‘Maude’ among TV Hall of Fame inductees

updated 1:27 p.m. ET Dec. 3, 2008

LOS ANGELES - "Maude" and "Golden Girls" star Bea Arthur is happily poised to enter the TV Academy Hall of Fame, but she acknowledges it's her own fault the recognition didn't come sooner.

Arthur says the academy approached her five years ago about her joining the ranks of past honorees, who include Lucille Ball, Johnny Carson and Bill Cosby.

"I said, ‘So sorry, very nice of you, but I can't possibly accept. There are so many talented people in the business,'" Arthur recalled.

"When I hung up, I thought, ‘Why the hell did I do that?' I had vaguely heard that George C. Scott had turned down the Academy Award, which I thought was kind of cool," Arthur said.

The Hall of Fame ceremony is scheduled for Dec. 9 in Beverly Hills, and Arthur said she's "delighted" to be included.

Other inductees are TV and movie writer Larry Gelbart ("M-A-S-H," "Tootsie"), the late talk show host and producer Merv Griffin ("Wheel of Fortune," "Jeopardy!"), writer-producer Sherwood Schwartz ("Gilligan's Island," "The Brady Bunch") and former Capital Cities/ABC executives Thomas Murphy and Daniel B. Burke.

"It's so important to hold up great examples of people who have done something exceptional," said John Shaffner, TV Academy chairman and CEO. "It not only reminds us of what can be accomplished but it inspires us."

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Arthur, 86, speaks fondly of Maude Findlay, the outspoken liberal character created for her by writer-producer Norman Lear and first introduced on "All in the Family." The spin-off "Maude" aired on CBS from 1972-78.

"Norman at the time was married to a militant feminist, Frances Lear, and it was the height of the women's movement, so he devised Maude as a real go-getter in the feminist movement," Arthur said.

She was lucky, she said, to be discovered by TV after a long stage career, recalling with bemusement CBS executives asking about the new "girl."

"I was already 50 years old. I had done so much off-Broadway, on Broadway, but they said, ‘Who is that girl? Let's give her her own series.'"

As for "The Golden Girls," the 1985-92 NBC series about four older single women created by Susan Harris, it was simply "brilliant," Arthur said.

Ask Arthur about the highlight of her long career, and she points to her role in 1954's off-Broadway premiere of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's "The Threepenny Opera."

"A lot of that had to do with the fact that I felt, ‘Ah, yes, I belong here,'" Arthur said.

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