The Late 2 Bs

Last week at this time I was sitting enjoying the supremely beautiful wedding of my friend, and former student, Elizabeth, at Chelsea Piers on the Hudson River in New York. It was a glowing sunset and then I noticed a plane coming in for a landing, I guess over at Newark International Airport. All of a sudden through my mind ran the familiar theme song:

Thank you for being a friend
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, you’re a pal and a confidant.

As I sat enjoying the Mozart and Beethoven before the wedding ceremony I quietly hummed the theme song from The Golden Girls.

Just an hour or so before I had left for the wedding I had checked in on Facebook and seen a ‘status report’ from a friend that read, “RIP ‘Pussycat’—we loved you ‘Dorothy.’”

As a TV junkie I knew immediately to whom he referred, but I hadn’t heard that news yet. I clicked over to the website for the New York Times and it had been posted just 9 minutes earlier that actress Bea Arthur had died that morning in Los Angeles. I thought it amazing how quickly word can spread now. Reaching back to my childhood days I had loved that actress in Maude and I will admit I can’t get enough of those golden-oldie Girls.

After the wedding and reception last Saturday, a group of us went over to this dynamic piano bar in the Village where everyone is a broadway diva and the whole crowd sings show tunes all night. In honor of Bea Arthur there was a rousing chorus of “Bosom Buddies,” the show-stopper Arthur and Angela Lansbury had performed in Mame in the 1960s.

I noticed the following day that of my “friends” in my friend list on Facebook, thirteen of them included something about Bea Arthur in their status report! Guess I know a lot of fans of this acidic, formidable actress.

One of the reasons I had always liked Bea Arthur is that her style and her powerful bearing reminded me of one of my favorite high school teachers. And then there was the time in the 1998-99 school year when this one colleague and I had to have a tonic of a Golden Girls episode before dinner in the Dining Room every night.

As a theater connoisseur I marveled at Bea Arthur’s ingenious comic timing. As I thought of her last weekend, and remembered happy TV moments, I realized she didn’t even need a great comic line to get a laugh—she had a slow burn with eyes throwing daggers that yielded thunderbolt comic power. As an actress, and as a singer, she delivered the goods.

As I was packing up and going to the airport on Monday—remember it is a long 90 minute subway ride out to JFK airport, I remembered some of my favorite Bea Arthur lines. Oh, there is the iconic braying, “God’ll getcha for that, Walter!” from Maude and the shivering warning “Shady Pines, Ma…” from The Golden Girls. But on the subway ride I remembered a few snatches of dialogue that always made me laugh:

Rose: Can I ask a dumb question?
Dorothy: Better than anyone I know.

Or there is this exchange when it turns out a woman friend believes she is in love with Rose:
Sophia: Jean is a lesbian.
Blanche: What's so bad about that?
Sophia: You're not surprised?
Blanche: Well I haven't known any personally but isn’t Danny Thomas one?
Dorothy: Not Lebanese, Blanche. Lesbian.

I saw her one-woman show on Broadway around 2002, and I recall her explaining the derivation of her stage name. Familiarly known as Bea, Arthur was billed in the theater and on television as Beatrice, but the name was one she made up. She was born Bernice Frankel but she preferred to be called B — “I changed the Bernice almost as soon as I heard it,” she said — and later expanded it to Beatrice because, she said, she imagined it would look lovely on a theater marquee.”

As authoritative as Bea Arthur’s characters were, no one seemed to resent her power. As I thought about it on the subway, no woman ever made so many people so happy by being so imperious, so decisive, so just plain bossy. Arthur’s innate gravitas was her greatest comic weapon: she was fearless about being unlikable, and we liked her all the more for exactly that quality.

Whether playing a character or being herself—Bea Arthur was a delightfully clever, articulate, self-deprecating guest on talk and variety shows—Arthur allowed you to both identify with her and to admire her. There was a lot to admire.

On the plane, I sighed that the world had just lost a great actress in her 80s named B, but I thought about another dear person, another woman in her 80s as well, with a “B” name that we have lost in the last few weeks.

And this was a person I actually knew!

Again, Facebook was the means by which I learned that my treasured Gastonia friend Mary had lost her dear Momma in March. I called Mare and we reminisced about her wonderful mother, Blanche.

Maybe it was the 30,000 feet in the air, or the 11 hours in flight, but I mused about what an interesting parallel to Bea Arthur my late friend Blanche was.
If you had ever met the elegant and genteel Blanche Wetzell you probably think I am out of my mind, but let me explain.

My friend Blanche (by the way I never called her Blanche although she asked me to, I could never be so familiar with a woman so…again…elegant and genteel) was the ultimate Southern lady. But I don’t mean that kind of Dolly Parton “Backwoods Barbie” caricature of deep-fried womanhood. I mean a woman of breeding, a refined woman who had an innate gravitas and commanded a kind of imperious adulation like Bea Arthur—except for being understated, restrained, and deeply kind! No one seemed to resent Blanche’s power, but she made everybody happy with her delightfully clever, articulate, self-deprecating manner.

I spent a great deal of time around the Wetzell family in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She came from a richly musical family, and had a creamy alto voice with a wonderful texture. She was a devoted wife (like Maude, she had a go-to line when speaking about her gregarious, exasperating husband “Chahhhhlie”: Give me strength!) and mother and grandmother.

Blanche Wetzell was a one-woman ode to The Golden Girls—she made aging refined and beautiful, much like her wardrobe and beaming smile.

On the plane ride across Greenland, and down the coast of Europe, back to Jordan, I remembered how much I loved this Blanche Wetzell. When I lost my own grandmothers in 1988 and 1991, she became my surrogate grandmother. She was multi-faceted, serious, but quick with a hearty laugh. In her 70s she and her husband decided to help start a new church, and she worked tirelessly to build a church family from scratch. Every visit with her was a lesson in how to embrace life and love the world around you.

As I came to the end of the flight I remembered an episode of The Golden Girls in which Bea Arthur beautifully sang an Irving Berlin song. When that episode first aired, it was the first time I had ever heard this old standard. As I think about these two great “B’s”—one an actress unknown to me except on that familiar small box, and one a real-live beacon of love, those Irving Berlin words feel even more poignant:


What'll I do
When you are far away
And I am blue
What'll I do?