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. That misconduct determination stemmed from Arthur’s
contracting of a venereal disease, which left her “incapacitated for
duty” for five weeks in late-1944. As a result, her pay was reduced for
that period.

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.