Maude
 Beatrice Arthur featured in this All In The Family
spin-off as Maude Findlay, a loud, middle-aged woman living in
suburban upper middle-class Tuckahoe, New York, with her fourth
husband, Walter, her divorced daughter Carol, and Carol's young
son Phillip.
The Findlay's also went through three housekeepers during the
run of the series. The first , Florida Evans (pictured below),
left in 1974 to her own spin-off, Good Times.
Maude Findlay was opinionated like her cousin Archie Bunker,
but her politics and class position were completely different.
Strong-willed, intelligent and articulate, the liberal progressive
Maude spoke out on issues raised less openly on All In The
Family.
While facelifts, birth control , abortion, alcoholism and
menopause don't seem like a recipe for prime time success, they
were among the personal crises Maude faced in her six seasons on
air and part of what accounted for the show's ranking in the top
ten for four consecutive years.
 In
a two-part episode that ran early in the series, the 47-year-old
Maude finds out that she's pregnant and decides, with her husband
Walter, that she would have an abortion which, had just been made
legal in New York State.
Part two of the double episode also dealt with men and birth
control as Walter considers getting a vasectomy. Thousands of
viewers wrote letters in protest of the episode because of the
abortion issue.
In other episodes Maude gets a face-lift, Walter's business
goes bankrupt, and he deals with the resulting bout with
depression; in yet another Walter confronts his own
alcoholism.
The socially controversial, sometimes radical sitcom ran on CBS
from 1972 to 1978, and like its predecessor All in the Family,
was created by Norman Lear's Tandem Productions.
The show's ratings began to fall after its fourth season, and
by 1978 Bea Arthur announced that she would leave the show.
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