Rue McClanahan Biography

Rue McClanahan was an American actress best known for portraying the role of Blanche Devereaux in the TV series ‘The Golden Girls’. At the age of four, she appeared on stage in the local production of ‘The Three Little Kittens’. After graduating from Ardmore High School, she was offered a dance scholarship but chose to study Drama at the University of Tulsa and at the same time joined Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. She made her professional stage debut in the play ‘Inherit the Wind’, in 1957, and made her Broadway debut, in 1969. She was then spotted by television executive Norman Lear who cast her in various television series, such as ‘Maude’ and ‘Mama's Family’. Her most notable TV series was ‘The Golden Girls’ for which she won many awards and nominations. Apart from being an actress, she was also an animal welfare advocate and a liberal democrat. In 2007, she released her autobiography entitled ‘My First Five Husbands... and the Ones Who Got Away’ in which she spoke about her six marriages.