Blanche Devereaux - Family

Family

Blanche Elizabeth Marie Hollingsworth Devereaux born in 1932 (as revealed by her mother in the season 3 episode "Mother's Day", Blanche was 17 in 1949), grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, at her family's mansion, Twin Oaks. Her parents were the late Elizabeth-Ann Margaret Bennett (Helen Kleeb) (later seasons named her mother as "Samantha Roquet") and Curtis "Big Daddy" Hollingsworth (first Murray Hamilton, and after Hamilton died, David Wayne), the latter a revered man in his neck of the woods. Much to Blanche's dismay, he married a young widow named Margaret Spencer (Sondra Currie) years after Blanche's mother, Elizabeth, died, but she grudgingly accepted the marriage. Blanche was not at Big Daddy's side when he died because she was supposed to attend a ball in Miami, in which she was the host (she admitted that in order to get the part she had to sleep with a committee member twice) but refused to go to his funeral because of an argument with her sister Virginia; Blanche regretted this afterward and resolved to try to rethink her priorities in life. After Big Daddy died, it was revealed that he and Blanche's long-lost African-American nanny Viola Watkins (Ruby Dee) had an affair that lasted for fifty years. She attended the fictional Miss McIver's Finishing School. Blanche is a member of "the Alpha Gams" (Alpha Gamma Delta) but it is not known which university she attended. The most likely schools are Brenau University or the University of Georgia which both have Alpha Gam Chapters dating back to the time when Blanche was college-aged. Both schools are also located within a short driving distance of Blanche's home in Atlanta. On occasions, Blanche states that she was Baptist. Blanche also had a nanny, who called her by another middle name, Marie. She called out this name on the episode where she had returned to Miami to claim a music box she had given Blanche's father, Big Daddy, when the two of them had an affair while he was married to Blanche's mother. She's proud of her status as a southern debutante, but when tracing her family history is shocked to learn that she has a great-grandparent who was named Feldman from New York, which prevents her from joining a conservative southern women's organization.

Blanche has four siblings: Virginia Hollingsworth Wylde (Sheree North) is the eldest sister, with whom Blanche shares a mutual loathing. They buried the hatchet when Virginia went into renal failure and Blanche offered her kidney to her sister, but their relationship became strained once more after their argument after Big Daddy's death in which Virginia accused Blanche of being too selfish and self-centered to say goodbye to her own father. Charmaine (Barbara Babcock), the spoiled youngest sister, who infuriated Blanche when she wrote a sordid novel that Blanche thought was about her, but when it was revealed that the book was about Charmaine and not Blanche, they made up and apologized to each other. There is also Clayton (Monte Markham), a younger brother whose subsequent revelation as being gay troubled Blanche to some extent; Blanche's reluctance to accept Clayton's sexual orientation nearly cost her relationship with him. During The Golden Palace, it was revealed that Blanche has a mentally challenged brother, Tad (Ned Beatty), who has spent most of his life in a Chattanooga institution. It was once revealed, when she was attempting to gain entry to the Daughters of the South, that she is 1/8 Jewish, her great-grandmother having been a Jewish woman named Rosalind Feldman from Buffalo, New York. Blanche also had a visit from her promiscuous niece, Lucy (played by Hallie Todd, later of Lizzie McGuire fame).