Bea Arthur, who has died aged 86, was the leader of the band in The Golden Girls, the US comedy series which networked in the US from 1985 to 1992 and achieved great success in Britain during the halcyon days of Channel 4. As Dorothy Zbornak she was the dominating boss among the four ladies of indeterminate middle to old age living together in retirement in Florida.
Dorothy supervised the activities of her ancient mother (played by Estelle Getty). The mother was a woman with an inflated sense of her own beauty and youth who did not know the difference between Republicans and Democrats, to say nothing of that between French and Russians. Arthur's character was the levelling influence, the one who put everything into perspective when things got too exciting in the Miami household - and every now and again an old lover or husband did appear on the scene. All the Golden Girls - Betty White and Rue McClanahan were the other two - won Emmies, but when Bea won hers, she was undoubtedly representing the whole company.
There was always an acidly witty comment from Arthur, as much while acknowledging awards as when reciting her lines. Two decades earlier she had won a Tony for her Broadway performance as second lead in the musical Mame (1966), with Angela Lansbury. Then, in 1972, she won an Emmy for her work - she had 11 nominations - in the groundbreaking sitcom Maude (1972-78). The latter had been a spin-off from All in the Family, the US version of Till Death Us Do Part, in which, in two episodes (1971-72), Arthur established herself as a TV favourite. She played the liberal cousin Maude Findlay who answered back to Archie Bunker, the American Alf Garnett, and she developed the character, and the feminist politics, in the follow-up series.
She was born Bernice Frankel in New York City but, in 1933, when she was 11, the family moved to Cambridge, Maryland. There her father ran a clothing store. Aged 12, she had reached her full height, variously quoted between 5ft 9 and 5ft 11, and her dream of being blonde, beautiful and 5ft 2 remained just that. She qualified from Blackstone College, Virginia, as a laboratory technician, hated the work and enrolled at the New School of Social Research, in New York, on a drama course. She sung in a nightclub to help pay the rent and having disliked Bernice and become Beatrice, a fleeting marriage provided the Arthur.
Her height had seemed a disadvantage, but before long her potential as a character actor was realised. She worked in summer stock, the American equivalent of repertory, and by the beginning of the 1950s had broken into TV with series such as Kraft Television Theatre and Studio One. She had also remarried, to the actor and director Gene Saks.
A pivotal moment came in 1955, when Arthur played Lucy Brown alongside Lotte Lenya in a seminal Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. Arthur was to pinpoint that performance as a key moment in her career and said that Lenya had taught her economy. The TV work persisted, including, by 1963, regular appearances on the prestigious Sid Caesar Show, where, she said, he taught her the outrageous.
The following year she returned to Broadway as Yente, the Matchmaker, in the original version of Fiddler on the Roof, starring Zero Mostel. Even more fame ensued as Vera Charles in Mame, which was directed by Saks, as was the film version (1974), in which she appeared. It was Mame, she said, that led to All in the Family, and it was Charles, perhaps, who sketched out the character reprised in her two subsequent TV series. She quit Maude because, she said, she wanted to go out on a high. Appearances in the Mary Tyler Moore Hour (1979) and Soap (1980) followed. She then starred in an ill-fated US cover of Fawlty Towers, called Amanda's (1983). In 1985 came The Golden Girls.
Her big screen career by comparison was limited. She was an (uncredited) Wac (Women's Army Corps) in Sidney Lumet's That Kind of Woman (1958), was more prominent in Cy Howard's Lovers and Other Strangers (1969), and was back to an uncredited role in Mel Brooks's History of the World Part 1 (1981). She was a confused mother in Jason Alexander's For Better or Worse (1996) and played opposite Peter Falk in Joey Travolta's Enemies of Laughter (2000). In October 2003, she made her Australian debut in a one-woman show And Then There's Bea in Sydney. A year later, she starred in a similar performance at the Savoy Theatre in London.
But TV remained her principal memorial. "I really feel all my adult life has been spent in that little black box," she once said. "If a wonderful part on TV came along, I would do it. But I don't want to do a recurring role. It would just be my luck that the thing would be successful. I'm old enough now and also secure enough financially that I really only want to do what I want to do."
The TV work did not dry up. In 2000 she appeared in Malcolm in the Middle. Five years later she materialised as Larry David's mother in Curb Your Enthusiasm. She divorced Saks in 1978. She is survived by their two sons and two granddaughters.
Beatrice Arthur (Bernice Frankel), actor, born 13 May 1922; died 25 April 2009