Blanche Devereaux - Love Life

Love Life

Although notoriously man-hungry, Blanche was faithfully married for decades to her husband George Devereaux (George Grizzard). George died three years before the start of the series in 1985, and at some point earlier, they had moved from Atlanta to Miami.

In a 1990 episode, Blanche had a dream that George came back from the dead nine years later (he said that he faked his death to escape criminal prosecution for fraud). Rue McClanahan has said that George was the love of Blanche's life, and that her promiscuity was in fact a desperate search for the next love of her life. The cause of George's death is never definitively established in the series: he either died immediately during a car accident when Blanche was at home, or after being in a coma when Blanche was getting a pedicure.

During her junior year in high school, in spring 1949, when she was 17, she almost eloped with Deck Boughvenlough, the father of her rival at cheerleading with the sole purpose of having her taken off the squad. From this story, we learn that Blanche was born in 1932. This made her 53 when the first season begins and 61 when The Golden Palace went off the air in 1993.

• Blanche also appeared in one episode of Empty Nest, entitled Fatal Attraction, and one episode of Nurses, entitled Moon Over Miami.

On the show, Blanche is shown to have dated various men, some of them unsavory. She almost married a bigamist in the pilot episode before he got caught by the police. Another man stole her necklace at her full moon-leap year's party, and he too was caught by the police. One boyfriend named Rex was emotionally and verbally abusive, until her roommate Dorothy helped her see his true colors. Another boyfriend Gary (Jerry Hardin) cheated on her under her very roof by sleeping with Rose's sister Holly (Inga Swenson) who was visiting. Yet another, who appears in The Golden Palace, turns out to be a gigolo (Barry Bostwick). Blanche overcame her apprehension of dating Ted, who was in a wheelchair, only to find out he was married, so she terminated the relationship based on the fact that she has never been the "other woman" in extramarital affairs and never wanted to be. The only other time that occurred was when, through a bizarre turn-of-events, her beau's wife was revived by paramedics after she was declared dead. But Blanche has also ruined good relationships with worthy men: Jake (Donnelly Rhodes) was perfect and wanted to marry her, he was charming, romantic, but they had too many differences and she turned him down, to the disgust of her roommates, and regretted it later, and when Steven (Robert Mandan) was hospitalized, she refused to visit him until much later, by which time he reconciled with his ex-girlfriend, Karen. Unlike Blanche, who feared commitment and having another man die on her, when Karyn heard of Steven's illness, she went right to his side when he needed someone. She also dated John Quin (Edward Winter) and considered breaking up with him because he was blind and she felt self-conscious because she knew he wasn't attracted to her physical beauty. She later apologized to him and made plans to go out with him again, but the relationship apparently ended, as he is never mentioned on the series again. Blanche's most frequent (but only seen once in Season 6) date was Mel Bushman (Alan King), who was always available whenever she lacked male companionship. The one time he wasn't, Blanche assumed he was dead and promptly fell in temporary love with him when she realized he was alive. Because of his zipper manufacturing business, Mel was known as "The Zipper King". When Blanche's death is reported mistakenly in the paper, Mel Bushman sends flowers and a note, saying he's gone back to his ex-wife.

On the show, Blanche is portrayed as a promiscuous woman, with her initials spelling out the word "BED." However, Viola Watkins calls her "Blanche Marie." She spends a great deal of her time with members of the opposite sex, and this is a source of both condemnation from and amusement to her roommates. Blanche's seemingly liberated human sexual behavior is a contrast to the sexual climate of the 1980s, when AIDS was beginning to seep into a nation's consciousness. However, in the episode "72 Hours," it is mentioned that Blanche was cognizant of the dangers of HIV and STDs; she always used protection and knows every lover's full sexual history. It is also implied in one episode that she has had numerous interracial sexual liaisons with African-American men, though no such relations were ever depicted on camera.