McClanahan won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 1987 for her role in The Golden Girls.

[6] A National Honor Society member, McClanahan earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, at the University of Tulsa, where she majored in both German and theater and joined the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority,[1] serving as vice president.

[7] A life member of the Actors Studio,[8] McClanahan made her professional stage début at Pennsylvania's Erie Playhouse in 1957, in the play Inherit the Wind.

[1] She began acting off-Broadway in New York City in 1957,[9] but did not make her Broadway début until 1969, when she portrayed Sally Weber in the original production of John Sebastian and Murray Schisgal's play with music, Jimmy Shine, with Dustin Hoffman in the title role.

After Maude, McClanahan starred in Apple Pie, a series created for her by Norman Lear, but which aired only two episodes before it was canceled.

[13] She appeared as a leader of Al-Anon in a 1970s informational film called Slight Drinking Problem, in which Patty Duke played the enabling and eventually self-empowered wife of an alcoholic.

On television, she appeared as Matilda Joslyn Gage, mother-in-law of L. Frank Baum in the made-for-TV movie The Dreamer of Oz (1990).

She replaced Tammy Grimes as "The Visitor from New York" (Hannah Warren) in the Neil Simon comedy California Suite from April 4, 1977, until the show closed on July 2 of that same year.

In 2003, she appeared alongside Mark Hamill in the two-hander Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, Florida.

[17] The same year, she appeared in the musical romantic comedy film The Fighting Temptations as Nancy Stringer, which costarred Cuba Gooding, Jr., Beyoncé Knowles, Mike Epps, and Steve Harvey.

[19] McClanahan's final acting role was as Peggy Ingram in the cable series Sordid Lives on the Logo network, which premiered July 23, 2008.

[citation needed] McClanahan was a supporter of gay rights, including advocating for same-sex marriage in the United States.

An event scheduled for November 14, 2009, to honor her lifetime achievements, Golden: A Gala Tribute to Rue McClanahan, at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, California,[23] had to be postponed.

In March 2010, fellow Golden Girls cast member Betty White reported on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that McClanahan was doing well and that her speech had returned to normal.