(Laughter) He walked over to her and he said Bea put his arms on her shoulder and he looked
around at her and he said, "I just want to say, thank you for inviting Rue, me and
my wife to come to your show tonight and to come to this party and I was just wonderful.
Thank you so much my name is Marlow Wilson, and I'm Rue McClanahans husband-and she
said, I love Rue, Betty's a c**t." (Crowd laughter) (Applause) The women had many sides.
(More laughter) I think this next speaker, is it Dam Mathews? Dan Mathews, who um...isn't
that a wonderful story? (Laughter) I love him. Dan is one of those people who we love;
you know he would strip off naked and walk down the streets of Tokyo for animals. He's
from PETA. Here is Dam Mathews. (Applause) I first met "BEA" in 1986, on the set of
the Golden Girls, through Rue actually- who already been very involved with PETA. Later
that night, Rue said, "now, Bea is a very private person, but she's crazy about animals
and she really admires PETAS brash styles. If you gave her a call, she just might get
involved." So, I waited the appropriate thirty seconds or so, and then, very nervously
called Bea who invited me over to her house on, Old Ranch Road to learn a little bit more
about our issues. She is somebody who once wore fur, she once road on an elephant on
Circus of the Stars but, she always felt there was something wrong with it. And when she
learned about these industries, she decided that she would be very happy to speak out
against them-over the last 23years, Bea has been one of our strongest spokes people. She
helped us convince congress to stop one of the most vicious chemical testing programs
on animals- Bearing a few hundred thousand animals. (Applause) But, as anybody who has
ever spent time in the kitchen with Bea knows, she was not about to turn vegetarian. (Laughter)
One afternoon I was at her house, she was getting ready for a dinner party, we were
getting ready to go over a few camping issues and she looks at me and says, "would you
help me chop up some onions and help me press them into the meatloaf?'' I don't know
if it was the look in her eye, or the knife in her hand, but I did what she said. (Laughter)
I thought, I'm a hard core vegan here at Bea Arthur's house for a PETA meeting and
I'm helping her make a meatloaf. (Laughter) One thing that I always found shocking about
Bea was that, unlike her domineer on screen; she was extremely, extremely sensitive. When
we would go over the nitty gritty of the animal cruelty, in any of the issues we were working
on, she would be reduced to tears-sobs, and it got so bad I would try to temper things
and not divulge too many gory details, because it was incredibly hard to see this strong
women be reduced to tears. So, one day she was very upset about one of these issues and
I tried to lighten things up by saying that it would actually be-we were talking about
an upcoming PETA event- where Alec Baldwin would be presenting her with her humanitarian
reward. She wiped away the tears, shuttered and said, "God, I'd like to f*ck him!"
(Laughter- applause)