1972-73 Television Season 50th Anniversary: Maude (Bea Arthur - Dick Cavett Show interview)

see it's funny in your introduction i didn't mention dear tony for mame i didn't mention uh golden girls i didn't mention uh maude i wonder if in retrospect we've forgotten that mod is such a vivid image that mod began on all in the family as the cousin yes i was i was jean edith's cousin his cousin yeah yeah and then i am i can't believe my life has been has become one huge television set did you think because when i first laid eyes on you it was on the stage of the theater de lis in the village a three penny three penny off the opera if you realize that was 1954 55. i know i must have been in someone's arms as an infant well hardly but a teenage girl but my parents let me walk to the theater because i didn't have to cross any streets we lived on christopher i mean on 10th yeah right behind the theater that that's true yeah you're not talking yes and uh i suppose you thought as many new york actors do when they go out to do a series well it'll bomb the way 99 of them do and i'll be right back to new york of course here you've been of course it's just i i can't believe i can't believe it happens to one person this many times i mean there's often it's just i suppose it would be comparable mathematically to hitting three jackpots in vegas in a row or something i have been in three hit series when by definition every series no not three two where did you you're not talking about amanda's no i was thinking well no we're all in the family well i just did one and golden girls i just did one uh segment of all in the family well so we can't really count that they were in it but that was a hit series well two both in the family maybe like we're winning the lottery twice though the odds just very very difficult amanda now was one will you admit you thought it was going to be good i thought it was going to be not only good but i thought it was going to take television one step beyond where it had ever been changed the face of hillary because it was when it was presented to me uh i was given a cassette of john cleese doing faulty towers and i thought this is it i mean i it won't be maude again i won't have to play uh detective roles you know immediately i finished with maude writers would come up with ideas they figured well she doesn't want to do another comedy so quickly so let's make her a plain clothes detective or the mother of a policeman or the widow of someone who works in police records you know something like that departure yes and along came this thing that was so bizarre and so so outlandish and and just so shameless that i thought i this is this is it i mean i've i'd done a lot of sketch work and musical reviews and really consider myself quite a quite a sketch performer and a far sir and i thought this was it of course they immediately started warming it up you know what i mean and it ended up being in warmth yeah being nothing yeah so i thought well that was the end of the uh so-called sitcom uh part of my life that along came this and the fluke that he's uh television ass had passed and uh it was back to yeah yeah maybe off-broadway yeah and maybe more fun than all that television and fame and money and headaches yes and recognition and heavy things yeah fame did you ever dream that when you began in television even before that that not only would you hear the word orgasm mentioned in the medium the media must have been 25 years old before it was ever heard even in a medical sense and four women middle-aged women sitting around talking about it in an episode of the golden girls yes i love it no it's interesting i was i forget who i was talking to someone about this when i started doing mod norman lear was breaking all the taboos you know i mean we tackled everything we did things on homosexuals and and everything but as i say everything except hemorrhoids which was never discussed but uh the language was not as of today as it is now i mean now we are able we are able to say pretty much what we want to say in terms of actual verbiage is that the word ah yeah you and i were talking about is it equated to or equated what was that two were compared with and all that equated two so yes i checked on that i'm always afraid some foreign person will ask me a point on grammar no because i never knew it in school and i don't know um i've never heard you talk about specifically what it was like to be six nine and a half five nine and a half hours come on richard i'm sorry my notions of you are bigger than life always anyway what did they say mostly how's the weather up there that how's the weather up there was i guess that was pretty much it yeah or hey shorty i don't know oh yeah that's listen i was busy doing my may west impersonations and things like that i may have asked you this before if i ever give me did you slouch the way tall girls i said to you never did good for you i never did yeah but i wore so many flat heels that now when i want to wear heels i can't i can't stand up in them let alone walk in them you know it really is impossible please ask me why i'm here who knows what emotional scars they get well we're out of time it's been nice of you to come and we uh we're only temporarily out of time we have a message we come back we'll talk about why you want to be here why are you here fine thank you it's a wonderful thing you do know that i wouldn't say that i probably would but in this case it really is we'll be back with the arthur stay with us [Applause]

Channel: TelevisionVanguard

Views: 3,845

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Id: SCMOnku7PHc

Length: 6min 18sec (378 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 16 2022