BEA ARTHUR R.I.P.
April 25th, 2009 | Published in Videos
We lost a comic genius today. Bea Arthur has passed away. Working with Bea was one of the great joys of my life. I so enjoyed writing for her. When we’d meet on Monday mornings for our table read there were certain people that I’d listen for to see if we could make them laugh out loud. The best was when I’d hear Bea. The smarter the joke, the better she liked it. But she didn’t back away from something that was just plain silly…as long as it was funny. I still smile when I think of Estelle and Bea as Sonny and Cher. She did, of course, have an air of intimidation. When I first went to work on the show one of the biggest challenges was giving notes to Bea. It didn’t take long, however, to learn that she welcomed any help that would make the show better. If I was wrong about something though, I had to be ready for an answer for Bea’s, “Why is that, Darling?” One of my proudest moments as a writer was when Bea, as Dorothy, recited the eulogy for her brother Phil. It seems apropos now:
DOROTHY
It seems like I’m always mad at my brother, Phil. I was mad the day my parents brought him home from the hospital. I thought he would take their love away from me. Instead, their love expanded as we felt more like a family. I was mad at him when I was ten and he was four and we moved to a new neighborhood. I was mad because he made new friends more easily than I.
But his friends had older brothers and sisters and soon they became my friends. I was mad at him later in life when he didn’t achieve what my parents or I thought he could achieve. All he was was happy. And that made me mad.
And I’m mad at him today. Mad because I never wanted to give the eulogy at my kid brother’s funeral. Mad because he didn’t have the wisdom to know that family members shouldn’t allow themselves to grow apart. Because when this day comes they can no longer tell each other how they care. If he had that wisdom he could have shared it with me and I would have known to tell him how the hundreds of memories I have of just the two of us, eating ice cream on the front stoop of our apartment building, going through the drawers at Grandma’s house or dressing up like the Bronte sisters, how those memories fill me with joy. Why didn’t you have that wisdom Phil? Why didn’t you give us a chance to tell you how much we loved you?
I loved you Bea. You will be missed.
