Frans death

[mamasfan]

Hi, i hate to post just because of this, but you have a mistake in Aunt Fran's bio. She actually choked on a toothpick while trying to get a string of roast beef out of her teeth while eating the all you can eat at the Bigger Jigger. She was in the bathroom trying to get the roast beef out with a toothpick when Mama burst through the door with a catfish tail stuck in her teeth, shouting "just be glad you didn't have the fish!" Fran was so surprised she inhaled the toothpick and locked herself in the bathroom stall.

I wouldn't even say anything, but your site looks like you really put some time in it and you just updated a few weeks ago, so I can tell you put work into it. And thanks for clearing up the mystery of Buzz & Sonja. Or at least, cleared it up as much as possible I guess. They are rerunning the episodes where I live and it is now on the episode where Mama dreams the names of all the winning horses then develops insomnia. I thought I missed the one where Buzz & Sonja left, but I guess they just took them off the show with no explanation. To bad.

Anyway, again nice site, and its good to know there are other fans of this show besides me. My husband thinks I'm crazy for watching this show so much.

[yumiko]

what a way to die ..

it seems as if they didn't value fran's character much, lol. She was much better as a golden girl.

[mamafanla]

Well I had read Rue McClanahan hated the role of Fran. She claimed that when she signed on the show that the character was totally different and that they changed the character shortly before filming started. so i think having Fran choke on a toothpick was the writers way of getting back at Rue.

[eightiesfan]

Really? That is interesting. I wonder what "specifically" she hated about the character. And that is interesting about the toothpick storyline. Where did you hear this from? Just curious. Thanks for the information.

[mamafanla]

Actually now I can't remember if I read that somewhere or if I had seen her say that on a tv show about her. Lifetime TV used to have a show called Intimate Portrait and they profiled her one time and I think she made that statement on it. She never went into specifics about what she didn't like about the character or how the character was originally written. I would guess she probably didn't like the character being written as an "old maid".

Of course I don't know for sure that the writers wrote the toothpick storyline to spite her but it sounds logical.

[mtelera]

Rue said it in her book. The character of Fran was supposed to bre fiestier until they saw Dorothy Lyman and gave the feisty part to Naomi and made Aunt Fran more prim. In the book Rue doesn't even have how Aunt Fran died correct. She says Fran choked on a chicken bone.

[rickyrod46]

I think Rue was used to playing characters with sex appeal (ie: Blanche Devereaux, and Vivian ,from Maude)and Fran had no
sex appeal...Fran weas actually a very confusing character for me, never understood why she was a spinster, or for that matter naive..I was really happy for Mamas Family and Rue when she left and found a character more suited for her, the lo and behold here comes Beverly Archer (who in my opinion, saved Mamas Family). She made Iola beliveable and played the Spinster to the tee. ;D