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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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 Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 2:16 pm Post subject: Bea Arthur is dead |
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I loved her work on Maude, but then I've always been a pretty big Norman Lear fan. Never really got into The Golden Girls.
http://tinyurl.com/dg4tmn |
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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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daskalos
Joined: 19 May 2006
Location: The Road to Ithaca
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 5:54 am Post subject: Re: Bea Arthur is dead |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
I loved her work on Maude, but then I've always been a pretty big Norman Lear fan. Never really got into The Golden Girls.
http://tinyurl.com/dg4tmn |
Yeah, I enjoyed her on those rare occasions when I saw an episode of "Golden Girls," but she won my devoted heart when I was a young boy/man when "Maude" was on air.
The thing I remember about her most clearly, though I can't remember where I saw/heard it, was something she said about "motivation." She was in this musical show, early in her career, and the script called for her to walk downstage to sing her song. Bea didn't get her "motivation" for walking downstage to sing her song, and she complained about it. At which point, another legend (Beatrice Lilly? Sophie Tucker? I can't remember...) said, "Oh, Honey, you walk downstage to sing your song because that's where you sing your song."
Fecking Beautiful. I'll miss her, but then I have lots of reruns to watch to console myself. |
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ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 12:21 am Post subject: |
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| Odd, I was always turned off by her brashness. She seemed to exude the in-your-face feminism of the '70s, at least on-air, although she was the first to get the best of Archie Bunker. But she was a presence to be reckoned with and I suspect--or want to believe--more feminine off-air. Then again, she was part of the first generation of American women who felt that being feminine was a sign of weakness. Tell that to most Asian women. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 2:54 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Odd, I was always turned off by her brashness. She seemed to exude the in-your-face feminism of the '70s, at least on-air, although she was the first to get the best of Archie Bunker. |
Well yeah, the character she played was supposed to be representative of that particular wave of American feminism.
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| she was the first to get the best of Archie Bunker |
I think it was from watching that episode of All In The Family that I first learned that liberals liked Franklin Roosevelt and conservatives disliked him.
Actually, I learned a lot about American and/or 1970s politics and culture from Norman Lear sitcoms. Among the things I picked up:
-The Jewish Defense League(when Archie got a swastika painted to his door by neo-Nazis who mistook him for Jewish, the JDL showed up to offer him protection)
-swinging(Edith bought a wife-swapping magazine, not knowing what it was, and invited a couple over)
-mirrors on the ceiling(learned that from the "swinging" episode of AITF, before I ever heard Hotel California)
-Thomas Jefferson might have had black offspring(George Jefferson tried to improve business at his dry-cleaning shop by advertising himself as the descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings)
-the KKK(Archie got involved with a bunch of them for some reason related to work, but did the right thing and stopped them from burning a cross)
-mistrel shows(Archie's lodge was gonna do one. I remember Arch in blackface, but I can't recall if the show went ahead)
-the idea of "tokenism" in the recruitment and hiring of minorities(George was all ready to join a country club, until the black locker room attendant clued him in that he was being recruited as a token) |
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ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 6:37 pm Post subject: |
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All in the Family is deserving of a thread all its own. But I'm not sure how many regular posters here have viewed it at length. I've probably seen every episode several times over the years and never tired of the show. The acting was simply brilliant and the scripts thought provoking and funny. Nothing even close to approaching this on-air today.
The '70s had some great comedies informed by social issues. That era isn't likely to be repeated in this age of manufactured bimbo stars, sadly.
And racism wasn't limited to Whites; Jefferson was racist. I also liked how Lear had gray areas; issues weren't so polarized and Archie, despite all his faults, was a genuinely likeable and, on a deeper level, decent guy. Today's Hollywood wouldn't allow for such complex, round characterization of casts on ideological issues. Instead, we just get caricatures, especially of the Right. Archie was a working man--no more, no less--and to some extent limited by the times in which he lived, growing up in the Depression, cutting short his education to support his family, and so on.
To this day, the episode where Mike invites a friend to Thanksgiving dinner who is a CO against the Vietnam War and there encounters a forgiving father who lost his son in "Nam still haunts me. Like the war itself, the ending has no clear-cut conclusion, as Archie is left to defer to his buddy who wants the young man to stay for dinner but feels uncomfortable nonetheless about the circumstances. I saw the same expression on my father's face as he was a combat vet of two wars.
Bea was an original; I'll give her that. And she had immense, raw talent. I only wish she could have stretched herself more and taken on a role that was more feminine and therefore challenging for her to perform. But she felt she had to be true to form. So be it. RIP |
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