Alan Light · CC BY 2.0

Born Bernice Frankel, Arthur built a career on a deadpan so precise it made social commentary feel like a punchline — Maude Findlay tackled abortion and alcoholism on primetime television in the early 1970s, years before sitcoms took such subjects on. She won a Tony for Mame, then Emmys for both Maude and The Golden Girls, and holds the third-most nominations ever for lead actress in a comedy series. Her one-woman Broadway show in 2002 was still selling out when she was nearly eighty.