Intimate Portrait

Rue McClanahan (6x7)

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Rue McClanahan: A Truly Golden Career To the world, Rue McClanahan will forever be Southern sex kitten Blanche. But more than that, McClanahan is a wife, an activist and a survivor. It was dance, not acting, that first lured Rue McClanahan into the spotlight. Born into a Midwestern blue-collar family (her father was a construction contractor and her mother, a homemaker), her parents wanted their children to experience the arts, so the young McClanahan got plenty of private dance lessons. Eventually, she taught ballet herself. But as a freshman at the University of Tulsa, the 18-year-old found a new love: acting. She immersed herself in all things theatrical during college, but was torn when a full scholarship to a prestigious dance company in Colorado came her way. Eventually, she turned it down, and graduated with highest honors and a double major in theatre arts and German. But Tulsa couldn't hold her. Her sights were set on New York. Initially, McClanahan kept busy acting in not-qu