“You wanna talk about my STYLE?” growls Bea Arthur. “What style? I like to be comfortable!”
In her hotel suite the other day, Arthur managed to look both stylish and comfortable in head-to-toe black. The operative word was “toe”: The onetime Maude and “Golden Girl” Dorothy was barefoot, just as she’ll be on stage tomorrow, when “Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends” begins its six-week run.
“You heard I had the most horrendous accident,” she says ominously, arranging her feet on an ottoman. “Opening night at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, I thought I was making an exit into the wings and instead I walked straight into the pit!” The result – a sprained foot and a cast – made footwear impossible. Arthur ad-libbed the line, “I will not be doing the military tap for the finale,” and liked it so much, she decided to stay shoeless.
But even barefoot, Arthur, at 78, is a formidable presence, a woman who can command the stage reciting a recipe for leg of lamb.
In fact, that’s how she begins her show – an anecdotal ramble through her six decades of stage and screen, during which she brushed shoulder pads with the likes of Angela Lansbury, Tallulah Bankhead, Tony Curtis and Lotte Lenya.
It was Lenya – “my goddess!” – who discouraged her, years ago from losing weight.
“‘Bea, don’t be silly,’ she told me. ‘Men like a big behind!'”
In person, Arthur seems somehow smaller than she did on the small screen, especially on “Golden Girls,” where she loomed above her co-stars.
“Rue [McClanahan] and Betty [White] are 5-foot-1, if that, and Estelle [Getty] literally hits me over here,” Arthur says, pointing somewhere below her heart.
And while she’s still the same 5-foot-9½ she’s always been, she is, she points out, a lot lighter in the chest. Years after “Maude” went off the air, she reveals, she had breast-reduction surgery – and calls the results “a gift.”
“I always had enormous breasts, and I was never that happy with them,” she says firmly. “To have to take a shower and go like this!” And she mimes some vigorous lifting and swiping.
Other than that, Arthur maintains, she hasn’t changed a thing. She’s never pierced her ears, hasn’t dyed her hair – now a snowy white – and has long resisted the siren call of stiletto heels.
“As a younger person, I wished I could wear very high heels but I wouldn’t wear anything above [an inch],” she shrugs. “I find that now that I’d love to be able to hop into something nice, I can’t even keep my balance in them!”
Always tall, she was naturally drawn to long jackets or sweaters, slacks and scarves. To hear her tell it, Maude’s style was born the day she showed up for “All in the Family” (the show from which “Maude” was spun off), wearing “pants and a long jacket and a scarf. And they said, ‘That’s an interesting look!’ and kept it.”
Since then, Arthur’s relied on the kindness of designers. She credits “Golden Girls” stylist Judy Evans with giving the characters “extra gorgeousness” and personality, just by how she dressed them.
“She knew Dorothy had a dramatic side, so she’d give me crazy earrings to wear,” Arthur recalls. “She was extraordinary.”
The black turtleneck tunic Arthur’s wearing at the moment was a present from the stylist for a gay men’s magazine. He insisted it was “her.”
Is it Armani? Karan? Arthur shrugs.
“I think there’s a label in there somewhere, but I don’t know.”
She’s still excited about the TV Guide shoot in which the stylist put her in black leather pants. She still has the white sequined tank top and sweater he gave her to wear over them.
“And then he put me in a black leather jacket with a black motorcycle cap, and the picture was fabulous!” she remembers.
Don’t expect to see Arthur much in black leather. These days, long divorced (from director Gene Saks), her two sons grown (one of them, she says, “is terribly pregnant by his wife”) she lives mostly barefoot and in “comfortable clothes,” alone in a small-ish ranch in LA.
Well, not entirely alone.
“I live with two enormous Dobermans,” she says grandly.
“They also have a lot of style!”
Bea’s bon mots
On fur:
“When we opened in ‘Mame,’ my then-husband wanted to buy me a mink coat, but I figured, ‘Why get a mink when Angie [Lansbury] had an Australian opossum coat that just killed me?’ It didn’t really dawn on me, until years later, where fur came from. I just thought you go to a shop and get a fur coat … I don’t even find faux fur amusing. What is so beautiful about fur that you have to pretend it’s fur even when it isn’t?”
About earrings:
“I hate earrings that hurt your ears. I got these adorable little button things from Tiffany’s, but I put them on and suddenly my ears are numb from the pain.”
On pierced ears:
“I really feel – bear with me here, don’t think I’m out of my mind – I think it’s a way of desecrating the body.”
Going gray:
“My hair is this color naturally only because it’s just a pain in the ass to dye it or even go to a beauty parlor and have it done … Why do you have to dye your hair? Everybody gets gray the same way!”
L.A. style:
“There’s no in-between – you either have grungy stuff you wear everyday or fabulous evening wear for the constant legion of awards shows and AIDS benefits.”
Dressing up:
“I love dressing up. To me it’s a pain in the ass, really, because … then I have to wear shoes!”
On being a gay icon:
“Don’t ask me why! I really feel like Judy Garland is looking down from somewhere and saying, ‘Thank you, Bea.'”
