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Bea Arthur Was A Truck-Driving Marine
Despite denial, records detail late television star’s military career
DECEMBER 9--While she strangely denied serving in the armed forces, military records show that the actress Bea Arthur spent 30 months in the Marine Corps, where she was one of the first members of the Women’s Reserve and spent time as a typist and a truck driver.
The "Maude" and "The Golden Girls" star, who died last year at age 86, enlisted in early-1943 when she was 21 (and known as Bernice Frankel). In a February 1943 letter included in her Marine personnel file, Arthur gave military officials a brief account of her prior employment as a food analyst at a Maryland packing plant, a hospital lab technician, and an office worker at a New York loan company.
Arthur was due to start a new job, but she “heard last week that enlistments for women in the Marines were open, so decided the only thing to do was to join.” While she hoped for an assignment in ground aviation, Arthur noted that she was “willing to get in now and do whatever is desired of me until such time as ground schools are organized.” She added, “As far as hobbies are concerned, I’ve dabbled in music and dramatics.”
As part of the enlistment process, Arthur underwent interviews that resulted in the production of “personality appraisal” sheets. One such analysis described her conversation as “Argumentative” and her attitude and manner as “Over aggressive.” In a handwritten note, the Marine interviewer remarked, “Officious--but probably a good worker--if she has her own way!”
Arthur is pictured here in an official Marine photo taken shortly after her enlistment. A second undated portrait can be seen above.
Arthur, who was fingerprinted during enlistment, started basic training in March 1943 and was initially assigned as a typist at Marine headquarters in Washington, D.C.. Over the following two years, Arthur was stationed at Marine Corps and Navy air stations in Virginia and North Carolina. During her military career, Arthur’s rank went from private to corporal to sergeant to staff sergeant, the title she held upon her honorable discharge in September 1945, according to one document.
On a Marine qualification card that included a section titled “Talent for furnishing public entertainment,” Arthur is credited for “piano & organ 13 years” and “contralto-orchestra.” Her “active hobbies” included hunting with a .22 caliber rifle and “bow and arrow.”
A year after her enlistment, Arthur married a fellow Marine, Private Robert Aurthur, in a ceremony presided over by a city judge in Ithaca, New York. She then formally had her named changed in military records to Bernice Aurthur. It would change again, to Bea Arthur, as she started her post-military career as an actress.
The military records, released in response to a Freedom of Informaton Act request, include a single “misconduct report” filed against Arthur while she was stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, North Carolina. For some reason, Arthur did not speak about her time with the Marines. In fact, in a videotaped interview (excerpted below) conducted as part of an Academy of Television Arts & Sciences archives project, Arthur flatly denied serving in the military. When an interviewer said that she had read somewhere that Arthur had once joined the Marines, the actress answered, “Oh, no. No.” She then continued a chronological review of her life by noting that, in 1947, she enrolled in dramatic school in New York.

Maggie Davis
Collection Maintenance Technician
Years employed at the MIA: 10 (Yikes!)

Describe something interesting or unusual about your work here:
My job is so hard to describe because it involves so many different responsibilities. I guess the most interesting part of my job is that I get to clean the artwork; dust paintings and sculptures in the galleries, polish silver in a lab. I’m also in charge of the museum’s Integrated Pest Management (IPM) System. That involves the identification of bugs found in the museum, assessing if they are harmful to the collection, and acting accordingly based upon identification. So if people find a bug in the museum, they capture it, bring it to me, and it’s my job to find out if it’s just a garden beetle or (gulp) something worse.

What was your first job?
My first job was at Bruegger’s Bagels in Dinkytown! I was in high school, and I worked with all college kids. I thought I was pretty cool at the time (and can assure you I wasn’t). I remember going to Ragstock and the Purple Onion coffee shop on my breaks. After college I accepted a full time position in The Museum Shop here at the MIA. I checked in the orders and priced the merchandise.

What’s hanging on your walls?
At work, pictures of my daughter Lucy, a poster of common museum pests, postcards of art I like. At home, it’s just as eclectic. Silk-screened concert posters, framed old maps, quirky “art” I picked up at thrift stores. My favorites are these wooden painted birds from Anthropologie and a Jay Ryan poster for one of my favorite bands, The Frames.

If you weren’t a Collection Maintenance Technician, what would you be?
If money, time and intelligence level were of no factor, I would be an archeologist living in Britain researching Neolithic sites. I’m fascinated with British history. An Anglophile, as I’ve heard it coined! I even have a mini Stonehenge set that my husband gave me for Christmas. I think he was making fun of me, but I love it anyway!

Photo: Dan Dennehy