Was Bea Arthur a lesbian?

Look, Sherlock, a clue!!!

We're Bea and Betty secretly lovers at any point? They were in this fan fiction I'm writing.

I wonder if she ever scissored with Adrienne Barbeau?

Bea loved cock. Couldn't get enough of it!

R4, You know this how? And you can love cock and pussy too. I think she had a romantic relationship with Angela Lansbury. She also said in her 2002 Lifetime Portrait that her relationship with her husband was kind of like a partnership of talent. She never said she was in love with him which I found a little odd. Also, look at how she contantly avoids answering Dinah Shore's questions about men in this 1989 interview.

We'll always be Scissor Sisters,,,friends, sisters and pals,,,,,,

Dinah was being catty, so annoying!

Do you know HOW MANY WOMEN SERVED IN THE MILITARY IN WW2? You think that makes them lesbians?

This is why people hate faggots.

Wasn't she a big supporter of Trevor Project?

She probably packed more than most DLers.

Two marriages, one lasting nearly thirty years, isn't exactly proof positive she was a lesbian. As already noted, many women (including my maternal grandmother) did military service during World War II. Take a look at a wartime film sometime. And adoption doesn't mean somebody is gay, either.

So I guess what you've got left is that she was unusually tall and had an atypically deep voice for a woman. I mean, she could have been one, I've no idea, but there really isn't any compelling evidence.

[quote]Arthur bequeathed $300,000 to the Ali Forney Center, a New York City organization that provides housing for homeless LGBTQ+ youths.

Definitely a lez.

Did Bea really take a dump in Betty’s dressing room wastebasket? That is what Dinah should have asked her!

She was an image consultant.

I always wonder why she continued to deny her time in the military.

We've all seen the pictures.

And remember, Joan Rivers outed her as a very nasty drunk.

I think the actual Bea is very different from the Bea we all know and love.

Bea was an alcoholic. I have friends that were close to her. She would go on rants about Betty White too. Miss Coco Peru, another close friend, had to change the name of her show, “Drinks with Coco”, because Bea was in recovery. A comedian revealed in a YouTube video Bea coming to see her show unannounced. She got Bea to come up on stage to sing. Bea whispered in her ear, “I’m so drunk I could fart.”

Bea didn’t wear shoes. She walked the street barefoot. The woman was odd.

That great book, “Golden Girls Forever”, interviews hundreds of people who worked on the show. Not one positive word about Bea. The cast had to constantly apologize for her. Bea had an actress fired because she was chewing gum.

I believe you, R16. Wink, wink.

The reason Bea didn't wear shoes was because she had very big feet and had a hard time finding attractive comfortable shoes. I don't think she hung around enough drag queens.

And she was a good sport to Jeff Ross' infamous joke: Sandra Bernhard? I wouldn't fuck Sandra Bernhard with Bea Arthur's dick. Ross said he stood in line to pay tribute after her one woman show and Bea saw him and said "you nailed me, you prick".

Some of these celebrity threads are exercises in creative writing.

Nice one OP. Maybe I should start a thread about closet case Allen Ludden, his wife Saint Betty White, and their suspiciously close relationship with Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler Moore. Or maybe a thread on Julie Andrew's and Carol Burnett's close relationship and their trips together to Julie's chateau in Scissorland- I mean Switzerland.

"Golden Girls Forever" is tabloid trash, along the lines of the Judy Garland book, "Get Happy".

R17, Everything R16 wrote is true.

This woman said Bea Arthur hit on her.

I wouldn't trust "Yvonne" as far as I could throw her! Feigning dumb like she can't remember their names...puhleese!

Isn't Danny Thomas one?

R15 Bea never talked about (sometimes outright denying it) her military service. She received a medical discharge because she contracted a STD. She allegedly was raped by her senior enlisted boss. As a result of the incident she was unable to carry a pregnancy to term and it wasn’t an honorable discharge. That’s why she didn’t like talking about the Marines. Poor thing, I can see why she was so bristly and moody at times.

How do you know this, R26?

For R27

For r27 again...

Thank you r26 for this information. I'm a fan and I never knew about this.

The rape and the following events would explain a lot.

This is why DL, despite the prisspots, incels and trolls, is still worth a look.

You’re welcome r30…it’s sad to think about. She carried that trauma with her all her adult life.

R24, She remembered Betty's name but not Bea. It doesn't mean she's lying. She was on the show only once in 1989. What she says about Bea makes sense because if you watch Maude, Bea liked to look at other women's breasts all the time.

She was in her younger days what the non pc folks referred to as a BAM, Not sure if that always means the same as lesbian.

BAM?

Major pussyhound. Big Bush supporter.

If they discharged every soldier who contracted an std there'd be no one left.

She may have been discharged but it wasn't for v.d.

How do you know that r36?

Boze Hadleigh put Bea's picture on the cover of his book "The Hollywood Closet" because he believes Bea was a closet case.

I know the owner of a day spa In Provincetown, MA. Rue McClanahan was in town giving a reading of her memoir. According to the owner, Rue called to schedule a massage. When asked whether she wanted a masseur or a masseuse, she apparently responded, “ I want a man, honey! I’m not Bea Arthur.”

[quote]She and Saks remained married until 1978..

I would've divorced him immediately after Mame.

Didn't Saks cheat on her and leave her for another woman?

Bea when asked about Mame: "IT WAS A TOTAL HORROR!!" lol. She seemed to think Mame was on the same level as Showgirls or Freddy Got Fingered.

I liked Mame. It was a fun movie. I would have loved to see Angela in the movie with Bea but it didn't happen and I think Lucille Ball did a good job.

Bea was great too.

The Man in the Moon IS A BITCH!

Yes R41. Gene Saks didn't want her to do Maude. Their marriage fell apart during that time and he left her for another woman.

I remember reading an article where Gene said that he was often depressed and suicidal while married to Bea. I don't remember where I read this. I think it was online on a Bea fan site.

He was basically saying that it was very tough being married to her.

Is this true R39 or are you making this up?

R39 & R45 if it’s true about the massage, she’d request a woman because she was raped

^Also. Not either or if the other rumors are true

If true R46, she wouldn't have been married twice. I'm sure she had sex with her husbands, but needed a female massage therapist because she was raped? Doesn't make sense. If what R39 wrote is true, why would Rue say this about Bea? What was she implying?

Maybe she didn’t want strange men she didn’t know touching her body. And if Gene Saks alluded to the fact that marriage to Bea was difficult, her being a rape survivor no doubt would have had an impact on their married life.

Not every cranky, brittle, angry cunt is a lesbian.

But every lesbian is a cranky, brittle, angry cunt.

I don’t believe that Bea was raped. There is a member on here who has been harking on about this for years trying to make it a thing. That blog could have been written by anybody, there is no proof she was raped.

I am more inclined to believe that Bea contributed the the book Lesbians In Hollywood, under the cloak of anonymity. In the book an actress said that if she ever got another big show she would refuse to wear a dress. In Golden Girls Bea very rarely wore a dress, even what looked like a dress on closer inspection turned out to be culottes.

R21 Golden Girls Forever is not tabloid trash. They interviewed everyone still alive and connected to the show, nobody had anything nice to say about Bea. Great actress but a fucking nightmare in real life. Imagine poor Rue, Betty and Estelle, finally the main stars in a long running brilliant sitcom, but having to put up with Bea every day.

Here's a quote by Bea from the book "Inside the Hollywood Closet: A Book of Quotes" by Boze Hadleigh.

"Yes, I agree a very large percentage of comediennes are lesbian... Most? I don't know about that... But give the ladies time. Most are still in the closet." - Bea Arthur

So you don’t believe that r51 somehow means that it didn’t happen? 🙄🙄🙄🙄

No one is making this up. You’re just being a contrarian and a cunt.

It’s true, R45. According to the owner.

Lesbian.

Lesbian?

LESBIAN!

R53 Stop talking daft you silly fanboy. There has never been any suggestion ever that Bea was raped. Are you the same idiot who keeps going on about how Dorothy lost a baby in childbirth as away of explaining why she didn't have a 38 year old child?

From a 2001 interview with "OUT" magazine:

OUT: Have you ever tried a lesbian tryst?

BEA: I thought about it once, but it didn’t take. I didn’t even approach it.

OUT: Was it a long time ago or last week?

BEA: It was possibly after an unhappy divorce. I thought maybe I’d make life easy for myself. But I can’t do that. I’m completely, irrationally heterosexual.

R57, She's completely, irrationally heterosexual just like she NEVER joined the Marines. ;-)

R56 you type…stupid.

^^ and you are stupid.

Girls, girls. You're both cunts!

Let's talk about the "Many Beas Conspiracy Theory". Compare what she looks like on All In The Family to her appearance on The Merv Griffin Show in 1985. They are clearly two different women.

I believe it. Rape is such a traumatic experience, it's totally understandable why she'd say she did not serve in the Marines when it obviously would have triggered negative memories. And many difficult people have toxic experiences that make them act that way. I would not want to have lived with Bea, but I feel for her and what she went through.

Wow, the rape story is right up there with the crapping on the floor of Betty White's dressing room in terms of factual veracity...

Mrs Naugatuck ate hole

From Dann Dulin's interview with Bea in 1998:

"With a node to Barbara Walters I ask Bea for a one word response to a few of the people who've crossed her path.

Lucille Ball : "Gorgeous."

Gene Saks : "Talented. Talented." (Gene Saks was her husband)

Rue McClanahan : "Ah. Gifted."

Estelle Getty: "Ballsy."

Betty White: Bea leans forward, eyes me directly, smiles wide, which I think is going to break into a laugh, and so I begin to laugh. Instead, her eyes moisten, she turns her body completely away from me, then puts her hand up and with a quiver in her voice says, "Next." She is stricken momentarily with emotion. I pause.

I continue this inquiry with the famous characters she has portrayed.

Vera Charles : "Delicious," she says as if eating chocolate mousse.

Maude Findlay : "Omnipotent," she says boldly and assuredly.

Dorothy Zbornak: "Dorothy," she says as though the name were new to her, then laughs. She grapples for a word. "I loved her. What's a word I can use? Fulfilling? I don't know. Bizarre? Outrageous? I don't know." She really cannot come up with a word that fully satisfies her.

In the mid-fifties, Bea Arthur and Tallulah Bankhead were traveling from city to city by train, appearing in The Ziegfeld Folies. They were in Tallulah's roomette at 9 o'clock in the morning. Tallulah was drinking Bourbon. Bea relates the story. "Tallulah said, 'You know, all the kids in the cast seem to think that I'm having an affair with Jack Cole [the choreographer], but of course,'" Bea halts, then in her lowest voice yet, imitates Tallulah, "'Jack is gay.'" Bea drops the Tallulah voice and continues, "'Let's face it, Divine Beatrice. There's a touch of homosexual in all of us. It's not the cock. And it's not the twat. It's the eyes don't you know, and sometimes, the smell of lilac.'" Bea's delivery is so understated. She sums up reflecting with a hint of laughter, "I've never forgotten (this). I could cry thinking about it. It's so beautiful, isn't it?" Then in a tranquil voice mixed with affection she says, "She's quite a character."

Bea and Adrienne had fabulous boobs on Maude. I watch the show just to stare at their boobs.

[quote] Joan Rivers outed her as a very nasty drunk.

And trans entertainer Alexander Billings outed her as a FUN drunk. Alex had an act at Gentry on Halsted in Chicago and Bea stopped in... Here's the story at the link.

So we can conclude that Bea was often drunk.

That could explain her issues with Betty and many of the guest stars on GG.

I think Rue and Estelle knew when to shut up and leave Bea alone.

But Betty was probably like SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS UM-DITTLE-ITTL-UM-DITTLE-I every single day while Bea had a hangover.

Bea staring at Angela breasts at 0:47 even when the cameras are rolling and every is watching. She just couldn't help herself.

Correction: Angela's breasts

Correction number 2: everyone is watching