Arthur won several accolades throughout her career, beginning with the 1966 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for playing Vera Charles in Mame.

Arthur has received the third most nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series with nine; after Julia Louis-Dreyfus (11) and Mary Tyler Moore (10).

In June 1943, the Marine Corps accepted her transfer request to the Motor Transport School at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

[8] After serving in the Marines, Frankel studied for a year at the Franklin School of Science and Arts in Philadelphia, where she became a licensed medical technician.

Arthur began her acting career as a member of an off-Broadway theater group at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City in the late 1940s.

[6] Arthur accepted the supporting role of Vera Charles, for which she won great acclaim, winning a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical the same year.

[9] Arthur made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1994 portraying the Duchess of Krakenthorp in Gaetano Donizetti's La fille du régiment.

[11] Arthur accepted a 1971 invitation from Norman Lear to guest-star on his sitcom All in the Family, as Maude Findlay, the cousin of Edith Bunker.

Debuting in 1972, the series found her living in the affluent community of Tuckahoe, Westchester County, New York, with her fourth husband, Walter (Bill Macy), and divorced daughter, Carol (Adrienne Barbeau).

[13] The series addressed serious sociopolitical topics of the era that were considered taboo for a television sitcom, including the Vietnam War, the Nixon Administration, Maude's bid for a Congressional seat, divorce, menopause, drug use, alcoholism, nervous breakdown, mental illness, women's lib, gay rights, abortion, and spousal abuse.

As a result, dozens of network affiliates refused to broadcast the episode, substituting either a repeat from earlier in the season or a Thanksgiving TV special in its place.

However, by the time of the summer rerun season six months later, the uproar was reduced, and the stations that had refused to air the episode upon its first run now ran it for broadcast.

She hosted The Beatrice Arthur Special for CBS on January 19, 1980, leading a musical comedy revue with Rock Hudson, Melba Moore, and Wayland Flowers with Madame.

Her other roommates included widow Rose Nylund (Betty White) and Dorothy's Sicilian mother, Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty).

Arthur spent seven years in the position, continuing as spokeswoman during her run on The Golden Girls by commuting to Toronto for commercial tapings.

She portrayed overbearing mother Bea Vecchio in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), and had a cameo as a Roman unemployment clerk in Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I (1981).

[30] In addition to appearing in programs looking back at her own work, Arthur performed in stage and television tributes for Jerry Herman, Bob Hope, Ellen DeGeneres.

In 2004, she appeared in Richard Barone's "There'll Be Another Spring: A Tribute to Miss Peggy Lee" at the Hollywood Bowl, performing "Johnny Guitar" and "The Shining Sea".

Her first marriage took place in 1944, during her time in the military when she wed fellow Marine Robert Alan Aurthur,[34] later a screenwriter, television, and film producer and director.

[38] Arthur was a longtime champion of equal rights for women and an active advocate of the elderly and Jewish communities in both her major television roles and through her charity work and personal outspokenness.

She raised $40,000 for the Ali Forney Center with one of her final live performances, a revival of her one-woman Broadway show in 2005 after she had fallen ill with cancer.

Barbeau was unavailable to perform regularly on the sitcom during its last season due to her schedule; nevertheless, the two remained close and stayed in touch for the rest of Arthur's life.

[47] Arthur's surviving co-stars from The Golden Girls, McClanahan and White, commented on her death via telephone on an April 27 episode of Larry King Live.

[59] Arthur received the third most nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series with nine; only Julia Louis-Dreyfus (11) and Mary Tyler Moore (10) have more.

She received the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series twice, once in 1977 for Maude and again in 1988 for The Golden Girls.