Bea Arthur takes a look back in My First Love.

Like most self-respecting gay folks, I’ve watched The Golden Girls in its entirety more times than I can count. It was comfort food in our household in the earliest months of this year’s lockdown, as it has been before. My wife and I turned to it again recently, following the death of a loved one from COVID-19. This week, a search for Golden Girls-adjacent streaming content yielded an interesting find: Bea Arthur in My First Love. It’s currently available for free on Amazon Prime and Tubi. Non-members can digitally rent or purchase on Amazon for a small fee.

A wife in mourning

This 1988 TV movie stars Arthur as Jean Miller, a widowed driving instructor and traffic school teacher from the Bronx. Jean spends her evenings watching the videotaped last will and testament of her husband, who died nine months earlier. At the urging of her best friend, Ruth (Barbara Barrie), she sorts through mementos of her marriage. (Here we should note that Barrie’s hair is an unmistakable nod to Rue McClanahan.) That’s when Ruth spots a bundle of letters from Sam Morrissey, Jean’s high school sweetheart. Some, she observes, were exchanged even after Jean was married.

The timeline of their romance is muddled, but it’s clear they have unfinished business. When Sam’s a no-show at their high school reunion, Jean’s disappointment is palpable. Ruth encourages her to overcome her reservations and send him a letter. Before you know it, Sam (Richard Kiley), a physician living in the Hamptons, responds with a plane ticket. And a nervous Jean, surrounded by friends, reluctantly leaves for a weekend visit.

The first half of My First Love is surprisingly strong, notwithstanding its cheesy traffic school introduction. Director Gilbert Cates knew how audiences felt about Arthur and mostly stayed out of her way. His camera regards her warmly, even reverently, and she gives a characteristically confident, enjoyable performance. There’s a lot Ed Kaplan’s screenplay doesn’t tell us about Jean, and that’s OK—we’re not entirely there for her.

Building a new life

Mercifully, there’s minimal handwringing about Jean’s disapproving daughter (a grimacing Kate Charleson). The differences between her modest lifestyle—an average home, fast food meals with friends—and Sam’s economic privilege are acknowledged matter-of-factly. Once reunited, they’re as happy bowling and eating ice cream as they are dining at fine restaurants. It’s the past that stands in their way, not their tax returns.

Naturally, obstacles arise, chief among them Jean’s lingering hurt that Sam abandoned her for medical school. Sam, too, is reluctant to make himself emotionally vulnerable following a bruising divorce. The most tedious complications pile up in the movie’s second half, thanks to Sam’s comically conniving ex-girlfriend, Claire (Joan Van Ark, with a tan you worry might stain the sets). Yet the suspense of who will end up together never really builds once you see how he looks at Jean.

Kiley’s performance—smitten with Arthur, alternately amused and annoyed by Van Ark—is charming and good-natured, elevating the thin material some. His amiability might’ve been a testament to his professionalism—writer James Bawden claims in his book Conversations with Legendary Television Stars: Interviews from the First Fifty Years, that Kiley told him, “She was wonderful but kept asking if she had dropped all Maude mannerisms. She never really relaxed. It was frightening having to continually placate her. But she got decent reviews.” (Note: The content of this review questions the veracity of some of Bawden’s work.)

Barrie and Anne Francis, as another of Jean’s friends, are also in high spirits throughout. If that’s not enough to recommend My First Love, you also get Arthur eating an onion ring, falling asleep while reading Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, and celebrating a strike as the most flamboyantly attired patron in the bowling alley.

… But wait, there’s more!

Kiley and Barrie never made it onto The Golden Girls, but there are crossover events here, beginning with Arthur’s wardrobe. You’ll find that a lot of what Jean wears looks familiar, including a denim jacket and pajamas. Here are two of the more extravagant examples:

Jean’s green, purple and yellow date ensemble appeared at least twice on The Golden Girls. Dorothy wore it first in “Adult Education” (S1E20, about Blanche’s sexual harassment by a teacher). It appeared again in the Stanley-centric “Take Him, He’s Mine” (S2E3), a white blouse replacing the yellow. The interesting tuxedo dress Jean wears to her reunion might also ring a bell. Dorothy wore it in “Love, Rose” (S2E10; Rose places a personal ad and Dorothy and Blanche create a fictional respondent).

Familiar faces in the cast include Richard Herd, who plays Sam’s best friend and colleague. He guest-starred in Golden Girls episode S4E13, “The Impotence of Being Ernest,” as Rose’s sexually dysfunctional new boyfriend. (Their dinner concludes with a memorable cry of “Check, please!”) Anne Francis, Jean’s friend Terry, appeared in “Till Death Do We Volley” (S4E19). In that truly bonkers episode, she played Dorothy’s ultra-competitive girlhood friend Trudy.

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