Emmy Winner McClanahan Hopes to Bring One-Woman Show to Chicago and Broadway

By Andrew Gans
20 May 2009

Rue McClanahan
Rue McClanahan
Photo by Aubrey Reuben

Emmy Award winner Rue McClanahan, who was most recently on Broadway as Madame Morrible in Wicked, is currently checking out Chicago theatres to house her one-woman show, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The stage and screen star hopes to eventually bring the show — based on her 2007 autobiography, "My First Five Husbands" — to Broadway.

McClanahan debuted My First Five Husbands . . . and the Ones Who Got Away in July 2007 at Provincetown's Town Hall. That performance, according to press notes, was described as "a funny and fiercely revealing romp in which [McClanahan] provides a deliciously entertaining chronicle of her eventful and passionately-lived life. Candidly discussing the challenges she's faced on the road to happiness and creative fulfillment, she shares the loves and losses, hits, flops, laughter, and tears that shaped her development—as well as the hard-won wisdom she has acquired over the course of five stormy marriages and a distinguished acting career that spans more than four decades."

Emmy Award winner Rue McClanahan is best known for her work on two classic television sitcoms, "Maude" and "The Golden Girls." Last on Broadway in Stephen Schwartz's Wicked, she has also been seen on The Great White Way in productions of The Women California Suite, Sticks and Bones, Father's Day and Jimmy Shine.