Bea Arthur on Meeting and Working With Gene Saks

Bea: No, when we were in drama school. We were-as a matter of fact I have a wonderful picture of-oh god, I think it was 1949 that we took of a production of the Booswa Jantium (sp) by Mullyair (sp) and there-there’s Gene and me and some other-some other actor. He was quite brilliant and-again, he was funny! There was comedy and I loved it, I loved it, it was-cause the-I don’t want to talk about what happened, because-but I do want to say one thing. I think at the time, of course it was after the I Love Lucy thing and all that, but there was still-it was still a TV-was still in it’s infancy. And-there was a lot of-it was like the you know, the bastard son, they didn’t take it seriously. I remember somebody said to me, “You know, you’re trying to turn sitcom into an art form” and I was, because I-I mean, you do that! Whatever you do, whether it’s singing for three Norwegian sailors, you know, or-I forget what we were getting-getting all involved, but-yes, I had one story I want to tell. May I tell a story? That I think is really-really-I don’t know whether I should tell it, whether it’s not in good taste, but I’ll tell it anyway, and when you get back to Canada if you decide its not, you can cut it. But-what’s his name? I can’t even think-an old friend, an old close friend… I got a call from an agent saying he wants you to read for him. Well you know, once you achieve any kind of-of celebrity, you’re never asked to read! That’s, you know, that’s a no-no. But he called me and said, “I’ll tell you why I want you to read” He said, “I have this script and I don’t know whether to cast you or Anne Bancroft” he said, “But I want you to read for me because I find TV actors are very quick to learn. They don’t spend enough time investigating” So I thought, “Well what the hell, I’m in select” the-the most difficult-the most difficult acting job I have ever done in my life was reading for him, even though I hated the script. Roddy McDowall had-had sent me the script a cou