Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Sony
EAN: 0043396136717
Format: Box set
Label: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Number Of Items: 3
Publisher: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Region Code: 99
Release Date: 2007-03-20
Running Time: 460
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: 1972-09-12
MPN: COLD13671D

Emmy Award-winner Beatrice Arthur stars in this beloved, groundbreaking sitcom created by Norman Lear. Maude was first introduced as Edith Bunker's outspoken, liberal cousin on the classic TV show "All in the Family." Her spinoff, set in Tuckahoe, New York, focuses on Maude's daily adventures at home with fourth husband Walter (Bill Macy), divorced daughter Carol (Adrienne Barbeau), and Carol's son Phillip. Joining in on the fun is housekeeper Florida (Esther Rolle, TV's Good Times), and conservative next-door neighbor Arthur (Conrad Bain, TV's "Diff'rent Strokes"). Guest stars include Rue McClanahan (TV's "The Golden Girls"), John Amos (TV's "Good Times"), and Tom Bosley (TV's "Happy Days"). Blessed with some of the best TV comedy writing ever, along with controversial plotlines, the show is just as hilarious and surprising today as it was when it debuted in the top ten in the early 1970s. Full of memorable one-liners, including her famous warning "God'll get you for that, Walter!"

Customer Rating:
Summary: We love MAUDE
Comment: Why oh why isn't there more seasons of MAUDE? They need to make more!!! WE LOVE MAUDE! She was and still is very cutting edge. Talks about a lot of issues that are still taboo. What an amazing show!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Bea Arthur at her finest
Comment: Long a fan of "Golden Girls," I recently decided to check out "Maude," which was a bit before this twenty-something's time. I wasn't disappointed -- not only are Bea Arthur and supporting cast excellent, but the show's situations and humor are timeless. There's nothing that is said or done during these twenty episodes that isn't as relevant today as it was thirty years ago.

Season 1, featuring Beatrice Arthur as Maude Findlay and David Macy as her fourth husband Walter, also includes Adrienne Barbou as Maude's twenty-something daughter Carol, who's moved back home with her son Phillip following her divorce.

Key episodes include "The Grass Story," where Maude and her housewife friends are determined to get arrested for possession of marijuana after a local boy receives what they feel is an unjust punishment for the same; and the two-part "Maude's Dilemma," where the title character finds herself in a surprise pregnancy at the age of 47.

If you haven't seen this show, give it a try! You'll soon be hooked.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: OH MY GOD!
Comment: This is one of the best sitcoms I have ever seen!!! I ordered this DVD because of all the good comments, and I was blown away bye Bea Arthur. I've seen her in the Golden Girls but I think this one's better!!!

I hope Sony (or whichever it is) launches the other seasons (I don't know how many there were), I will buy all of the right away!!!

If you like sitcoms from today, start my viewing the ones from the past and fall in love with Maude and all the bunch.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: :( A great DVD that stopped at Season One
Comment: This is a marvelous show. Brilliantly written and magnificently performed. The humor runs the gamut from giggly-cute to in-your-face. The characters are a whacky mix and the topics they discuss were sometimes very shocking in the 70's. This was a show that got people talking about these things, and helped them clear the air and have a good laugh about it. More than a few stubborn people had a change of heart thanks to this show.
Wouldn't it be nice if Season Two was also available? Just think of all the great Season Two shows, languishing in the vaults, and nobody to enjoy them. Wouldn't it be nice if.....?

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The 70s Feminist As Suburban Godzilla
Comment: Norman Lear's seminal television series 'Maude' (1972-1978) harks back to a time when American adults were still adults, people freely and fearlessly spoke their minds, and the modern scourge of political correctness did not exist.

Lear revolutionized American television with 'All In The Family' (1971-1979), which introduced audiences to bigoted conservative Queens resident Archie Bunker in an era when most viewers where still tuning in for pleasant rural fantasies like 'Mayberry R.F.D.' and established series with magical premises like 'Bewitched' (1964-1972).

Where television comedies of the previous decade, from 'Mr. Ed' (1961-1966) to 'Hazel' (1961-1966), had emphasized genteel good manners and upper middle class respectability, All In The Family, with its coarse blue collar protagonist and his 'dingbat' wife, Edith, hit the ground running by boldly tackling themes of racism, anti-Semitism, rape, homosexuality, women's liberation, breast cancer, and impotence.

Rumored to have been based on Lear's wife Frances, Maude Findlay originally debuted on All In The Family in a passing role as Edith Bunker's cousin. Maude was the diametric opposite of Archie Bunker: upper middle class, feminist, educated, intelligent, and, above all, liberal.

Brilliantly portrayed by Beatrice Arthur, Lear wisely realized that he had television gold on his hands, and 'Maude' soared into primetime, as instant and controversial a success as All In The Family had been a year earlier. Arthur's commanding presence, impeccable comic timing, and blatant intellect cast an instant shadow across the entertainment landscape of the country, making 'Maude' one the decade's most recognizable icons.

Dressed in her slightly eccentric trademark ensemble of a kneelength open vest over a blouse, a neckerchief, and a pair of loose trousers, the tall, confrontational, never less-than-assertive Maude, with her unruly steel-gray hair, hilariously roars through each episode, bellowing, hollering, and reducing her antagonists to rubble like a prototypical Japanese monster.

Like All In The Family, 'Maude' would embrace mature themes like racism, abortion, spousal abuse, alcoholism, and mental illness (in a later season, Maude is revealed to suffer from manic-depression after becoming obsessed with the idea that screen legend Henry Fonda should become America's next president) head-on in a responsible but consistently entertaining manner. 'Maude' was a program created largely for adults and watched largely by adults; children and teenagers were unlikely to find it interesting.

As the characters in Woody Allen's later films 'Annie Hall' (1977) and 'Manhattan' (1979) would, Maude, her husband Walter (Bill Macy), and other adult cast members blithely take subscription pills to stabilize their moods, while the ritual of evening cocktails is an essential component of the Findlay's daily lives. There are very few episodes in the first season in which Maude, Walter, or physician-neighbor Arthur (Conrad Bain) don't reach for a drink as soon as tempers begin to flare.

Perhaps these habits explain the continually worn-out, beaten-down look of the cast, the repulsive clothing worn by everyone, the women's taste-free hairstyles, and the relatively tacky interior of the Findlay manse.

Or perhaps Lear was partially attempting to underscore the 'realism' of his program: the grooming, dress, and decor found in 'Maude' are leagues away from the polished standard established by earlier Fifties and Sixties television series from 'Leave It To Beaver' (1957-1963) and 'My Favorite Martian' (1963-1966) to 'That Girl' and 'Family Affair' (both 1966-1971).

This is particularly unlikely to be the case, however, since most of the show's production values are equally poor, a trend which would unfortunately sweep Seventies television and not be rectified until the late Eighties and early-to-mid Nineties with dramas like 'Thirtysomething' (1987-1991), 'Twin Peaks' (1990-1991), 'Northern Exposure' (1990-1195), and 'Picket Fences' (1992-1996).

But 'Maude' was always about intellectual substance rather than visual style, and if he couldn't reflect both qualities equally, Lear certainly made the right choice, as 'Maude,' via the complexity of the writing, characterization, and superb acting by Arthur, remains the never-bettered situation comedy of its kind.

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