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
Archie Bunker sprinkling "incest" (incense) on their congregation, whereas he referred to incest itself as "committing 'insects' in the family". Archie repeatedly called Richard M. Nixon "Richard E. Nixon". By the show's second season, these had become dubbed "Bunkerisms", "Archie Bunkerisms", or simply "Archie-isms". The actor who played Bunker, Carroll O'Connor, is Irish Catholic, and Norman Lear modeled the character on his Jewish father, but Bunker's own ethnicity is never explicitly stated, other than identifying him as a WASP; over the course of the series, he mocks or belittles not just most minorities (including blacks, Hispanics, Latinos, Jews, and Asians), but also