Rue McClanahan

Rue McClanahan has died. She was 76. According to her manager, Barbara Lawrence, McClanahan died early Thursday morning after suffering a massive stroke. She was surrounded by her family, and Lawrence says she went in peace. She first gained fame on the groundbreaking Norman Lear seventies sitcom Maude, starring Bea Arthur playing Vivian, Maude’s best friend and next door neighbourhood, a role she won after an Emmy nominated appearance on Lear’s All in the Family, playing a married swinger who, alongside her husband, played by Vincent Gardenia, befriends the Bunkers. In the eighties, she starred in the awful Mama’s Family – her character of Aunt Fran written off the show, dying off screen, while choking on a chicken bone – and appeared on The Love Boat and Charles in Charge, before an appearance as Blanche Devereaux on Empty Nest, which led to her being cast in the pilot episode of The Golden Girls, a kind of spin-off of Empty Nest, in which she co-starred alongside Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, and Betty White. McClanahan earned an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 1987 for The Golden Girls. She most recently appeared on Logo’s Sordid Lives, alongside Leslie Jordan. McClanahan was to be honoured at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco in November, 2009, at a gala tribute, but it was postponed when she underwent surgery November 4th, and was never to take place. Once, when I lived in New York, Rue was eating a late lunch in the same coffee shop as I, along 7th Avenue near 57th Street. She took a window booth, accompanied by two female friends, and a male. She was, well, Rue McClanahan, and took time to talk to each person that approached the table, with an easy generosity. Leaving, I went towards her, shyly – I felt it rude to interrupt lunch. I told her how much I enjoyed her acting, and that all my friends loved Blanche. Or tried to; I tend to be very soft spoken and she had a hard time hearing me over the noise of the diner. “Come closer dear,” she said, in that famous Southern drawl. “I don’t bite, sweetie,” lowering her voice and eyeing her male companion. “He will,” she whispered, “but I won’t.”