"Maude"
Maude Meets the Duke (1974)

TV Series:

"Maude" (1972)

Original Air Date:

9 September 1974 (Season 3, Episode 1)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Beautiful Daughter | Political Activism | Sitcom | Chrysler Building New York | Alcohol

Cast

Beatrice Arthur	...	Maude Findlay
Bill Macy	...	Walter Findlay
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Adrienne Barbeau	...	Carol Tranior
Elisabeth Fraser	...	Liz
Brian Morrison	...	Phillip Trainor #1
John Wayne	...	Himself

Series Cast

These people are regular cast members. Were they in this episode?

Hermione Baddeley

...

Mrs. Nell Naugatuck

Country:

USA

Color:

Color

The Power Of Celebrity

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

By the time this episode aired on Maude, Bea Arthur had established herself first on All in the Family as Edith's feminist leaning cousin Maude and then on her own show, so popular a character she became. Bea Arthur later played a kind of version of herself on Golden Girls later on.

It was decided by producer Norman Lear that Maude just had to meet someone who was the antithesis of her beliefs who wasn't Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker. So in the first episode of season three of Maude, John Wayne makes an appearance at a party in Maude's town of Tuckahoe, New York.

You had to love it. Maude who was NEVER at a loss for words defending her beliefs is reduced to a tongue tied stammering idiot just by the mere presence of John Wayne. And the Duke says some of the things just calculated to outrage her. Had Archie Bunker said them to Maude, she'd have clobbered him with a frying pan. But when John Wayne says to her that it's all right for a woman to have a career just as long as she's got supper on the table for him when he arrives home from work, she just becomes a babbling idiot.

It's the power of celebrity, of being a movie star. Even a liberated woman like Maude Findlay isn't immune from it.

The episode was great fun, I hope some of the Duke's fans get to see it sometime.