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Beatrice Benaderet ( ; April 4, 1906 – October 13, 1968) was an American actress and comedienne. Born in New York City and raised in San Francisco, she began performing in Bay Area theatre and radio before embarking on a Hollywood career that spanned over three decades. Benaderet first specialized in voice-over work in the golden age of radio, appearing on numerous programs while working with comedians of the era such as Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, and Lucille Ball. Her expertise in dialect and characterization led to her becoming Warner Bros.' leading voice of female characters in their animated cartoons of the early 1940s through the mid-1950s.
Benaderet was then a prominent figure on television in Sitcom, first with The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show from 1950 to 1958, for which she earned two Emmy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress. In the 1960s, she had regular roles in four series until her death from lung cancer in 1968, including the commercial successes The Beverly Hillbillies, The Flintstones, and her best-known role as Kate Bradley in Petticoat Junction. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame honoring her work in television.
Benaderet was raised in her mother's Catholic faith and attended grade school at a Dominican Order convent. She studied voice and the piano; her first acting performance came at 11 when she portrayed a bearded old man in a school play.
The following year, her participation in a children's production of The Beggar's Opera resulted in a local radio station manager inviting her to a one-time performance on one of his programs, for which she was paid $10. Benaderet made her professional theatre debut at 16 in a production of The Prince of Pilsen, and, after graduating from the Academy of St. Rose, a private, all-girls' high school, she attended the Reginald Travers School of Acting and joined his stock company The Players' Guild, appearing in stage productions of works such as Polly, Lysistrata, and Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Initially seeking work as a dramatic actress, she switched to comedy and performed on multiple programs, in particular the Blue Monday Jamboree variety show, where her castmates included Meredith Willson, Elvia Allman, and future I Love Lucy producer Jess Oppenheimer.Oppenheimer (1999), p. 124 Benaderet honed a variety of such as French, Spanish, New York City English, and Yiddish, the latter from voicing a character named "Rheba Haufawitz". She additionally hosted the musical variety show Salon Moderne and gained attention for her work as a female announcer, a rarity in 1930s radio.
Benaderet relocated to Hollywood in 1936 and joined radio station KHJ, making her Radio network debut with Orson Welles for his Mercury Theatre repertory company heard on The Campbell Playhouse. The following year she received her first big break in the industry on The Jack Benny Program, where she played Gertrude Gearshift, a wisecracking telephone operator who gossiped about Jack Benny with her cohort Mabel Flapsaddle (Sara Berner).Busch, Noel F. (February 3, 1947). "Jack Benny, Inc.: Comedian mixes a fiddle, a feud and stock characters in formula which has paid off for 15 years". Life, pg. 85. Retrieved July 16, 2017. Intended as a one-time appearance, the pair became a recurring role starting in the 1945–46 season, and in early 1947, Benaderet and Berner momentarily took over the NBC switchboards in Hollywood for publicity photos. She performed in as many as five shows daily, causing her rehearsal dates to conflict with those of The Jack Benny Program and resulting in her reading live as Gertrude from a marked script she was handed upon entering the studio.
Other recurring characters Benaderet portrayed were Blanche Morton on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show; school principal Eve Goodwin on The Great Gildersleeve; Millicent Carstairs on Fibber McGee & Molly; maid Gloria on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet; and Iris Atterbury on the Lucille Ball vehicle My Favorite Husband, opposite Gale Gordon. Benaderet voiced various one-time parts before joining the main cast as Iris, neighbor and friend of Ball's character Liz Cooper. The 1950 CBS program Granby's Green Acres, a perceived spinoff of My Favorite Husband, was her one radio lead role and reunited her with Gordon as a husband and wife who abandon city life to become farmers, but it lasted only eight episodes.
Benaderet continued her Burns & Allen radio role of the Burns' neighbor Blanche Morton, Gracie's friend and staunchest supporter in her escapades.Irvin (2014), pg. 17 She was the only secondary cast member who appeared in every episode and the first six shows were shot live in New York, resulting in Benaderet commuting to Los Angeles, where she was working several radio assignments at the time.
Blanche Morton's long-suffering husband, Harry, was played by four actors over the show's eight-year run; the last, Larry Keating, was introduced on the October 5, 1953 fourth-season premiere when George Burns entered the set and halted a scene of an angered Blanche preparing to hit Harry with a book. Burns introduced Keating to Benaderet and the audience, and she broke character to exchange pleasantries with Keating. The segment then resumed and Benaderet struck Keating with the book.Blythe & Sackett (1989), pp. 127–129 Benaderet and Gracie Allen regularly shopped for their own on-set wardrobeBlythe & Sackett (1989), pg. 141 and she developed a high-pitched laugh for Blanche that became a staple of the character and was used for comic effect: "When we had a scene with some silent spots in it, George would say to me, 'Laugh there, Bea.Karol (2006), pg. 53 Benaderet garnered two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 1954 and 1955.Tucker (2007), pg. 10 Following Allen's retirement in 1958 at the end of the eighth season, the program continued as The George Burns Show in 1958–59 with Blanche repackaged as George's secretary, but it was canceled after one season due to low ratings. Benaderet worked sparsely in 1959, filming one-time appearances on General Electric Theater and The Restless Gun.
Benaderet became a fixture on television in the 1960s, which included working on two shows simultaneously from 1960 to 1964. She played housekeeper Wilma in the lone season of the 1960 sitcom Peter Loves Mary, a part she received because of references from Burns. Benaderet considered herself "lucky" to be cast in another series out of fear that she had become too closely associated with Burns & Allen.Tucker (2010), pg. 199 The same year, she was then cast as the voice of Betty Rubble in the Hanna-Barbera primetime animated series The Flintstones. Benaderet auditioned with past radio coworker Jean Vander Pyl for Betty and Wilma Flintstone by exchanging dialogue before the show's co-creator Joseph Barbera, who asked afterward what part they preferred. Vander Pyl recalled in 1994: "I said, 'Oh, I want to be Wilma!' and Bea said, 'That's fine with me. Benaderet voiced guest spots on the side for fellow Hanna-Barbera productions Top Cat and The Yogi Bear Show during 1961 and 1962. While filming the debut season of her show Petticoat Junction the next year, she continued voicing Betty by recording her part alone or with her Flintstones castmates during evening hours until scheduling conflicts forced her to drop the role at the end of the fourth season in 1964. She was replaced by Gerry Johnson.
Henning had long admired Benaderet's talents and strove to create a starring vehicle for her, as he felt she was worthy of headlining her own series after years of supporting parts.Marc (1996), p. 58 When CBS granted him an open time slot after the massive success of Beverly Hillbillies, he crafted the 1963 rural sitcom Petticoat Junction around Benaderet, starring as Kate Bradley, the widowed proprietor of the Shady Rest Hotel. Cousin Pearl was consequently written out of the Beverly Hillbillies storyline as having moved back home.Mansour (2005), p. 356 The character of Kate represented Benaderet's first Straight man: "Kate Bradley is different from the characters I've played in the past. She has to walk a fine line between being humorous and tender. The other women I've played were strictly for laughs." Benaderet and director Richard Whorf auditioned the young actresses who would play Kate's three teenaged daughters;Kulzer (1992), pp. 55–57 she persuaded Henning to let his 18-year-old daughter Linda read (successfully) for the role of Betty Jo Bradley. Linda Henning and Benaderet's son, Jack Bannon, were members of a young actors' theater group at the time. CBS promoted the show's September 22, 1963, premiere with a print ad featuring an Al Hirschfeld caricature of Benaderet as Cousin Pearl. "8:00–8:30 pm on CBS: Petticoat Junction, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (September 22, 1963), pg. 256. Retrieved August 10, 2017. Petticoat Junction was an immediate hit, peaking at fourth in the Nielsen ratings, and remained in the top 30 during Benaderet's four full seasons on the show from 1963 to 1967.Brooks, Tim; Marsh, Earle F. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946–Present (Ballantine Books, 2007), pp. 1683–85. Her former Flintstones costars Alan Reed and Jean Vander Pyl filmed guest spots in later seasons.
Henning was again given free rein for a new show with no pilot needed, which he bestowed to colleague Jay Sommers due to his busy schedule. Sommers created the 1965 sitcom Green Acres, adapted from his 1950 radio program Granby's Green Acres that had starred Benaderet, thus making it a spinoff of her own television show. Benaderet filmed six appearances as Kate in the first season as both shows' casts intermingled on several episodes in a process dubbed "cross-pollination".
In 1945, Benaderet and fellow voice actresses Janet Waldo and Cathy Lewis were to appear on a televised fashion show on her former KFRC employer Don Lee's KCBS-TV network before the project fell through. On Irving Taylor's novelty album Drink Along with Irving (1960), she duetted with Elvia Allman and Mel Blanc, respectively, on tracks titled "Sub-Bourbon Living" and "Separate Bar Stools".Karol (2006), p. 130
In 1961, Benaderet dressed in a Flintstones-inspired leopard-print costume to collect donations for City of Hope and March of Dimes and worked with Welcome Wagon in the San Fernando Valley. On February 5, 1964, she was named an honorary sheriff of Calabasas, California, with her daughter Maggie accepting a badge on her behalf that was presented by her Petticoat Junction co-star Edgar Buchanan in a public ceremony.
Benaderet's treatment was initially successful and concluded in January 1968. She had missed 10 episodes of the show as she recuperated, during which her character of Kate Bradley was vaguely described in the storyline as being out of town. Expectations were that Benaderet would eventually recover and be able to resume filming. Rosemary DeCamp (Kate's sister Helen) and Shirley Mitchell (Kate's cousin Mae Jennings) filled in as temporary mother figures during her absence; Mitchell had previously worked with Benaderet on The Jack Benny Program in 1954–55 as Mabel Flapsaddle. Benaderet returned for the March 30 fifth-season finale "Kate's Homecoming","Bea Benaderet Returns to Role". Independence Examiner (p. 8). March 30, 1968. Retrieved June 24, 2017. but five months later, after shooting the first three episodes of the sixth season, she took leave from the series due to being too ill to continue. Initial plans were for her to record her voice to be inserted into future episodes. However, her condition dramatically declined; on September 26, chest pains related to her illness forced her to return to the hospital for the final time. The fourth show of the sixth season, "The Valley Has a Baby", marked Benaderet's last episode and featured only her voice with her stand-in filmed from the rear.
Benaderet died on October 13, 1968, of lung cancer and pneumonia, at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. She is entombed in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in North Hollywood. On October 17, four days after her death and the day after her funeral, her husband Eugene Twombly died at the age of 54 from a massive heart attack and is interred beside her.
Benaderet garnered praise for her mastery of and her work as a comedienne and Character actor, while she is recognized for her voice in animation. MeTV considered her an "icon" of 1960s television. Donna Douglas said, "Watching her Comic timing is like watching a ballerina. She's so effortless." Benaderet credited George Burns with mentoring her in comedy acting,Staff (September 1, 1965). "Today's Channel Check". The Cincinnati Enquirer (p. 16). Retrieved September 21, 2017. but claimed that television scriptwriters focused more on her voice and delivery than her characters, which she believed stunted opportunities for her to play more dramatic roles. For her contributions to television, Benaderet received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, on 1611 Vine Street, and she was the recipient of a Genii Award in 1966.
She is credited with over 1000 combined radio and television episode appearances,Karol (2006), p. 15-16 ("One of the most prolific actresses ever, she appeared in more than 600 series episodes — all sitcoms, one The as a voice actor only.") which earned her the nickname of "Busy Bea" from members of the press. The Pantagraph columnist Ernie Kreiling remarked in 1965 that "probably no Hollywood personality has spent as many hours in our homes". Benaderet was good friends and a frequent collaborator with Mel Blanc, who wrote in his 1988 biography That's Not All Folks!:'' "We spent so much time together in studios that I used to refer jokingly to her as the 'other woman' in my life."Blanc & Bashe (1988), p. 81
Keeping the spelling of her surname, which has been misspelled as Benederet or Benadaret, was a choice she insisted on. She first resisted requests to change it early in her radio career: "They'd say, 'Anything's better than Benaderet—How about Smith?'" When she was introduced to Orson Welles in 1936, he remarked that her name "sounded like something you Ad libitum in a mob scene." It was misspelled in a 1946 press release created specifically about its proper spelling, and Radio Life wrote in 1947: "If someone were to conduct a survey to decide the radio personality with the most frequently misspelled name, Bea Benaderet would probably win hands down." Early in the first season of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, her full name appeared as "Bee Benadaret" in the closing credits.
| 1946 | Notorious | File Clerk | Uncredited |
| 1949 | On the Town | Brooklyn Girl on Subway | Uncredited |
| 1952 | The First Time | Mrs. Potter | Uncredited |
| 1954 | Black Widow | Mrs. Franklin Walsh | Uncredited |
| 1959 | Plunderers of Painted Flats | Ella Heather | |
| 1962 | Tender Is the Night | Mrs. McKisco |
| 1950–1958 | The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show | Blanche Morton | 291 episodes Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (1954, 1955) |
| 1952 | I Love Lucy | Miss Lewis | Episode: "Lucy Plays Cupid" |
| 1952–1955 | The Jack Benny Program | Gertrude Gearshift | 7 episodes Continuation of radio role |
| 1955 | The Lineup | Episode: "The Falling Out of Thieves" | |
| 1956–1957 | The Bob Cummings Show | Blanche Morton/Dixie | 2 episodes |
| 1958–1959 | The George Burns Show | Blanche Morton | 25 episodes |
| 1959 | General Electric Theater | Marie | Episode: "Night Club" |
| 1959 | The Restless Gun | Madame Brimstone | Episode: "Mme. Brimstone" |
| 1960 | Mister Magoo | Mother Magoo; additional voices | 5 episodes |
| 1960 | 77 Sunset Strip | Mary Field | Episode: "Ten Cents a Death" |
| 1960–1963 | The Flintstones | Betty Rubble; additional voices | 112 episodes |
| 1960–1961 | Peter Loves Mary | Wilma | 32 episodes |
| 1961 | The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis | Telephone Operator | Episode: "Spaceville" |
| 1961 | Top Cat | Various characters (voices) | 6 episodes |
| 1962 | The New Breed | Miss Horne | Episode: "A Motive Named Walter" |
| 1962 | Pete and Gladys | Mrs. Springer | Episode: "Continental Dinner" |
| 1962 | The Jetsons | Emily Scopes/Celeste Skyler | Episode: "A Visit From Grandpa" |
| 1962–1963, 1967 | The Beverly Hillbillies | Cousin Pearl Bodine | 23 episodes |
| 1963–1968 | Petticoat Junction | Kate Bradley | 164 episodes |
| 1965–1966 | Green Acres | Kate Bradley | 6 episodes |
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| 1954 | Primetime Emmy Award | Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series | The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show | |
| 1955 |
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