Intimate Portrait
Rue McClanahan
TV-PG
S6 • E7 Jun 18, 2000 45mRue McClanahan: A Truly Golden Career
To the world, Rue McClanahan will forever be Southern sex kitten Blanche. But more than that, McClanahan is a wife, an activist and a survivor.
It was dance, not acting, that first lured Rue McClanahan into the spotlight. Born into a Midwestern blue-collar family (her father was a construction contractor and her mother, a homemaker), her parents wanted their children to experience the arts, so the young McClanahan got plenty of private dance lessons. Eventually, she taught ballet herself. But as a freshman at the University of Tulsa, the 18-year-old found a new love: acting.
She immersed herself in all things theatrical during college, but was torn when a full scholarship to a prestigious dance company in Colorado came her way. Eventually, she turned it down, and graduated with highest honors and a double major in theatre arts and German. But Tulsa couldn't hold her. Her sights were set on New York.
Initially, McClanahan kept busy acting in not-qu
To the world, Rue McClanahan will forever be Southern sex kitten Blanche. But more than that, McClanahan is a wife, an activist and a survivor.
It was dance, not acting, that first lured Rue McClanahan into the spotlight. Born into a Midwestern blue-collar family (her father was a construction contractor and her mother, a homemaker), her parents wanted their children to experience the arts, so the young McClanahan got plenty of private dance lessons. Eventually, she taught ballet herself. But as a freshman at the University of Tulsa, the 18-year-old found a new love: acting.
She immersed herself in all things theatrical during college, but was torn when a full scholarship to a prestigious dance company in Colorado came her way. Eventually, she turned it down, and graduated with highest honors and a double major in theatre arts and German. But Tulsa couldn't hold her. Her sights were set on New York.
Initially, McClanahan kept busy acting in not-qu
