Norman Lear Sitcom ‘Maude’ Turns 50

Amazingly, four classic CBS TV series – comedies M*A*S*H, Maude and The Bob Newhart Show, and family drama The Waltons – are celebrating their half century milestones this week. First up is All in the Family spin-off Maude from Norman Lear.

Before she was Dorothy Zbornak in her Emmy Award-winning role on The Golden Girls, Bea Arthur took home her first Emmy statuette as the outspoken Maude Findlay on Maude. It aired for six seasons, from 1972 to 1978, and today we celebrate 50 years to the day that Maude debuted.

With All in the Family then the top-rated TV series in all of primetime (for five straight years, in fact), CBS decided it was time for the first spin-off series. Enter Bea Arthur as Edith Bunker’s (Jean Stapleton) cousin Maude Findlay, a middle-aged liberal woman who was constantly butting heads with the conservative Archie Bunker. The character of Maude was loosely-based on Norman Lear’s then-wife Frances.

Originally appearing in the season two episode of All in the Family titled “Cousin Maude’s Visit” (telecast on December 11, 1971), Arthur made enough of an impact to return in a backdoor pilot in the season-ending episode of on March 11, 1972 titled “Maude.” Then, on Tuesday, September 12, 1972, opposite ABC comedy Temperature’s Rising and veteran NBC family western Bonanza, came Maude, that “uncompromising, enterprising, anything but tranquilizing…right on Maude!”

Maude was an immediate Top 5 rated sensation in that first season, finishing behind Norman Lear’s All in the Family and Sanford and Son, and the original Hawaii Five-O, all CBS entries), according to Nielsen.

With a focus on women’s liberation, Arthur’s Maude Findlay was a suburban housewife in Tuckahoe, New York unlike any female character we had ever seen before. While Mary Tyler Moore was “making it on her own” in her eponymous sitcom, TV Moms Margaret Anderson (Jane Wyatt, Father Knows Best) and June Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley, Leave It to Beaver) kept busy keeping house, and the beloved Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo was up to her comedic shenanigans on I Love Lucy, Maude was on her fourth husband (Bill Macy as Walter), and she had a grown daughter, Carol (Adrienne Barbeau), and a grandson Philip (initially Brian Morrison) living with her. Rounding off the cast was Conrad Bain (pre-Diff’rent Strokes) as Arthur Harmon, the Findlay’s stuffy, cynical Republican neighbor; Rue McClanahan as Arthur’s scatterbrained second wife; and Esther Rolle as Florida Evans, the first of the Findlay’s three different housekeepers.

Esther Rolle, of course, found lead sitcom actress success of her own in Maude spinoff Good Times, which shipped her Florida Evans character to a public housing project in a poor neighborhood in inner-city Chicago. John Amos was her husband James (instead of Henry on Maude) and they had three kids: Jimmie Walker as James, Jr. (”J.J.”), BernNadette Stanis as Thelma and Ralph Carter as Michael.

Stepping in as the new housekeeper on Maude in 1974 was Hermione Baddeley as Mrs. Nell Naugetack, an elderly (and vulgar) British woman who drinks excessively and lies compulsively,

Mirroring All in the Family, Maude was never shy addressing issues, including the then 47-year-old character having an abortion. In a two-part season one installment, two months before the Roe v. Wade then ruling to make abortion legal in the country, Maude’s decision to end her pregnancy resulted in 39 TV stations across the country pre-empting it.

Other topical issues addressed on Maude included alcoholism, marijuana usage, wife-swapping, depression and suicide. Like any Norman Lear sitcom, Maude was never shy addressing the subject matters many of us were facing in our own lives.

Like any aging series, the Nielsen ratings began to wane for Maude. But CBS was not ready to walk away and the network proposed a seventh season that had Maude Findlay move to Washington, D.C. to pursue a career in politics. But Bea Arthur decided to call it quits, and the storyline for Maude evolved into the pilot Mr. Dugan, with John Amos replacing Arthur as the lead character. When a negative backlash from a screening for African-American members of Congress resulted in CBS pulling the plug and not airing any of the three episodes produced of Mr. Dugan, Norman Lear reworked the premise into Hanging In. That featured Bill Macy as a former professional football player turned university president, and it aired for just four episodes in August 1978.

Other interesting factoids about Maude:

-Aforementioned M*A*S*H and The Bob Newhart Show are also hitting the 50-year mark this week. And a fourth then new CBS comedy, Bridget Loves Bernie, might have also accomplished that same feat had it not tackled the then taboo interfaith marriage.

-Martin Balsam, who played Archie Bunker’s partner Murray Klein in the first two seasons of spinoff Archie Bunker’s Place, guest-starred as Maude’s third husband in the season five episode titled “Maude and Chester” (September 27, 1976). Many of the same actors at the time surfaced on different Norman Lear comedies.

-Prior to his role as purser Burl “Gopher” Smith on Aaron Spelling’s The Love Boat, Fred Grandy appeared in seven episodes of Maude as Carol’s boyfriend Chris. In 1986, Grandy campaigned for the open Iowa United States House of Representatives seat and won.

-Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan, of course, reunited for the long-running comedy The Golden Girls. But the first choice to play Vivian on Maude was Doris Roberts. Roberts found later work with Norman Lear on episodes of All in the Family and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

-Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf, the team who wrote for I Love Lucy, were also writers and co-producers on Maude. Needless to say, there was never any topical humor on I Love Lucy!

Finally, Maude’s theme song, “And Then There’s Maude”, was performed by Donny Hathaway. But Sammy Davis Jr. recorded and released his own version of it, with extra verses and choruses. And there was a long version parodied on animated comedy Family Guy.

In honor of 50 years of Maude, all together now…

Lady Godiva was a freedom rider,

She didn’t care if the whole world looked,

Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her,

She was a sister who really cooked,

Isadora was the first bra-burner,

Ain’t ya glad she showed up? (Oh yeah!)

And when the country was fallin’ apart,

Betsy Ross got it all sewed up.

(CHORUS):

(And then there’s Maude),

And then there’s Maude,

(And then there’s Maude),

And then there’s Maude,

(And then there’s Maude),

And then there’s Maude,

(And then there’s…..),

That uncompromising, enterprising, anything but tranquilizing,

Right on Maude!