Bea Arthur, the towering star known to millions as Dorothy Zbornak on “The Golden Girls” and Maude Findlay on Norman Lear’s landmark sitcom, kept a significant chapter of her life out of her public biography for more than six decades: she was a staff sergeant in the U. S. Marine Corps Women’s Reserve during World War II. Born Bernice Frankel in Brooklyn on May 13, 1922, she moved with her Jewish immigrant family to Cambridge, Maryland, at age 11.
Already 5’9” by age 12 and pushing 5’11” in her teens, she endured relentless bullying in a mostly gentile Southern town, including the nickname “the giraffe. ” She later said this experience drove her to develop humor on her own terms, so people would laugh with her rather than at her. After high school, she trained as a medical laboratory technician at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. But Pearl Harbor changed the direction of her life.
On February 18, 1943, just days after the Corps began recruiting women for the new wartime Reserve, the 20-year-old Frankel enlisted. She worked initially as a typist at Marine Corps headquarters in Washington, requested a transfer to motor transport, trained at Camp Lejeune, and later served as a driver and dispatcher at Cherry Point. She was promoted to staff sergeant in January 1945. While stationed at Cherry Point in 1944, she married fellow Marine Robert Arthur; the marriage ended in divorce three years later, but she kept and simplified his surname professionally.
She was honorably discharged on September 26, 1945. She rarely discussed this service. In a late-life interview, when asked directly whether she had served in the Marines, she answered no. The denial became a noted mystery after her death, when records confirmed her service and the story spread widely.
After the war, she moved back to New York and enrolled at Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop at the New School, training alongside future icons including Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Harry Belafonte, Rod Steiger, and Walter Matthau. In 1950, she married director Gene Saks, with whom she had two adopted sons, Matthew and Daniel. They divorced in 1978. Her breakthrough came in the Tony-winning 1966 Broadway production of “Mame,” opposite Angela Lansbury.
Arthur had wanted the title role, but her husband, the show’s director, persuaded her to play Vera Charles, the acid-tongued actress friend. She won the Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She reprised the role in the 1974 film version starring Lucille Ball. Television brought her into American homes.
In 1971, Norman Lear cast her in an episode of “All in the Family. ” Her character, Maude Findlay, so impressed the network that she received her own series in 1972. “Maude” ran for six seasons and broke new ground, most famously in a 1972 two-part episode in which the 47-year-old title character, unexpectedly pregnant, decided to have an abortion. Arthur won an Emmy for the role in 1977.
She then joined “The Golden Girls” in 1985, playing Dorothy Zbornak, the sharp-witted, divorced schoolteacher. The show became one of the most beloved sitcoms in television history, centered on four older women sharing a Miami home. Arthur won a second Emmy in 1988. She chose to leave the series, which ended in 1992.
In her later decades, she developed a well-received one-woman show, performed on Broadway at age 79, and became a dedicated animal welfare advocate. She quietly supported the Ali Forney Center, a charity for homeless LGBTQ youth in New York. After her death, it was revealed that she left the organization $300,000. The bequest helped open the Bea Arthur Residence in Manhattan in 2017, providing housing for homeless LGBTQ young people.
Arthur died of cancer at her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, on April 25, 2009. She was 86. Only after her death did her Marine Corps service become widely known through military records and renewed media attention. Her son Daniel later said his mother almost never spoke about her time in the Women’s Reserve.
The one detail she occasionally mentioned was that she could drive any vehicle. The choice to keep the service private remains, like so much of her guarded personal life, unexplained.