Bea Arthur Leaves $300,000 to LGBT Youth Homeless Organization

[JamesG]

Golden Girls star Bea Arthur leaves $300,000 in will to NY group that helps gay homeless youths
News Staff
Tuesday, October 27th 2009

Bea Arthur left $300,000 in her will to a New York organization that aids homeless gay youth.

The Ali Fornay Center provides services to more than 1,000 each year, and is planning to buy a building to house 12 young people - and name it in honor of the "Golden Girls" actress.



The head of the center said he is thrilled with the stage and television legend's generosity.

"We work with hundreds of young people who are rejected by their families because of who they are," said Executive Director Carl Siciliano.

"We are overwhelmed with gratitude that Bea saw that LGBT youth deserve as much love and support as any other young person, and that she placed so much value in the work we do to protect them, and to help them rebuild their lives," he said.



The Ali Forney Center offers emergency shelter and transitional housing in seven residential sites in New York.

It also operates two drop-in centers offering food, clothing, medical and mental health treatment, HIV testing, treatment and prevention services, and vocational and educational assistance.


http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/..._in_will_.html

[Smartboy]

I have spent the bulk of this evening trying to stimulate some conversation about some of these fine series! I have already left my John Handcock on the pages of Caroline in the City, Facts of Life, Gimme a Break! Happy Days, Mad About You and What's Happening!! So far, I have not generated a single response! This being the case, I decided to to see what happens if I respond to this thread. In closing, I would just like to say that I really salute Bea Arthur's committment to this cause!

[ratherbwatchinGG]

Well smartboy I'll follow. I too think it was a great gesture on Bea's part. I know she supported many organization's but this one in particular could really use the any help it could get financially. With this money many programs can continue to help gay and lesbian youth.

[Smartboy]

Originally Posted by ratherbwatchinGG

Well smartboy I'll follow. I too think it was a great gesture on Bea's part. I know she supported many organization's but this one in particular could really use the any help it could get financially. With this money many programs can continue to help gay and lesbian youth.

I am very happy to see that a post by me has generated a response! It is very nice to be recognized! During the past few days, I have been doing whatever I can think of to stimulate some conversation about some of these fine series. So far I have had very little luck! On this very evening, I have already posted messages on the pages of "Friends" and "Gimme a Break!". I would be very interested in what you (or anyone else) thinks of them!

[tunameltd]

With all the wonderful things Miss Arthur has done in her life, wouldn't it be great to see her final interview, in HER OWN WORDS talking about her career etc.

I found this clip of Bea Arthur's final interview. The clip also show Betty White, Carol Channing and Phyllis Diller.

We need to contact Merv Griffin Productions and see if entire interview will be aired. An email that was given to me was:

roy_bank@griffingroup.com


I'd hate for an full interview with Bea or the other legendary ladies in the clip to go unseen.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqTi7rsk3GY

[browneyes106]

Bea was very generous and her donation will go long way in helping homeless gay youth which is a big problem in some cities.

[JamesG]

How Bea Arthur Gave Back to the Gays Who Loved Her
by Seth Abramovitch
9/23/2016


As a shelter for New York's homeless LGBT youth prepares to open in her name, the son of the comedy legend opens up about dinner parties with Rock Hudson, friction with Betty White and her lifelong compassion for "innocents — either kids or animals or gay teens."

Back in the early 1970s, when she was playing the outspoken lead on Norman Lear’s "All in the Family" spin-off, "Maude", Bea Arthur would host raucous dinner parties at her Los Angeles home. The guests were by and large gay men — closeted, as most were back then — who were drawn to Arthur, like moths to a porch light.



Observing these drunken evenings with fascination was Arthur's then-11-year-old son, Matthew Saks, the elder of two boys she adopted with her second husband, the film and theater director Gene Saks.

"They were always excited to come to her house,” says Matthew, now 55, of his mother’s many gay confidantes. “I remember Rock Hudson was over once and him clearing the table. He was balancing five dishes on one hand. I was like, 'How can you do that?' He said, 'Before I was in the Navy, I was a waiter.'"







Arthur, who died of cancer in 2009 at age 86, occupies a singular space amid the pantheon of gay icons: Neither preening show diva nor pill-popping wreck, she was instead a pillar of liberal-minded fortitude, always at the ready to do battle with the Archie Bunkers of the world.

Through it all, there was something inarguably patriotic about Arthur's social crusade, born as it was out the civil unrest of the 1960s. She even looked a bit like the Statue of Liberty. All of this held considerable sway over the emerging gay-rights movement.

A decade later, as AIDS raged, "Golden Girls" only further served to cement Arthur’s belovedness. No one could knock her down — an overwhelmingly appealing attribute at a time when thousands were dying and survivors were being pushed to society's margins. The zingers, the sweaters, the oversexed best friend: Bea was just good medicine.







Fully aware of the appeal she held over her gay fans, Arthur decided to give something back, and left an endowment to the Ali Forney Center, an organization for homeless LGBT youth in New York City.

In turn, a new 18-bed shelter on the Lower East Side, scheduled to open in February, will be named in her honor. “That’s something she wouldn’t have wanted,” Saks says of his mother, who led a deeply private and humble life. “But too bad. She deserves it.”



Arthur first learned of the center in 2005, when her friend Ray Klausen, who designed most of the Academy Awards sets in the 1980s, told her the organization was in dire financial straits.

Arthur agreed to fly from her L.A. home to New York to mount a benefit performance of her one-woman Broadway show. It was mid-December and Arthur hated the cold. (She had to borrow a winter coat from her best friend, Angela Lansbury.)



“I was taken aback by her appearance,” recalled Carl Siciliano, Ali Forney’s executive director, of coming face-to-face with his idol. “I met a surprisingly frail and seemingly shy and tenuous woman. She looked much older and weaker than in her promotional photos.”

Still, when it came time to deliver, “she was the Bea Arthur we all knew and loved.” After the performance, Arthur sat for photographs. The mostly-gay crowd very nearly flew into a frenzy, “pushing toward her, grabbing at her, eager for face time with the great legend.” She made it out alive and the benefit raised $40,000.







Three years later, Arthur died and left money to a number of causes, with the Ali Forney Center receiving the second-largest sum: $300,000. (Another, the American Indian College Fund, received $100,000.)

“It seemed like all her charities were mostly about innocents — either kids or animals or gay or lesbian teens, who have a bigger fight than anybody can imagine,” Saks says.

Siciliano credits the endowment with having gotten Ali Forney through the lean recession years. He pledged at her memorial to name the first building owned by Ali Forney Center after Arthur. After the City of New York recently turned over a long-abandoned former crack house, the Bea Arthur Residence for LGBT Youth was born.







Both of Arthur’s sons, Matthew and Daniel, 52, married women and started families in Los Angeles. Daniel became a TV set designer — he created the cozy, middle-class home of NBC’s "The Carmichael Show", which resembles the All in the Family house.

Matthew, meanwhile, born blond with handsome Anglo-Saxon features, pursued an acting career in his 20s. He even got cast as a wisecracking cop on an episode of "The Golden Girls".

“I think I read for the part,” he says. “I don’t think it was just given to me, but probably it was. Who would say no? To me it’s embarrassing. I do occasionally get a $20 check in the mail.” He eventually abandoned acting and focused instead on home renovating and landscaping. His biggest client was his mom: He updated her Cliff May-designed Brentwood estate, a 1920s Spanish-style house, which sold in 2015 for $15 million.







If one persistent rumor about Arthur still follows her into the afterlife, it’s that she and her "Golden Girls" co-star Betty White, who played the dippy Minnesotan Rose Nylund, had a contentious off-screen relationship.

Saks says it isn’t entirely without merit. “My mom was the real deal,” he explains. “I think she felt she was more of an actress than Betty. Mom came from Broadway. Betty starred on a game show at one point.”

He continues: “When they shot the sitcom, sometimes they had to stop. My mom would stay concentrated, maybe stay backstage, stand in her place there. And sometimes Betty would go out and smile and chat with the audience and literally go and make friends with the audience. Which is a nice thing — a lot of them have come from all over the country and are fans. I think my mom didn’t dig that.

It’s more about being focused or conserving your energy. It’s just not the right time to talk to fans between takes. Betty was able to do it and it didn’t seem to affect her. But it rubbed my mom the wrong way.” Still, Saks adds, “there was no fighting at all. They were friends. At one point they lived close enough that they would drive each other to work.”



Don't let the gruff facade fool you: Arthur was a softy through and through, as evidenced by the Bea Arthur Residence for LGBT Youth — an honor, among gay icons, sure, but Saks puts things in perspective.

"I don’t think my mom ranks up there with Liza, Barbra or Cher," he says. "But she has her own clique."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...omeless-932269