Rue McClanahan, 1934–2010

last updated 8 January 2015

Rue McClanahan liked to insist, semi-seriously, that she shouldn’t be confused with Blanche Devereaux, the man-eating character she played on the hit television series The Golden Girls. “Consider the facts,” she wrote in her autobiography. “Blanche was a glamorous, oversexed, self-involved, man-crazy Southern belle from Atlanta—and I’m not from Atlanta.”

Born in Healdton, Okla., McClanahan first stepped onstage at age 5, playing the role of the mother cat in Three Little Kittens, said The Washington Post. She fell out with her fellow performers when they started to giggle mid-performance. “I took drama seriously even then,” she said. After graduating from the University of Tulsa, she landed her first adult role, in a regional theater production of the courtroom drama Inherit the Wind. Her big break followed her move to New York, in 1964, where she landed a role in an off-Broadway production of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Producer Norman Lear plucked her from the stage in 1970, casting her in TV’s Maude as Vivian Harmon, the dimwitted best friend of the title character, played by Bea Arthur. She would later rejoin Arthur, along with Estelle Getty and Betty White, in The Golden Girls. Critics hailed the show for its portrayal of older women as fully rounded, warts-and-all characters. Or as McClanahan put it, “It gave women in America a chance to feel publicly the way they felt secretly.”

McClanahan went through nearly as many men as the character she played, marrying six times, said the London Daily Telegraph. Like Blanche, McClanahan was less a femme fatale than an incurable romantic, with “the same eternally optimistic view of men and relationships as her on-screen persona.” But it was only because of a last-minute casting change that she even got the chance to play Blanche. White was originally cast in the part, with McClanahan playing the naïve Rose. The two exchanged roles just before shooting started on the pilot episode. The show went on to become a staple of NBC’s comedy lineup, running from 1985 to 1992. It was one of only two shows—the other was All in the Family—whose four lead characters all won Emmy awards. McClanahan’s was awarded in 1987.