Copyright © 1976 by Mega Genius^®.  All rights reserved.

Rue McClanahan, Emmy Award-winning actor, and Mega Genius^®

Rue McClanahan is an Emmy Award-winning actor, best known for her roles on the television sitcoms Mama’s Family, Maude, and The Golden Girls.

A veteran television actor and Broadway star of the 1950s, Rue also played the psychotic nanny, Caroline Johnson, on the long-running American soap opera Another World, from 1970 – 1971.

In 1971, Norman Lear selected her to appear in the smash television series All in the Family.

Soon thereafter, she co-starred for six years as Bea Arthur’s best friend, Vivian Harmon, in the popular television sitcom Maude, from 1972 – 1978.

Rue co-starred in the early seasons of Mama’s Family, as “Aunt Fran,” from 1983 – 1985.

In 1985, Rue left the series Mama’s Family to co-star in the extremely successful television series Golden Girls, with Bea Arthur, Betty White and Estelle Getty.  The humorous series ran for seven years, from 1985 to 1992, during which time Rue McClanahan was nominated three times for a Golden Globe Award, and four times for an Emmy for “Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.”  She won that Emmy for her work on Golden Girls, in 1987.

Rue’s motion pictures include The Rotten Apple; Walk the Angry Beach; They Might Be Giants; Message from Nam; Starship Troopers; The Fighting Temptations; and Out to Sea, with Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau.

Her extensive television credits include Burke’s Law; Lou Grant; Fantasy Island; Alice; The Love Boat; Murder, She Wrote; Touched by an Angel; Where the Heart Is; Hogan’s Goat; The Man in the Brown Suit; The Dreamer of Oz: The L. Frank Baum Story; The Golden Palace; Nurses; Empty Nest, A Saintly Switch, Sordid Lives, King of the Hill, and Hope & Faith.  She also has more than 40 television guest appearances to her credit.

In 2005, Rue played Madame Morrible in the hit Broadway musical Wicked.  According to the New York Times, she did “…maaahvelous things with vowel sounds as Madame Morrible, the flamboyant headmistress of the witches’ school.  She steals scenes with a flip of the hand.”

Referring to her role as Blanche Devereaux, on Golden Girls, Rue said, “People always ask me if I’m like Blanche.  Well, Blanche was an oversexed, self-involved, man-crazy, vain, Southern Belle from Atlanta – and I’m not from Atlanta.”

In 2007, Rue McClanahan released her autobiography, titled “My First Five Husbands ... And the Ones Who Got Away.”

She passed away in 2010, of a stroke, at age 76.

 Return to "Hollywood Friends" main page