Golden Girl With a Lust for Writing : Theater: Rue McClanahan unveils her talent as she pens the words and music for the farce ‘Oedipus, Schmedipus.’

She’s the Golden Girl who goes gaga over guys.

And now she’s flirting with another challenge. This time, it’s theater.

“I just thought it would be fun,” said TV sitcom specialist Rue McClanahan, about the new musical, “Oedipus, Schmedipus, As Long as You Love Your Mother” opening tonight at the Golden Theatre in Burbank. McClanahan, who plays the lusty Blanche on NBC’s long-running “Golden Girls,” penned the lyrics and music for the farce about a father and son in love with the same woman. “It was always my pet. Friends would want to go out, and I worked on it instead. It really made me laugh harder than any of them.”

And maybe cry. McClanahan started the project in 1984, before “Golden Girls.” At first, she collaborated with Norman L. Hartweg, a friend from college, until he bowed out. Then, it went through more rewrites than a high school term paper. “There are a few of Norman’s words left,” she joked.

McClanahan spent long days on the set with Betty White, Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty, her TV co-stars, and long nights at the computer screen with the stars of her imagination.

She composed songs and lyrics in her car, always carrying a portable tape recorder. She sang aloud, except at traffic lights.

Finally, in 1987, she tried out the first few scenes on stage with a few actor friends. The songs, she decided, worked; the prologue didn’t. Her pet was not ready to see visitors.

She went back to her other lives--the sitcom, a television movie, “earning money.” McClanahan never forgot “Oedipus, Schmedipus.” When she admired “Noises Off,” a farce directed by Gregory Scott Young at the Golden last year, she knew it was time for the long-awaited unveiling of her own work. She asked Young to direct.

Comedy came easily to her--sometimes by accident. Whenever she tried to write serious material, it evolved into comedy. She finally learned she can write serious stuff, as long as it doesn’t relate to an early marriage that collapsed more than 30 years ago.

“I carried the torch for him for a long time,” McClanahan said. “I couldn’t get him out of my system.”

She never got writing out of her system, either. At the University of Tulsa, McClanahan wrote musicals and did choreography.

“She was a quadruple threat in college,” Hartweg recalled. “She could act, compose songs, choreograph and dance. As she’s concentrated on acting, that other side of her seemed to vanish. But now it’s back.”

In some ways, McClanahan derives a satisfaction from writing that she has never attained in acting.

“In writing, there’s that unexpected inspiration that presents itself as a gift,” McClanahan said. “You can move at your own pace. In acting, you have to act as a group. You can only move as quickly as the slowest member of the group.”

She is hardly ready, however, to relinquish her acting career.

“I’ll always be an actress,” she said. “There are just certain things I can’t say any other way. I can act anything. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in comedy.”

Next month she’ll begin her seventh season of “Golden Girls.” She knows how close she came to never getting the chance.

After five years on “Maude” on CBS, McClanahan became a regular on NBC’s “Mama’s Family,” which starred Carol Burnett’s sidekick, Vicki Lawrence. The network dropped the show in 1985. But the temporary misfortune became the break of her career. She was available to audition for “Golden Girls.”

“I knew it was special when the script came through delivery service,” she said. “It came in this gold packet, and had its letters in black. I just had a feeling about it.”

Her intuition alone wasn’t going to be enough to land her a part. She hoped to try out for Blanche, but soon learned the part belonged to White. The producers wanted her to read for the role of Rose.

But when Jay Sandrich, who directed the show’s pilot, spotted her, he asked her to read for Blanche. She got Blanche, White got Rose.

“I knew how to play that part,” McClanahan said.

She feels that she also knows how to write a musical.

It is based in 452 BC in Athens. Both Hornius Maximus, the wealthiest tycoon in Athens, and his son, Puritas, fight for the love of Trembelina. They both hope to buy her.

McClanahan doesn’t see “Oedipus” as a one-time endeavor. She has already written another musical, “Cobra Island,” and may write an episode of “Golden Girls.” She sees herself doing the show for two more years.

“I don’t think I’d be too comfortable after that,” she said.

“Oedipus, Schmedipus,” a musical farce with music and lyrics by Rue McClanahan, opens tonight at the Golden Theatre, 139 N. San Fernando Road, Burbank, and will run indefinitely. For information, call (818) 841-9921.