Rue McClanahan Looks to the Great White Way with Solo Show

Former Golden Girl and Broadway veteran Rue McClanahan is following in the footsteps of her late co-star Bea Arthur: She has a one-woman show in the works, and she’s eyeing the Great White Way, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The solo show—which would have a Windy City tryout—is based on McClanahan’s 2007 book, My First Five Husbands…and the Ones Who Got Away. In the breezy autobio, the Emmy-winning actress talks sass but never trash, blending brave revelations she discusses an abortion and her struggle with breast cancer with dishy humor she and one husband, she writes, “had about as much in common as a blowfish and a baby’s butt”.

Though she’s best known as The Golden Girls’ sexy Southern belle Blanche Devereaux, McClanahan has a stage career that spans more than four decades. She made her New York stage debut off-Broadway in 1964 in a musical version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, her Broadway debut opposite Dustin Hoffman in 1969’s Jimmy Shine and won a 1970 Obie for Who’s Happy Now? Her recent Broadway appearances include the Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2001 revival of The Women and a 2005 stint as Madame Morrible in Wicked.