OBIT: Fond Farewell, Blanche: Rue McClanahan Dead at 76

Via Greg in Hollywood:

GOLDEN STAR PASSES: It’s not easy saying goodbye to one of our Golden Girls.

Rue McClanahan has joined former co-stars Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty at that big TV Land in the sky. I hope they are enjoying a nice, big cheesecake together right now.

Her death this morning leaves 88-year-old Betty White—currently enjoying a Facebook-fueled surge of popularity—as the last surviving Golden Girl. The top photo of Rue, Betty and Bea is the last time they appeared together – two years ago at the TV Land Awards.

Betty said in a statement today: “Rue was a close and dear friend. I treasured our relationship. It hurts more than I even thought it would, if that’s possible.”

The actress, who won an Emmy for her performance as the sexually liberated Southern belle Blanche Devereaux on The Golden Girls for seven seasons, has died at the age of 76. Before suffering a stroke earlier this year, she was still active in stage roles and television parts including the Logo series Sordid Lives: The Series.

Leslie Jordan, her co-star on Sordid Lives shared this memory with Entertainment Weekly today: “I got really close in the twilight of Rue’s life. She’s one of the true Southern ladies. She showed up in Shreveport, La. to play my mother on the series Sordid Lives with a portable sewing machine, and she wanted to make her own hats. She just said, ‘I just think that this lady would have made beautiful Sunday hats.’ We got so close, though, Rue and I. We did a tour of comedy from the show. She was in a wheelchair, I think after a hip replacement, and rather than stand-up comedy, she called it sit-down comedy. Honey, we wheeled her out [and] I thought we were going to have to get the hook! We said, ‘You have 20 minutes.’ Well, she had that audience on the palm of her hands. … She was a lady, but she was a bawdy lady too. She could get down with the best of us. She was filthy. She will really be missed.”

As the saucy, slutty Blanche, she became an Emmy winner and a gay icon for playing waaaay against type. Betty White had played the slutty Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show while Rue was to play sweet and childlike Rose. But in the end, thankfully, they switched roles and the rest is history.

Marc Cherry, a writer-producer for part of The Golden Girls said Thursday that his “favorite character to write for was Blanche Devereaux, In the hands of lesser actresses Blanche’s vanity and sexual appetite would have been off-putting. But in Rue’s brilliant hands, that character became one of the most beloved in the history of T.V. Rue’s kindness, generosity and enormous talent will be sorely missed.”

She had a chat with The Advocate a few years back and was asked why she thought gay men loved her character of Blanche Devereaux so much – aside from her glamour and way with men.
Said Rue: “She always bounced back from disappointment very quickly. I think that’s why a lot of people loved her. Underneath she was insecure, or she wouldn’t have been so man crazy. It wasn’t a driving physical need for her, but she sure did love sex.”

She and Miss Arthur were close friends off-screen and had also starred together for six seasons on Maude. I did one of the last interviews with Bea before she died last year and she told me a funny anecdote about Rue: “When we started ‘Golden Girls’ and Rue, my darling Rue, suddenly found herself a so-called TV star. I remember she couldn’t believe that I did my own grocery shopping! But I did and would usually meet Angela (Lansbury) in produce.”

Rue’s other television credits included playing Vicki Lawrence’s sister on Mama’s Family, the short-lived ABC comedy Apple Pie, the 1999 season Safe Harbor and one season of The Golden Palace, the series Golden Girls transitioned to after Bea left the show in 1992. She also did scores of guest spots on dozens of TV shows when she was between series including the recurring role of Mary Hubble on The Love Boat.

In addition, Rue starred in many highly-rated TV movies and has more than 100 televisions credits in all starting with roles on the daytime soaps Another World on NBC and Where the Heart Is on CBS. Last year, she did a guest spot on Law & Order. It was last November that her health began to fail. She underwent bypass surgery then suffered a minor stroke in January. It was a massive stroke that took her life earlier today.

She began acting on Off-Broadway in New York City in 1957 and made her Broadway debut in 1969 when she portrayed Sally Weber in the original production the musical Jimmy Shine with Dustin Hoffman in the title role. She won the 1969 Obie Award for the Off-Broadway play Who’s Happy Now and went on to star on Broadway in Father’s Day, Sticks and Bones, California Suite, The Women, and most recently, the delicious role of Madame Morrible in Wicked.

Off screen, Rue was married six times and had been with her last husband, Morrow Wilson, since 1997. She wrote a memoir about her life in 2007 called My First Five Husbands … and the Ones that Got Away.