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Beatrice Arthur could get a huge laugh with just a long, hard, silent stare. When she opened her mouth, her ringingly authoritative voice brought forth another wave of laughter. To defy her as Maude Findlay in Maude, or as Dorothy Zbornak in Golden Girls, was foolish: she’d crush you. No one upstaged Bea Arthur, yet no one, performer or TV viewer, resented her for that. Indeed, this was the source of her thunderbolt comic power. Other women may rival her as TV icons (Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore), but no woman ever made so many people so happy by being so imperious, so decisive, so just plain bossy.

Look at Maude, which premiered in 1972 as a spin-off from All In The Family. Its best episodes play out in front of the studio audience like complete little plays; the laughter is frequently so explosive, Arthur has to do that stage-freeze thing, standing motionless until her next line can be heard. A force of intimidation, Arthur made upper-middle-class liberal Maude brayingly noisy. She towered over her TV husband Walter (Bill Macy) and daughter Carol (Adrienne Barbeau). The show’s humor was often rooted in seriousness (the revolutionary 1972 Maude-gets-an-abortion episode) and anger (countless tantrums directed at anyone Maude thought stupid), and Arthur’s innate gravity was her greatest comic weapon: she was fearless about being unlikable, and we liked her all the more for exactly that quality.

On Golden Girls, as Dorothy, Arthur ruled the aging hen house with caustic slashes of sarcasm. For Arthur, Golden Girls was a further refinement of everything she did in Maude. The second series demonstrated how she could modulate her talent to fit into an ensemble of equals… even though she made you know that Dorothy considered herself superior to all she surveyed.

Because we live in a pop culture that thrives on parody and irreverence, Bea Arthur existed in the popular imagination during her final years as the punchline to jokes about her deep voice and her Amazonian stature (try Googling her name and “mannish” and you’ll see what I mean). She had a huge gay following, yet never became a figure of camp ridicule. Whether playing a character or being herself — she was a delightfully clever, articulate, self-deprecating guest on talk and variety shows — Arthur allowed you to both identify with her and to admire her. There was a lot to admire.

reprinted from Entertainment Weekly

Personally, I will never forget watching Bea on the Golden Girls during its original run, and then often in rerun.  It was a show that I was not allowed to watch at home, assumedly because of PG humor and sassyness of the women.  But as happens with all good grandparents, the rules were more lax at their house and my grandmother, bless her heart, loved the Golden Girls.  I loved the sarcasm, wit, and delivery even at a young age.  Only later in life did I learn of Bea’s groundbreaking role in Maude and see many of those episodes in rerun as well.  As a student of television and a lover of the culture surrounding it, I have an appreciation for the role this show played in the formative years of television.  Bea, you’ll be missed.