Bea Arthur in the unsuccessful 1974 film version opposite Lucille Ball. In 1981, she appeared in Woody Allen's "The Floating Light Bulb". She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1994 portraying the Duchess of Krakenthorp, a speaking role, in Gaetano Donizetti's "La fille du régiment". In 1971, Arthur was invited by Norman Lear to guest-star on his sitcom "All in the Family", as Maude Findlay, the cousin of Edith Bunker. An outspoken liberal feminist, Maude was the antithesis role to the conservative Republican character Archie Bunker, who described her as a "New Deal fanatic". Nearly 50, Arthur's tart turn on
Carroll O'Connor Robert, a psychiatrist in New York City. O'Connor spent much of his youth in Elmhurst and Forest Hills, Queens, the same borough in which his character Archie Bunker would later live. In 1941, Carroll O'Connor enrolled at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, but dropped out when the United States entered World War II. During the war, he was rejected by the United States Navy and enrolled in the United States Merchant Marine Academy for a short time. After leaving that institution, he became a merchant seaman and served in the United States Merchant Marine during World War II. After