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Sally Struthers called Bea Arthur a ''force of nature''
The All in the Family guest star had the cast laughing uncontrollably.
Look, you don't need any new reasons to love Bea Arthur. A talented performer and an overall great person, Arthur made a name for herself performing in television shows like All in the Family, Maude, and The Golden Girls.
Loud and abrasive, Arthur was never one to shy away from voicing her opinions. Recently, Sally Struthers appeared on the podcast Let's Talk About That! With Larry Saperstein and Jacob Bellotti. Struthers, who played Gloria Stivic in All in the Family, remembered her time with Arthur fondly. Apparently, the actor had her in stitches when a few corporate workers from CBS paid a visit to the show's set in an effort to ensure that everything was in line.
"Bea Arthur was brought to Los Angeles by CBS from New York to have a guest spot on All in the Family," said Struthers. "And the episode Bea Arthur was on was so outrageous...Bea Arthur comes in, and she's a force of nature."
Struthers explained that the cast was visited during that rehearsal by two network workers who needed to watch their performance in order to make sure that the episode was morally and ethically appropriate for television.
"They would march in like Tweedledee and Tweedledum in their suits and ties, each with a script of this week's episode," said Struthers. "They wouldn't even look at us while we were running the show...We were giving a full-on performance, but the program's practices guys were looking at the script. Sometimes they'd look up, but you couldn't count on them for a lot of laughs because they were too busy making sure we said the words that were on the page."
In response, Arthur decided that she'd take a few...liberties with her lines in the episode, much to the delight of the rest of the cast.
"Bea Arthur was filthier than a drunken sailor on purpose," said Struthers. She put all sorts of expletives in her lines to shock these men. They were having heart attacks, and Rob Reiner and I were screaming. We were falling down, screaming."
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