The Peculiar Truth about the Golden Girl Marine

• February 13, 1943: Two years and two months after the United States entered World War II, women were given the opportunity to join the US Marine Corps. The official announcement was made on a Thursday.

• By the following Tuesday, a 20-year-old woman got the blessings of her parents and enlisted in the Marines. Two days after that, having filled out the necessary paperwork, she entered the ranks.

• Her name was Bernice Frankel. Later in life, she became known by her stage name - Bea Arthur.

• She was one of 20,000 Women Reservists who served in the Marines during the Second World War.

• Bernice was born in New York City to European immigrant parents. When she was age 11, the family relocated to Cambridge, Maryland (the birthplace of Harriet Tubman). After briefly attending college in Virginia, she returned to her Maryland hometown to work at a food packing facility.

• When America entered the war, Bernice moved to New York City, took on odd jobs, and volunteered as an air raid warden. It was there that she joined the service.

• Women Marines were not a new phenomenon. They also served during WWI. In both cases, women were assigned noncombatant roles. In the First World War, women did only clerical work. Not so in the later war.

• In 1943, she went to Camp Lejeune’s Motor Transport School. Then she served at the US Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point, North Carolina (about 60 miles northeast of Camp Lejeune). During that time, she drove a supply truck and served as a dispatcher.

• Within the year, she was a sergeant, which made her a squad leader. In the final months of the war, she was named staff sergeant, her highest rank.

• At age 22 while still serving, she married a fellow Marine named Robert Aurthur.

• In her military personnel file, officers described her as brutally honest, somewhat aggressive, and argumentative. In other words, Marine Sergeant Bernice Frankel was quite similar to the television characters that later made her famous.

• After the war, she went to Philadelphia for one year of study and then became a medical technician. That wasn’t her calling, though. She and Robert Aurthur divorced, but she kept his last name for the rest of her life, altering it to Arthur. She also became Bea instead of Bernice.

• She went to New York to study acting at Lee Strasberg’s drama school. Throughout the 1950s, Bea appeared in Off-Broadway productions. In ’64, she appeared in the original Broadway cast of Fiddler on the Roof. She originated the role of Yente the matchmaker. Then she won a 1966 Tony Award for her supporting role in Mame.

• Bea Arthur got cast in a role on All in the Family, the legendary 1970s sitcom created by Norman Lear. Her character was introduced on the show as Edith’s outspoken cousin, Maude. She was a forthright, assertive, liberal-minded suburbanite who clashed with Archie Bunker. Her own TV series followed.

• The sitcom, simply titled Maude, ran on CBS for six seasons from September 1972 to April 1978. She won an Emmy Award for the role in 1977.

• That’s when she married to her second husband Gene Saks. They stayed together for 28 years before divorcing. She never remarried after that.

• By the 1980s, Bea Arthur was in her mid-60s and landed on The Golden Girls. That series ran for seven seasons and made her more famous than ever.

• She lived to age 86 and died in 2009.

• To date, she is the only award-winning actress to ever serve in the US Marine Corps.