Bea Arthur spent seven seasons as Dorothy Zbornak, the sharpest tongue in a Miami kitchen, and South Florida never really let her go. On Wednesday, Oct. 21, a new documentary built around an interview with Arthur that the public has never seen plays one night at Gray Box Theater, the young 240-seat stage at 1444 NE 26th St. in Wilton Manors.

A kitchen-table interview, finally on screen

The film is Bea Arthur: I've Done Everything But Porn, a title that sounds exactly like something she would have said with a straight face. According to Gray Box Theater's event page, the documentary is built on a never-before-released conversation with Arthur and pairs it with new interviews with friends and colleagues who worked beside her. The Little Theatre in Rochester, N.Y., which has its own screening later this month, describes the original interview as recorded at her kitchen table, per its listing.

The film follows the whole arc, not only the sitcom years. It starts with her student days at The New School, moves through off-Broadway, Broadway and cabaret, and then into television. That means Maude, the role that made her famous in the 1970s; Dorothy on The Golden Girls; and Vera Charles in Mame, the part that won her a Tony. It runs 113 minutes, per the Jacob Burns Film Center, which has a screening of its own on Oct. 26.

Why Wilton Manors makes sense

The theater's own description of the film spends real time on something that fans in Wilton Manors already know: Arthur was a longtime, outspoken supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, and she gave her voice and her money to causes she believed in. A city whose Wilton Drive has long been a home base for LGBTQ+ South Florida is a natural place for that part of her story to land.

There is a Golden Girls angle too. The show was set in Miami, and four decades later Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia are still the most beloved fictional South Floridians on television. A film that lets Arthur speak for herself, at length, is a different thing from a tribute act, and that is the draw here.

Who made it

The documentary is produced by Dan Watt, a 2024 Emmy winner, and Daryl Roth, the Broadway producer who has won both a Tony and a Pulitzer, according to the Gray Box listing. Watt also directed it. At other stops on the film's fall run, including the Burns center and the Little Theatre, he is scheduled to stay after the screening for a Q&A and to share stories from his own time with Arthur. The Little bills its night as one of a small handful of in-person screenings planned across the country, which makes a Wednesday on NE 26th Street a rare chance to see it with a room full of fans rather than alone on a couch.

The theater itself

If you have not been inside Gray Box yet, this is a good excuse. The nonprofit venue is presented by CAN Community Health and works with the arts nonprofit HarmonyWaves to program original plays, live music, spoken word, cabaret and community events. The theater says it came together in just 122 days. With 240 seats, it is big enough to feel like an event and small enough that nobody is watching from the back of a multiplex.

A few practical notes from the theater's FAQ and home page: the venue is cashless and takes cards and mobile pay, and it offers a rotating $5 Lyft and Uber discount code for rides to Wilton Drive from Thursday through Sunday. A Wednesday show falls outside that window, so plan on parking or paying full fare. The screening is scheduled from 7 to 9 p.m., and tickets are sold through the theater's online box office.

Make a night of it

Wilton Drive's restaurants and bars are a short ride away, so a midweek dinner before a 7 p.m. start is easy to pull off. Bring the friend who can still recite the cheesecake scenes word for word. For one evening, the woman who played the most quotable Miamian on television gets the last word in her own voice, and Wilton Manors gets to hear it in a room full of people who love her.