You knew her as Dorothy on The Golden Girls: sharp-tongued, six feet of pure dignity, never one to be pushed around. But long before Hollywood, Bea Arthur was something else entirely. She was a United States Marine.
In February 1943, a 20-year-old named Bernice Frankel walked into a recruiting office. The Marine Corps had just announced its Women’s Reserve on February 13th of that year. Bernice showed up to enlist just five days later.
Bernice Frankel, of course, would later become Bea Arthur. And she served in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve during World War II. Her military service file documents what the Marines thought of her during that time.
Here is the surprising part. For years after the war, Bea Arthur denied it. She did not talk about her service. When the subject came up, she pushed back on it.
It is a side of her that most fans of The Golden Girls (which ran on CBS) never knew existed. The woman who made millions laugh on Saturday nights had answered her country’s call decades before any of that.
She passed away in 2009 after a battle with lung cancer. But her military service file survives, a record of a young woman who quietly did something remarkable at a moment when the world needed it most.
There was always more to Bea Arthur than the zingers. Turns out, quite a lot more.
