Maude's neck

And then there’s MAUDE!

Turkey-like neck.

Your time will come, OP.

Strivectin TL neck cream is my friend.

Dorothy wore the most clothes. It's Miami and she's wearing boots, and a drapey dress and a shawl, and blazer.

It was the style at the time. 😉

Lady Godiva was a freedom rider—she didn’t care if the whole world looked! / And then there’s Maude in a cowl neck sweater—she got an abortion at forty seven!

r6 she did look absolutely fantastic. Dorothy was the most stylish.

R7, why you dirty rat. She was expelling the dreaded menopause baby!

In Golden Girls her neck and chest were actually frequently exposed (the only part of her body that ever was apart from her forearms). Usually when she was all slutted up for a date or fancy dress party. She got a face-lift (and likely also neck-lift) in between Maude and GG though, right? That would explain the more flagrant skin flaunting.

She had VERY good surgery pre-GG. Dorothy looked ten years younger than Maude.

Also on “Maude,” they made Rue look much older in her first appearance (“Maude’s Dilemma Part One”) so they just aged her down for reality episode.

Florida’s neck or lack of

To cover up the hickeys, Rose!

When she looked like a "mother of a solid gold dancer," she was wearing a V-neck blouse.

Maude was into vampirism

R14 sorry, on The Golden Girls.

Bea was so fat in the 70s. Must have been all the booze.

Turtlenecks were right on, sister!✊🏾

I did wonder watching Maude if maybe the rumors were true and she was covering up an Adam's apple.

God’ll get you for that, R19.

Yes, as mentioned, she got really good work done before Golden Girls.

Facelift, upper and lower eye job, and a neck lift.

In 1986, Dorothy really did look 10 years younger than Maude did in 1977.

Bea in 1977

Bea in 1988

Anyone see The Boss with Melissa McCarthy? She wore turtlenecks for the entire film and they never acknowledge it.

Nora Ephron wrote the book on it.

Powder and Paint (and some carefully placed sutures) make a Gal what she ain’t, R23!

I read an interview with Bea where she also mentioned having had breasts reduction. She was just short of completely renovated physically by the time of “GG,” and yet still maintained that most fantastic slow-burn turnaway stare more than anyone else this side of Jack Benny. :)

Oddly enough, Maude was rarely the butt of jokes about her looks, whereas a large part of the humor in Golden Girls was jokes about Dorothy’s appearance, even though Bea looked so much better as Dorothy compared with Maude. It’s no wonder Bea wanted out of Golden Girls after a few years and had to be persuaded at several times during the run of the show to keep going for seven seasons.

Maude's sack.

The scene that ends with Dorothy saying, “Why don’t I just hang a sign around my neck that says ‘Too ugly to live’” is funny but I could see where Arthur would not have liked it. Or the scene where Sophia refers to Dorothy as hideous in anything backless. The jokes about Rose being dumb or Blanche a slut were strictly related to the character but for Dorothy, it was her physical appearance.

As people advance in age it is appropriate and becoming for them to cover up all the sagging, mottled flesh that’s hanging off their bony frames.

And then there's Broad!

My neck! My back!

Hilary Shepard, the woman who claimed Bea hit on her when she was on GG, once said during an interview that Bea had a big goiter on her neck.

It’s already a shit day, but R22 and R23 made me happy for Bea Arthur. Good job!

To hide the neck scars from Lucy trying to strangle her for getting decent reviews in "Maimed."

This is because her neck featured scales like a snake’s belly.

They do a closeup of her in her first “All in the Family” appearance and man did she have a mustache!!! The lighting on AITF and “Maude” was harsher than on GG.

The moment is at the 45 second mark.

R38 I also noticed the mustache during the original airing of the episode (i.e., visible even in low definition on a cathode ray TV screen) and wondered about it. The director or Norman Lear could have done something about it but didn’t, so they may have wanted it to make Maude look even more fearsome. The mustache was gone or covered during the run of the “Maude” series.

In addition to lighting improvements, I think TV camera filters and TV makeup improved between the 1970s and 1980s. Also, Lear may have wanted a hard-edged look to his videotaped programs in the 1970s because concurrently MASH was being shot on film, The MTM and Bob Newhart shows were being shot on something that looked to me like a cross between videotape and film, and The Carol Burnett Show was videotaped, but not nearly as hard-edged looking as the Lear shows. These shows played one after the other on Saturday nights, so the differences were readily apparent to me.