La Rue becomes her producer and confidant. Rue McClanahan may have played sex-positive senior Blanche Devereaux on The Golden Girls, but she doesn’t get hitched to the much younger man with the distinctive last name. “Marry me so my name can be ‘Rue La Rue,’” says the actress when she meets Michael J. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, file) ASSOCIATED PRESS In her honor, he names the new 18-bed facility the Bea Arthur Residence.įILE - In this Jfile photo, actress Rue McClanahan arrives at the TV Land Awards in. Siciliano uses some of the donation to purchase the nonprofit’s first building. For the rest of her life, the comedy icon tells anyone who’ll listen about the Ali Forney Center.Īfter her death, Arthur bequeaths $300,000 in her will to the organization.It’s a lifeline during the Great Recession, a time when director Carl Siciliano worries he’ll have to shutter the organization due to a lack of adequate financial support. In the process, she raises over $40,000 in one night. That December, the woman who won a Tony for playing Vera Charles in Mame dazzles the Manhattan audience by singing torch songs, bantering with the crowd, and delivering her signature death stare. Arthur greenlights the benefit performance. It outrages her sense of decencythat some gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender kids are tossed out of their homes for merely being who they are. She hates the cold and doesn’t even own a winter coat.īut the native New Yorker is shocked by what her old coworker tells her. The two-time Emmy winner is quietly wrestling with a cancer diagnosis. In her early 80s, Arthur has struggles of her own. AFC has only 12 shelter beds but a waiting list of over 100 teens who long to get off the streets. His team strives to provide housing, food, and medical care for clients, but demand far outstrips funding. The star of Maude and The Golden Girls listens as her old friend describes his volunteer efforts with the Ali Forney Center(AFC), the country’s largest agency devoted to homeless queer youth.Įxecutive director Carl Siciliano created the nonprofit in New York City 3 years earlier.
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