Beatrice Arthur, 86, a brassy Maude and Golden Dorothy

LOS ANGELES - Beatrice Arthur, 86, best known as the acerbic Maude Findlay on Norman Lear's sitcom

Maude

and as the strong-willed Dorothy Zbornak on the long-running

The Golden Girls,

died yesterday.

Ms. Arthur, a stage-trained actress who was a success on Broadway long before television audiences got to know her, died of cancer at her Los Angeles home, a family spokesman said.

In 1966, the tall, husky-voiced Ms. Arthur won a Tony for her performance as Angela Lansbury's sharp-tongued sidekick, Vera Charles, in the original production of Mame on Broadway, which was named best musical that year.

She had little experience in film or TV when Lear spotted her singing a song called "Garbage" in an off-Broadway show, The Shoestring Revue. In 1971, Lear brought her to Hollywood for a guest role on CBS's All in the Family. She played Edith Bunker's loudmouthed cousin, Maude, who tangled with Edith's equally loudmouthed husband, Archie Bunker, from opposite sides of the political fence. Within a year, Ms. Arthur had her own show, Maude, which ran for six years on CBS.

Maude came at the onset of the feminist movement and addressed serious issues, including death, depression, and abortion, but there were always laughs. Maude's most famous line, delivered often and with withering drollery, was: "God will get you for that."

Playing Maude earned Ms. Arthur five Emmy nominations and a statuette in 1977. Despite the show's success, she did not enjoy being the public face of feminism, a role she said was thrust upon her. "It put a lot of unnecessary pressure on me," she told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2001.

After she left Maude, she returned to TV in 1985 as Dorothy, the divorcee on The Golden Girls, which ran from 1985-92. The show - about the lives of three older women sharing a household in Miami with Dorothy's widowed mother - also brought her an Emmy for best actress in a comedy. She also appeared in Malcolm in the Middle and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

She was born Bernice Frankel on May 13, 1922, in New York City, the daughter of department-store owners, and was raised in Cambridge, Md. She often described herself as a shy child, but her classmates remembered her as vivacious and funny.

Although she pined to be a June Allyson type - small and cute - she made the most of her 5-foot-9 stature and a voice so deep that on the telephone she was often mistaken for a man. She studied at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School in New York. She also joined the famed Actors Studio, where she met her future husband, Gene Saks, who directed Broadway shows and movies.

In 1964, Harold Prince cast her as Yente the Matchmaker in the original company of Fiddler on the Roof.

In 2002, Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends, a one-woman show she developed with composer Billy Goldenberg, appeared on Broadway for two months. The show also toured the United States, Canada, and elsewhere. "I simply wanted to see if I had the guts to just come out and be myself, which is something I never felt very comfortable doing," she told her audiences.

In addition to performing, she supported animal rights and AIDS research. She had lived in Los Angeles for many years. Ms. Arthur and Saks divorced in the late 1970s. She is survived by two sons.