Maude (TV series)

Characters

Maude Findlay (Beatrice Arthur) first appears in a pair of season two episodes of All in the Family: the first in December 1971, and the second, essentially setting up the premise of the Maude series, in March 1972. She is Edith Bunker's (Jean Stapleton) cousin who has been married four times. Her first husband, Barney, had died shortly after their marriage; she had divorced the next two, Albert and Chester. Albert was never portrayed on screen, but the episode "Poor Albert" revolved around his death, while former second husband Chester would appear on the show (played by Martin Balsam). Her current husband, Walter Findlay (played by Bill Macy), owns an appliance store called Findlay's Friendly Appliances. Maude and Walter met just before the 1968 presidential election. Maude sometimes gets in the last word during their many arguments with her hallmark catchphrase, "God'll getcha for that, Walter." Maude's deep, raspy voice is also an occasional comic foil whenever she answers the phone and explains "No, this is not Mr. Findlay; this is Mrs. Findlay! Mr. Findlay has a much higher voice."

Maude's daughter from her first marriage, Carol Traynor (played by Adrienne Barbeau – in the All in the Family pilot episode the character was played by Marcia Rodd), is also divorced and has one child, like Maude. Carol and her son, Phillip (played by Brian Morrison and later by Kraig Metzinger), live with the Findlays. Though single, Carol maintains her reputation of dating many men. She dates various men throughout early seasons, eventually forming a serious (but brief) relationship with a man named Chris (played by Fred Grandy) in the later seasons. Like her mother, Carol is an outspoken liberal feminist who is not afraid to speak her mind, though they often clash. After the fourth season, with a new time slot and a drop in the ratings, Barbeau's appearances were reduced.

The Findlays' next-door neighbors are Dr. Arthur Harmon, a stuffy, sardonic Republican and foil for Maude played by Conrad Bain and his sweet but scatterbrained second wife Vivian, played by Rue McClanahan, who confirmed in an interview with the Archive of American Television that she was approached by Norman Lear during the taping of the All in the Family episode "The Bunkers and the Swingers" (1972) to take on the role as a late replacement for Doris Roberts, who was originally intended for the part. Arthur has been Walter's best friend since the two men served together in World War II; he was the one who brought Walter and Maude together in 1968 and "affectionately" called Maude "Maudie." Vivian has been Maude's best friend since they both attended college together. At the beginning of the series, Arthur is a widower and Vivian is a soon-to-be divorcée. Arthur and Vivian begin dating at the beginning of the second season and marry each other by the end of the season.

The housekeepers

For the entire run of the show, Maude also has a housekeeper. At the beginning of the series, the Findlays hire Florida Evans, a no-nonsense black woman who often has the last laugh at Maude's expense. Maude often makes a point of conspicuously and awkwardly demonstrating how open-minded and liberal she is (Florida almost quit working for Maude because of this). Despite Florida's status as a maid, Maude emphasizes to Florida that they are "equals," and insists she enter and exit the Findlay house via the front door (even though the back door is more convenient).

As portrayed by Esther Rolle, the character of Florida proved so popular that, in 1974, she became the star of her own spin-off series, entitled Good Times. In the storyline of Maude, Florida's husband, Henry (later James), received a raise at his job, and she quit to be a full-time housewife and mother. Good Times is based on the childhood of its creator, Mike Evans, who starred as Lionel Jefferson on All in the Family and The Jeffersons. Whereas Maude took place in New York, the setting for Good Times was Chicago.

After Florida's departure in 1974, Mrs. Nell Naugatuck (played by Hermione Baddeley), an elderly (and vulgar) British woman who drinks excessively and lies compulsively, assumes the role of housekeeper. Unlike Florida, who commuted to work, Mrs. Naugatuck is a live-in maid. She meets and begins dating Bert Beasley (an elderly security guard at a cemetery, played by J. Pat O'Malley) in 1975. They marry in 1977 and move to Ireland to care for Bert's mother. Mrs. Naugatuck's frequent sparring with Maude is, arguably, just as comedically popular as Florida's sparring. The difference in the two relationships was that Mrs. Naugatuck often seems as if she despised Maude Findlay, whereas Florida seems only periodically frustrated by her boss.

Lear said the last name 'Naugatuck' was directly taken from the town of Naugatuck, Connecticut, which he found amusing. Due to the popularity of the program, Baddeley even visited the town in the late 1970s and was given a warm, official ceremony at the town green.

Maude then hires Victoria Butterfield (played by Marlene Warfield), a native of Norman Island in the British Virgin Islands, whom Maude initially accuses of stealing her wallet. Victoria remains until the end of the series in 1978. However, Warfield's character was never as popular as her two predecessors, and she was never given a credit as a series regular.

Title sequence

The opening title sequence begins with an aerial shot of New York City, including the Chrysler Building. It then showcases a drive from the city to Maude's house in Tuckahoe, where Maude answers her door, wearing a Bob Mackie gown, ostensibly to greet the viewing audience. Although the sequence supposedly shows the trip in the then-present day (1970s), most of the cars in one part of the sequence appear to be from the 1950s.

The first travel shot was taken on the old West Side Elevated Highway, heading downtown (south), which is the opposite direction from Tuckahoe. If a driver on the highway was headed uptown, to the driver's left would be abandoned piers on the Hudson River and New Jersey. Like the shot on the Miller Highway, another in the title sequence takes the viewer over the George Washington Bridge. In reality, this bridge connects New York City with New Jersey to the west, whereas Westchester County, where Maude lives, lies to the north of Manhattan. The most obvious and direct route from Manhattan to Tuckahoe would be to drive through The Bronx.

The show's theme song, "And Then There's Maude", was written by Marilyn and Alan Bergman and Dave Grusin, and performed by Donny Hathaway.

Series history and topicality

The character of Maude Findlay was said to be loosely based on creator Norman Lear's then-wife Frances. She first appeared on two episodes of All in the Family as Edith Bunker's cousin. A "Cousin Maud," with a similar role, had also appeared on an episode of Till Death Us Do Part, the British series on which All in the Family had been based. Maude represented everything Archie Bunker did not: She was a liberal, a feminist, and upper-middle class, whereas Archie was conservative, sexist, and working class.

Maude's political beliefs were closer to those of the series creators than Archie Bunker's, but the series often lampooned Maude as a naive "limousine liberal" and did not show her beliefs and attitudes in an entirely complimentary light. Just before the show's premiere in September 1972, TV Guide described the character of Maude as "a caricature of the knee-jerk liberal."

While the show was conceived as a comedy, scripts also incorporated much darker humor and drama. Maude took Miltown, a mild tranquilizer, and also Valium; she and her husband Walter began drinking in the evening. Maude had an abortion in November 1972, two months before the Roe v. Wade decision made abortion legal in the U.S., and the episodes that dealt with the situation are probably the series' most famous and most controversial. Maude, at age 47, was dismayed to find herself unexpectedly pregnant. Her daughter Carol brought to her attention that abortion had become legal in the state of New York. After some soul-searching (and discussions with Walter, who agreed that raising a baby at their stage of life was not what they wanted to do), Maude tearfully decided at the end of the two-part episode that abortion was probably the best choice for their lives and their marriage. Noticing the controversy around the storyline, CBS decided to rerun the episodes in August 1973, and members of the country's clergy reacted strongly to the decision. At least 30 stations pre-empted the episode. The two-part episode was written by Susan Harris, who would work with Bea Arthur again later on The Golden Girls.

The producers and the writers of the show tackled other controversies. In a story arc that opened the 1973-74 season, Walter came to grips with his alcoholism and subsequently had a nervous breakdown. The beginning of the story arc had Maude, Walter, and Arthur enjoying a night of revelry. However, Maude panicked when she woke up the following morning to find Arthur in her bed. This alarmed her to the point that both of them swore off alcohol entirely. Walter could not do it ("Dean Martin gets a million dollars for his buzz") and became so aggravated during his attempts to stop that he struck Maude. Afterward, he suffered a breakdown as a result of his alcoholism and guilt over the domestic violence incident. The arc, which played out in two parts, was typically controversial for the show but gained praise for highlighting how social drinking can lead to alcoholism.

The first season episode "The Grass Story" tackled the then-recent Rockefeller Drug Laws, as Maude and her well-meaning housewife friends try to get arrested in protest over a grocery boy's tough conviction for marijuana possession. The severity of the marijuana laws was contrasted with the characters' own lax attitudes toward drinking and prescription pill abuse.

In season four, Maude had a session with an analyst, in which she revealed insecurities about her life and marriage and talked through memories from her childhood. The episode was a solo performance by Beatrice Arthur.

During the fifth season, Walter suffered another nervous breakdown, this time even attempting suicide, when he saw his business go bankrupt.

The Nielsen ratings for Maude were high, in particular, during the first seasons of the program (during the heyday of topical sitcoms, which its presence helped to create), when it was regularly one of the top-ten highest-rated American television programs in any given week.

In Great Britain, Maude was not shown nationally, although it was shown (beginning in 1975) in the ITV regions of Westward, Border, Tyne Tees, Anglia, Yorkshire, Granada and Channel. Satellite station Sky One ran the series in the early/mid 1990s.

Cancellation

In the fifth season, Maude unexpectedly plunged from #4 to #31 in the Nielsen ratings as its lead-ins Rhoda and Phyllis began to struggle. In 1978, late in the sixth season, CBS revamped the series. In the last three episodes of that year, the fictional governor of New York appointed Maude as a congresswoman from Tuckahoe, as a Democrat during the 1978 U.S. midterm elections (she helped campaign for a congresswoman who unexpectedly died in her home). With this change, Maude and husband Walter would move to Washington, D.C., and the rest of the regular cast written out of the series. In the story, the Harmons moved to Idaho, where Arthur accepted a job offer as a country doctor (his "lifelong dream"), while Carol also got a new job offer and she and Phillip moved to Denver.

Those plans changed after the three episodes in the new format at the end of that season when Bea Arthur decided to leave the series and without its star, Maude was forced to end production. Lear still liked the idea of a member of a minority group in Congress, and it evolved into the pilot Mr. Dugan, with John Amos replacing Arthur as the lead character. Intended for a March 1979 premiere, 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. Lear went back to work on the project and it was eventually reworked into Hanging In, with Bill Macy returning to play a former professional football player turned university president. Premiering in the summer of 1979, the show did not find an audience and ended shortly after it began.

DVD releases

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the first season of Maude on DVD in Region 1 on March 20, 2007. This release has been discontinued and is now out of print.

On August 27, 2013, it was announced that Mill Creek Entertainment had acquired the rights to various television series from the Sony Pictures library including Maude. They subsequently re-released the first season on DVD on February 3, 2015.

On December 2, 2014, it was announced that Shout! Factory had acquired the rights to the series; they subsequently released the complete series on DVD on March 17, 2015. Among the bonus features, the set includes the two Second season episodes of All in the Family, which introduced Maude ("Cousin Maude's Visit" and "Maude"); two previously unaired episodes of Maude ("The Double Standard" and "Maude's New Friends"); the Syndicated Sales Presentation, which was hosted by Norman Lear; as well as three featurettes called "And Then There's Maude: Television's First Feminist"; "Everything but Hemorrhoids: Maude Speaks to America"; and "Memories of Maude" with interviews by Adrienne Barbeau and Bill Macy, along with newly discovered interviews with the late Bea Arthur, the late Rue McClanahan and Maude director, the late Hal Cooper.

In 2015, Shout! began releasing individual season sets; the second season was released on August 11, 2015, followed by the third season on November 10, 2015. the fourth season on March 22, 2016, the fifth season on June 14, 2016 and the sixth and final season on August 9, 2016.

Golden Globes

Emmy Awards

Syndication

Maude aired on TV Land in 1999 for a brief time, including an introductory "Maude-a-thon" marathon. Maude was later seen on Nick at Nite in the United States in 2001. Reruns of Maude are occasionally shown on Canwest's digital specialty channel, DejaView in Canada. In 2010, Maude began reruns in Chicago, on WWME-CA's Me-TV. In 2011, Maude began airing on Antenna TV, a new digital broadcast network, which has since run the entire six season cycle of the show. In 2015, reruns of Maude began airing on Logo TV during late night/early morning.

Adaptations

Maude was adapted in France as Maguy. Maguy aired on Sundays at 19.30 from September 1985 to December 1994 on France 2 for 333 episodes.

Maude had previously been adapted in 1980 by ITV in the United Kingdom as Nobody's Perfect. Starring Elaine Stritch and Richard Griffiths, the show ran for two series with a total of 14 episodes. Of the 14 episodes Stritch herself adapted 13 original Maude scripts and Griffiths adapted one.