a budget crunch, Collins was put on part-time duty so now both favored leading ladies were absent. The series got one last major shot in the arm from the divine, staggeringly glorious Stephanie Beacham as Alexis's cousin Sable. The very best thing about the Dynasty spin off The Colbys, she came onto the mother show and made an enormous impact. Her built-in grace, charm, looks and talent made all the difference in that waning last year, but the writing was on the wall. As the extravagant 80s drew to a close, so did this series in 1989.

A repugnant reunion movie sort of tied up the loose ends of the regular series' cliffhanger finale. Here, much of the previous storyline was ignored as the returning original producers attempted to fit things into their own point of view versus where the show had been prior to cancellation. It was good to see most everyone and have a little closure, but it was pretty ineptly handled and horribly written. It was also a ratings failure. A later reunion, consisting of the actors conversing amid clips was somewhat more fulfilling, if inherently tacky.

In it's day, Dynasty made the world a better place and if it comes off as hopelessly campy today, that's a small price to pay for all the years of fun and glitz it provided to viewers when it first aired.

Ford Tough!

Yet another Hollywood type that seems to have gone by the wayside in these homogenized times is the tough-as-nails, overbearing dame. Though Miss Constance Ford certainly had her share of roles that don’t fit this particular criteria, this is one area in which she soared. She excelled at it in its many variations.

Those who only know her from her lengthy tenure as Ada on Another World may be surprised to learn that she had a strong career in film and primetime television prior to that. And those that know her from her work in film may be surprised to find out that she began her career as a model! In fact, her face was used to launch Elizabeth Arden’s lip color Victory Red in 1941. Her angular features in this era are in contrast to the more solid and hearty looks she would display in the 1950s and 60s.

She spent the early part of the 50s in a myriad of television dramas and anthology series before debuting in the movies in 1956 with The Last Hunt, a Robert Taylor/Stewart Granger saga about buffalo hunters. Other TV work and routine film roles followed. By 1959, however, she essayed a part that is unforgettable and stands today as an example of one of the all-time repressed, neurotic, intense, harping and controlling mothers – that of Sandra Dee’s mom in A Summer Place.

A Summer Place was a love story between teenagers Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee, two clean-scrubbed kids who happen to have a parent each who were also once in love long ago. Troy’s mom Dorothy Maguire and Sandra’s dad Richard Egan are reunited at the same time the teens meet and love blossoms for all four of them. Unfortunately for them (but luckily for the viewer!), Troy’s dad Arthur Kennedy and Sandra’s mom Ms. Ford are steadfastly against all of it. Ford couldn’t be any more constricting and demanding if she tried. Her obsession with Dee’s virginity surely put the fear of God into many a teenage girl who was watching and if that didn’t do it then perhaps seeing her shove Dee into the (supremely tacky) Christmas tree did! Millions of viewers adored the theme song from this hit film and danced away to it for years, but Poseidon can’t forget Constance Ford.

Two years later, Ford played Arthur Kennedy’s wife in the film Claudelle Inglish. This cinematic Holy Grail has yet to float into the Underworld for viewing, but is high on the list of must-see movies. She plays another less than desirable mother, this time attempting to marry off her pretty daughter Diane McBain to a rich boy in order to get her out of her own lifestyle and financial doldrums. This time, instead of pushing her daughter to stay virtuous, she pushes her daughter to land a meal ticket!

Ford continued to appear in supporting roles in Warner Brothers dramas (on TV and in movies), often working with actors she’d previously appeared with. She had a small role in Rome Adventure as the bookseller who employs Suzanne Pleshette, played a tough prison inmate in House of Women with Shirley Knight and appeared in the odd psychological thriller The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari with Glynis Johns, frequently playing either imposing types or at least strong-willed, generally independent women.

In 1963, she joined the sprawling cast of The Caretakers, a movie concerning the implementation of group therapy in a mental hospital. Robert Stack played the crusading doctor, trying to move treatment into the 20th century while Joan Crawford played head nurse Lucretia (!) Terry, devoted to the old ways. Ford played her right hand man, Nurse Bracken, who carried out her strict orders with little or no empathy. Interestingly, the novels The Caretakers and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest were both written in 1959 and featured nurses with similar sounding names, Bracken and Ratched. Though Nurse Ratched is easily the more famous, Nurse Bracken is enjoyably severe in her own right. A highlight of the film is seeing Crawford and Ford in black leotards training new nurses in judo for self-defense!

Several years after this, following more primetime TV work and a stint on Edge of Night, Ford began the long run on Another World. As Rachel’s stern, but long-suffering, mother, she won over a legion of fans who enjoyed her still-tough, yet good-hearted, persona, the only person who ever seemed to be able to straight talk Rachel (as played by Robin Strasser and later by Victoria Wyndham.) Ford also managed to incorporate a fair amount of light-hearted humor into the character. Where she once had excelled at playing butch, threatening bitches, she now enjoyed the opportunity to portray a more well-rounded, caring, but no-nonsense type of character and one with a strong moral code. She stayed with the show from 1967 to 1992, leaving only because of ill health and when she died, the character died soon after as well. In true Ford fashion, she was tight-lipped about her illness until practically the very end.

Not a great deal of this work is readily available to view, but some choice bits pop up on youtube.com occasionally and one clip is attached here (Poseidon’s first featured link at the Underworld!) so that readers can catch that famous Ada temper at full throttle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPcqjR5Wu_g&feature=channel_page

Connie, you were a captivating screen presence and are missed! Thankfully, many of her performances remain for the world to enjoy again and again.

Burt Offerings

Well, it’s been a pretty crazy ride over the years for ol’ Burt Reynolds and one of great ups and great downs. All through his youth, it seemed as if he would become a successful football player until a knee injury and a serious car accident made that impossible. Turned onto acting by a notable college professor, he soared and eventually wound up in New York where he met and worked with people such as Joanne Woodward, John Forsythe and Charlton Heston.

Always having to work around the fact that people felt he looked like Marlon Brando (a fact that prevented him from appearing in the Brando film Sayonara), he kicked around in many odd jobs and as a stuntman before landing roles in late 50s TV. His stint on the show Riverboat was marked by great animosity between the star Darren McGavin and him. His three-year stay on Gunsmoke as the town blacksmith was more amiable. He toiled away in TV roles, low-budget flicks and spaghetti westerns until making a major splash in 1972 with Deliverance.

Deliverance is legendary for its "Dueling Banjos" theme music and the brutal scene of sexual assault upon Ned Beatty by two savage hillbillies. However, it’s more famous in Poseidon’s Underworld for the vision of Mr. Burt Reynolds in a zip-up, sleeveless wetsuit vest! He is, here, the epitome of masculine virility. Eventually, he is as undone by the environment as much as his friends are, but for a while there, he is the man.

Simultaneously helping to make his career as well as handcuff it was the photo spread he did in Cosmopolitan magazine. Right on the heels of his Deliverance success came a “nude” centerfold picture, meant as a takeoff on the famed Playboy centerfold, but which took off like lightning and left many viewers (and critics) unable to take him completely seriously as an actor. The result was immense popularity, but frequent critical disdain. It’s been suggested that his (by today’s standards, very innocent) centerfold spread cost him an Oscar nomination.

Game show appearances (in which he was always hilarious) and talk show appearances (ditto) did little to alter his lightweight perception, but, perhaps, by then he’d learned to just embrace his image and cash the checks that came along with being a number one box office attraction. He still, occasionally, attempted to make darker and/or more meaningful fare, but his typical films were southern-friend action flicks with plenty of car chases and brawling. Always, he could poke fun at himself as in Silent Movie where his house is a shrine to himself and his morning shower is invaded by three fellows looking to get him to star in their next film!

There was a speed bump in 1973 when a mysterious death occurred during the filming of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing and fingers were briefly pointed his way due to some personal conflict he had had with the man, though he was eventually cleared of any involvement.

Things really hit the skids for Burt when he injured his jaw badly during the making of City Heat in 1984. His career already in some degree of trouble due to numbing formula and substandard content, it went completely south when he began to look terrible following this condition. Unable to chew without excruciating pain, he began to look hollow and unbecomingly thin. The AIDS epidemic was in full swing then and, to many folks recalling Rock Hudson’s decaying features, gaunt looks equaled infection. Unfounded rumors began spreading about his health.

Though he worked steadily, his films did terribly at the box office and several went straight-to-video, which, back then, was considered almost as low as a person could get. It took a lot of endurance, patience, resilience and effort, but Reynolds eventually bounced back with the successful TV series Evening Shade, followed by some very choice supporting roles in feature films, the pinnacle being Boogie Nights, for which he finally received the elusive Oscar nomination.

Amongst all of his career highs and lows were some heavily publicized and equally rollercoaster-like romances. His two-year marriage to Judy Carne was marked by her assertions of physical and verbal abuse. A relationship with Dinah Shore (20 years his senior) was good for both of them while it lasted, but it eventually petered out. Sally Field spent several years as his girlfriend, but it didn’t seem to make it past her Oscar for Norma Rae and all the attention that provided. He seemed to have made a good match with Loni Anderson, even marrying her and adopting a son, but it ended quite messily and was a notable media frenzy at the time.

Despite his difficult and questionable love life, Burt made some extremely loyal, long-term friends and he loved to populate his films and the TV series with them whenever possible. Charles Durning, Ossie Davis, Jim Nabors, Jerry Reed and Dom DeLuise are only a few. He also included many of these people in his productions at The Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre in Jupiter, Florida. Unknown to many folks is the fact that Reynolds maintained a deep appreciation for theatre and legitimate acting. He was also a heavy-duty fan of classic films (his childhood idol was Errol Flynn), even hosting a short-lived TV show that featured round table discussions with surviving greats and near-greats.

Burt was immortalized in a classic episode of The Golden Girls in which the ladies had intended to meet him at the premiere of his latest film, but were arrested for soliciting instead. As a tag, he appeared as himself to take Sophia to lunch (who went to the premiere when the other three were in jail) and when he asked her which one of her roommates was “the slut,” all three raised their hand and exclaimed, “I am!” This was during his rough period, physically, and he is very slender in the episode, but does manage to chomp gum throughout his appearance! His dinner theatre would be mentioned many times on the series with gag combinations such as “Mister Jamie Farr in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial” and so forth.

Mr. Reynolds continues to work very frequently and yet recently entered himself into rehab for alcohol abuse, so the highs and lows continue. It’s a shame that he felt the need to have his face augmented the way he has rather than age more along the lines of another idol of his, Cary Grant (though who else ever aged THAT well?!), but every time you think he’s through, he emerges looking better than you expected him to and doing more than you thought he could. In any case, he’s left the world not only indelible images of hot, hairy manliness, but also a resume of surprisingly varied performances if one is willing to scratch beneath the surface.

Astor the Master

Miss Mary Astor has a tendency to divide people. Some sing her praises while others find her quite ordinary, even boring. I confess that I don’t typically get a charge out of much of her early work (nor did she! She was an actress who took anything she was asked/ordered to do and, as a result, often wound up in roles she didn’t care a great deal about.) However, there are indisputable times in which she rose to the occasion and, even if she didn’t, she has one role that has a special place of honor in Poseidon’s Underworld, a role that ought to make a fan out of even her most strenuous detractors.

Astor had a film career lasting about 44 years, beginning in silents and lasting to the mid-60s (though, surprisingly, she lived until 1987.) Her earliest years were marked by the firm hand of her oppressive and sponge-like parents who not only controlled her money, but, when she was 26 and finally wanted to hold her own purse strings, sued her for support! What’s more, they won. She ran into trouble when talkies came into vogue because her deep voice was at odds with her ethereal image onscreen. However, after success in a Los Angeles play, her voice was deemed pleasing and she fielded five different film contract offers.

Always one to experience a pretty tumultuous private life, she was married four times, was widowed by one husband in a plane crash, and, most famously, engaged in a nasty custody hearing in which pages from her diary were shown in court. The actual passages and pages were never shown to the public, but the rumors were shocking, involving tales of various lovers and explicit details of the ecstasy she was having with men other than her husband. The notable book was stored, unread, in a safety deposit box from 1936 - 1952 when it was destroyed.

The film she was working on during the scandal was Dodsworth and it was in the best interest of various studio heads to ensure that she kept some degree of respectability, which she did, thanks in part to their far-reaching influence. Dodsworth was a hit and became a classic, as did some of her subsequent films such as Red Dust, The Prisoner of Zenda and The Hurricane. In 1941, she appeared in the legendary The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart. The big news for Astor that year, though, was being co-starred with Bette Davis in The Great Lie.

Unlike the vast majority of female stars who worked with Davis, Astor got on well with her and Davis was unusually generous in return. She insisted on having Astor cast and worked overtime to punch up her scenes. She even encouraged Astor to cut her already short hair shorter, giving her a chic, unusual look at a time when shoulder length hair was the rage. Astor soared as the spoiled, petulant and fiery concert pianist who tangles with Davis over George Brent (why?) One highlight of the film has the women holed up in a bleak cabin, riding out Astor’s pregnancy with Davis trying to prevent Astor from running away and from smoking “too much.” Astor won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress that year.

Still, she was never one to chase parts or even seek above-the-title billing. She enjoyed the less pressured approach of being a featured player. Thus, she wound up playing mothers more often than not and hated it in spite of herself. Even though audiences may have enjoyed her in Meet Me In St. Louis and Little Women, she was miserable in the roles.

After the death of her parents (several years apart), whose side she had stayed by through their illnesses and demise, she discovered her mother’s diary which outlined the deep hatred she’d felt for her daughter/provider over the years. This, paired with career trauma and other issues led Astor to bouts of sleeping pill “accidents” and a membership in Alcoholics Anonymous. She found it cathartic to write an autobiography in 1959 and it was a major success, though she scarcely mentioned her considerable career at all in it. (She penned a later book all about her cinematic experiences in 1971 as well as half a dozen novels in between.)

And now we come to her ultimate performance as far as The Underworld is concerned, the role of Roberta Carter in Return to Peyton Place. Return, a rather cheap and muddled follow up to the prior, more prestigious film, has many strikes against it. For one thing, almost none of the original cast is back. Also, the storyline contains far fewer engrossing threads than its predecessor did and several of the plotlines come off as rehashes rather than fresh scenarios. What it does have however, is the magnificently small-minded, bitter and nasty presence of Roberta Carter.

There just isn’t anyone else who could bring quite the prudish, derisive, possessive, manipulative and authoritarian qualities to this character than Astor does. She’s barely onscreen a minute before her faux-pleasant demeanor gives way to haughty arrogance and sidelong cruelty. She’s hardly finished insulting her son’s former girlfriend before her son arrives back home from college with an unexpected wife in tow. Astor’s blood is frozen in her veins until she makes it to her bedroom and slams her purse on the bed with smile-inducing fury. From here, it’s a battle of wills between Astor and the (:::gasp::: Italian) wife Luciana Paluzzi. The animosity builds and builds with all sorts of snappy repartee between the women.

Sadly, some nincompoop at 20th Century Fox decided to lop off roughly the last ¼ of the movie, including a murder plot between the ladies as well as a fire and these scenes have never seen the light of day since. Still, what’s there is mesmerizing. Ultimately, Astor turns her attention away from Paluzzi and guns for Carol Lynley, who has authored a book all about the title town, one that is full of salacious gossip, most of it true. Astor wants the book removed from the school library and fires the principal over it, resulting in a climactic town meeting. Even though we know we’re supposed to be rooting for Lynley, she’s so bratty and snotty that we retain a soft-spot for Astor, the old dragon. How interesting that Astor, a woman who led quite a spicy life was so adept at portraying someone this repressive and conservative. Every sour frame of her in this movie is cinema magic.

Now ready to hang up her hat and tend to her garden or write some more, Mary Astor made one last appearance before the big screen camera. Old pal Bette Davis asked her to portray her longtime nemesis in a two-scene cameo in Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Astor thought it a fitting way to go out and readily agreed, adding a rare drop of understatement to this tribute to hammy overacting (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) Her character’s name is a fun one and is bandied about continuously by the other characters: Jewel Mayhew. You have to hear Bette say it, though.

Her final years were marked with self-imposed solitude and failing health. She gave interviews only on the rarest of occasions, shunned visitors other than the closest of family and friends and wouldn’t even look at fan mail, of which she received healthy amounts. After all, she had appeared in about 120 films.

"Let's Get Ready to Rumble!"

At the height of the disaster movie craze in 1974, Universal Studios got in on the action with Earthquake, billed as “An Event…” The event in question was a fictional earthquake that nearly leveled the city of Los Angeles, all presented in the new gimmick called Sensurround. Sensurround involved booming speakers with vibrations that mirrored the action on screen, making it seem like audiences were really experiencing the tremors themselves. (The system was only used two more times, in Midway and Rollercoaster, before being retired.)

Far more electrifying than Sensurround, or than any other effect in the movie, is the performance of Miss Ava Gardner as Remy Graff! Gardner, who was in semi-retirement at the time, took the role merely because she felt like spending the season in L.A. However, if you think she phoned her performance in and grabbed the money, think again. She acts, ACTS, A-C-T-S in all of her too few scenes and every frame of her portrayal is jaw-droppingly mesmerizing.

She plays the melodramatic and suicidally-inclined wife of Charlton Heston who can’t seem to hold his attention unless she’s screaming “Godammit!” at him or otherwise grasping at him and trying to control his life. She affects a captivatingly bizarre accent, calling her father Lorne Greene (infamously only seven years her senior in real life) “Dodd” and “Fathah!” 52 years-old at the time of filming, the movie originally included a subplot about her having had an abortion the previous year and Heston’s outrage over it because she knew he wanted children! Um, do we think these roles were, perhaps, written with younger people in mind?! That scene was cut out completely and others were trimmed before release. Sadly, they have never turned up as extras on a DVD, nor were they inserted into the TV version (which was expanded with hideous, newly shot footage of Debralee Scott on a plane and Victoria Principal wandering around.) A lobby card does exist with Chuck, Ava and family doctor Lloyd Nolan in the midst of a discussion about the lost fetus.

Ava portrays here a popular type of the time that has since, unfortunately, fallen out of fashion. This would be the middle-aged, foul-mouthed, booze-loving shrew! I live for characters like this and learned all of my best cuss words from them. I’m talking about Stella Stevens in The Poseidon Adventure, Lee Grant in Airport ’77 and the delectably nasty Miss Gardner in this film. Some of her choice lines include, but are not in any way limited to: “Christ. If it wasn’t 7:30 in the morning, I’d have a drink!,” “BASTARD!!,” “You’re really going to see that Marshall BITCH aren’t you?” and “Laura, where’s my fathah? Laura! MY FATHAH?!”

Gardner stunned the director Mark Robson when she determined that she was not only going to personally film sequences that included heavy falling debris, but also take part in the dangerous, draining and uncomfortable flash flood sequences that mark the climax of the picture. She was quite the trooper here, throwing all vanity to the wind (though, perhaps, not quite as far as Miss Shelley Winters did when she shot the world an underwater glimpse of her drawers in The Poseidon Adventure!) Gardner barely has a word to say in the last third of the film, conveying most of her thoughts through facial expression. She also has one gloriously hysterical moment careening back and forth in a daze as an aftershock shoots through the underground (!) parking lot in which she’s taken shelter. These are the sort of film clips that need to be placed in a Hall of Fame. Take heed AFI, with your dreary lists!

Though this movie could hardly be described as “good,” it is mostly entertaining thanks to some interesting visual effects, some excellent, some not (the “not” including a truckload of plastic cows going over a bridge and an elevator crash that involves a blob of red paint coming over the screen!) This is a “box movie,” one of those 70s gems that features small headshots of the stars in a row of boxes at the bottom. George Kennedy (Heston’s buddy from Airport 1975, which was filming simultaneously with this) plays a cop who has a run-in with a car thief and winds up socking a fellow officer in the face in the front yard of a celebrity who would later go to jail herself for a similar offense – Zsa Zsa Gabor! (Miss Gabor is only mentioned, not shown.)

Lang, the producer of this film (which, by the way, was the fourth most successful film of its year despite an atrocious script – credited to Mario Puzo, but barely resembling what he wrote) had a wife name Monica Lewis. Lewis had been a singer and movie starlet in the 50s, but now, as the spouse of a high-ranking movie executive, was able to win roles in the films he was bankrolling. For about a dozen years, she did either bits or featured parts in movies of his (most amusingly in The Concorde: Airport ’79.) Here, she’s Greene’s loyal secretary who is on the receiving end of one of history’s greatest bits of knee-slapping dialogue as he barks, “Barbara, take off your pantyhose, damn it!” (He needs them to use as a makeshift safety belt on a makeshift chair lift in this makeshift movie!)

Another cast member of note is Victoria Principal as the big-busted sister of an entertainment promoter. In an effort to spread the word about her brother’s act (Richard Roundtree playing a motorcycle daredevil named Miles Quade), she wears a snug promotional t-shirt over her braless chest. For reasons that film historians are still delving into, she also has on a massive curly wig throughout the film that not even the earthquake can knock off. Perhaps that is what wig-wearing nutjob Marjoe Gortner sees in her as he plays a National Guardsman with a power trip kink.

Still one more prominent female cast member (you know, Poseidon is all about the ladies in films, unless there’s a hunk present, which, in this case, there really isn’t!) is Genevieve Bujold. An actress not expected to be found in a disaster movie, she did the film in order to avoid being sued for an uncompleted contract with Universal. She has a memorably suspenseful scene dangling from a collapsed bridge over a spillover drain as live electric wires dance menacingly. She has a son who, thankfully, avoids the usual trappings of being an obnoxious brat throughout because he’s mostly unconscious.

Disaster nut that I am, I attended the Earthquake attraction at Universal Studios in Florida and practically licked a framed 8 x 10 of Ava that was posted in the lobby area. They asked for volunteers to be part of the attraction and my hand was up before the announcement was even finished. I made my way to an escalator and feigned reaction to imaginary tremors while they projected falling debris around me on a monitor for others to see. Taking a page from Gardner’s book, I threw myself into it so much that I broke my sunglasses in half! However, for thirty seconds, I was the star of my own disaster flick!

Meant to Bea

In April of 2009, the world lost one of its unique talents. It’s hard to imagine anyone ever being quite exactly like Bea Arthur. Known for her considerable height, her well-projected baritone voice and her comic “takes” which could elicit gales of laughter from an audience without the need for words, she was a TV treasure, not to mention a terrific stage actress.

Ms. Arthur initially toiled away for years in plays and musicals, both on and off-Broadway, all the while balancing life as a wife and mother. She gained a degree of success as Lucy Brown in "Threepenny Opera", but it was her supporting role as Yenta in "Fiddler on the Roof" which got people to really start noticing her. When she won a Tony award for playing Vera Charles in "Mame," her reputation as a scene-owning comedienne was cemented, at least as the theatre world was concerned.

Then in 1971, she played Edith Bunker’s boisterous, liberated and domineering cousin Maude Findlay on an episode of the highly popular sitcom All in the Family. This led to her own series, Maude, which was a big success in its own right, earning the actress a 1977 Emmy Award. Maude is legendary for having tackled previously (and, in some cases, still) touchy subjects such as feminism, racism, abortion, alcoholism, plastic surgery and more. Arthur, who never let the promise of money keep her in a place in which she felt as if she were merely marking time, declined to continue the series in 1978, though it was still popular.

While Maude was still in production, she found time to appear in the big screen debacle Mame, an adaptation of the hit musical, which had starred Angela Lansbury on stage, but was done on film by Lucille Ball in an almost career-killing move. Arthur’s husband Gene Saks directed it, but Lucy held the reins and, even though she had requested Arthur to reprise her role, she also undercut it by draining a lot of the humor out of it and tweaking the music to suit her own frog-like voice. If nothing else (and trust me, there’s little else!), the movie served to capture Arthur’s rendition of “The Man in the Moon” on film along with a couple of her deadpan lines. Bea’s interaction with her dresser following the “Moon” number is a comic highlight.

Her resume between that time and 1985 includes some real dillies, including a role as the singing cantina-tender in the infamous The Star Wars Holiday Special and even her own TV special that featured such unlikely guests as Melba Moore and Rock Hudson. She also did a cameo in Mel Brooks’ History of the World: Part I.

In 1985, she was given a script that called for a “Bea Arthur type” and somehow she was deemed right for the part! This was, of course, the pilot for The Golden Girls and, here, she was granted one of her all-time best parts and given recognition in a series that simply refuses to die. It had an almost comically-long run on Lifetime, playing practically all day, every day and now airs on both WE (Women’s Entertainment) and The Hallmark Channel in lengthy blocks. Despite having been cancelled in 1992 (when, again, Arthur chose to leave, rather than milk a thing dry, though, for my money, it was mostly milked by around 1990 and I am a major fan of the show!), the series gains new fans every day, some of who weren’t even born when it first aired.

Arthur had already perfected the booming exclamations, the slow burn stares and the claw-handed reactions to other characters as Maude. However, The Golden Girls gave her the opportunity to round off some of the harder edges while playing Dorothy and also to explore some more heartfelt, vulnerable and, at times, kooky aspects of her persona that weren’t mined as deeply in the prior series. She picked up a second Emmy in 1988 for her work on the show. It’s interesting, too, to note the arc that Arthur, as Dorothy, undergoes in Girls with the initial episodes being very Maude-like and the later ones offering a far more tender (and zany) rendition along with the requisite toughness.

Though Ms. Arthur still made a fair amount of appearances after the end of The Golden Girls, she cut back significantly on her acting (the grind of the series having worn her out by her own admission.) When she did appear on TV, it was usually well regarded such as in her Emmy-nominated guest role on Malcolm in the Middle as an old babysitter.

One of her chief projects in the wake of Girls was a one-woman stage show, recounting her long career and performing various songs that she had either previously performed or merely enjoyed. She took it on the road in 2001 and 2002, eventually moving it to Broadway where she was nominated for a Tony (losing to Elaine Stritch, who was performing a similar style of show.)

It was during the pre-Broadway tour of this show (at the time called “And Then There’s Bea…” and later changed to “An Evening with Bea Arthur,” as well as other titles) that I was fortunate enough to meet Ms. Arthur in person. Ill with a cold and wearing a cast on one foot from having fallen into the orchestra pit Minneapolis, she nonetheless put on a captivating program and spent a friendly and unforgettable ten minutes or so with me and two of my friends afterwards. I learned during this encounter that it’s true that Ms. Arthur was, in person, very little like her screen personas. She was unassuming, demure, reticent, a little shy, really, but amiable. She was also humble, insisting that credit go to her accompanist Billy Goldenberg, who was a veteran composer in his own right and reacting with much surprise at the many compliments thrown her way. At that stage in the production, she had not yet added the songs “The Man in the Moon” or “What’ll I Do?” but she vowed to add them in after I had mentioned missing them.

Bea Arthur brought thousands of laughs (and a few tears as well) to millions of people during her career and the bulk of them came from enacting a tough as nails, foghorn loud type of character, but when the stage and set lights were out, she was really just a rather subdued, down to Earth type of gal, though still just as no-nonsense as the big characters she played. I’ve been grateful to have her work available to me as a pick-me-up on days that are less than wonderful and she never fails to leave me smiling.