The Ali Forney Center Will Name New LGBT Residence After Bea Arthur

The Ali Forney Center has announced its plan to name a residence for LGBT youth in honor of Bea Arthur. AFC will formally announced the honor at Arthur's September 14 memorial service. The event will take place at Broadway's Majestic Theater.

Bea Arthur passed away April 25, 2009 At age 86.

"Bea Arthur was tremendously kind and generous to the Ali Forney Center" says Carl Siciliano, AFC Founder and Executive Director. "The caring and concern that Bea expressed for our kids meant the world to us, and we are thrilled to be able to give honor to her memory in this way."

To read more about Arthur's efforts with the AFC, click here.

The Ali Forney Center is the nation's largest organization dedicated to homeless LGBT youth. AFC currently provides eight residential sites offering emergency shelter and longer-term housing, and additionally provides two drop-in centers which offer medical care, mental health treatment, HIV prevention, testing and treatment, housing and benefit assistance, and job training and placement services. The mission of the Ali Forney Center is to help homeless LGBT youth be safe and become independent as they move from adolescence to adulthood. Ali Forney was a queer youth who was murdered on the streets in 1997, when there was no safe shelter for LGBT youth in NYC.

Bea Arthur's memorial will take place at the Majestic Theater in New York on Monday, September 14, 2009 at 1pm. The afternoon will be hosted by Bea's Bosom Buddy, Angela Lansbury who will be joined by Bea's close friends, both professional and personal, as well as family.

The program will be a celebration of Bea's life and career. All are invited and admission is free. Further information on the event is expected to follow shortly.

Before she became an iconic Emmy®-Award winning television star, Bea Arthur received a Tony Award® for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 1966 for her performance as Angela Lansbury's best friend Vera Charles in the original Broadway production of Jerry Herman's musical Mame, directed by Gene Saks, her husband at that time.

Ms. Arthur's Broadway career began in 1955 with the original musical Plain and Fancy and continued with roles in Seventh Heaven and Nature's Way. Among her Broadway credits, she played Yente the Matchmaker in the 1964 premiere of Fiddler on the Roof and appeared in Woody Allen's The Floating Lightbulb in 1981.

In 2002, she returned to Broadway starring in Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends, a collection of stories and songs based on her life and career. The show was nominated for a Tony Award® for Best Special Theatrical Event.

In a career spanning seven decades, the celebrated actress, comedienne, singer and writer became a television star as the title character, Maude Findlay, on the 1970's sitcom Maude, and as Dorothy Zbornak on the 1980's sitcom The Golden Girls. She won Emmy® Awards for both roles.

She is survived by two sons and two granddaughters.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.