Bea Benaderet

At 62 years old, Bea Benaderet has this physical status:

Beatrice Benaderet ( BEN-DERR, TERR?t; April 4, 1906 – October 13, 1968) was an American radio and television actress and voice actress.

She was born in New York City and raised in San Francisco before embarking on a three-decade career in Hollywood.

Benaderet first became an expert in voiceover work in the golden age of radio, appearing on a variety of television shows, including Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, and Lucille Ball.

Her skills in dialect and characterization led to her role as Warner Bros.' leading female characters in their animated cartoons from the 1940s to the mid-1950s. Benaderet appeared on television for the first time in situation comedies, first with the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show from 1950 to 1958, for which she received two Emmy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress.

She appeared in four series up to her death from lung cancer in 1968, including The Beverly Hillbillies, The Flintstones, and her most well-known role as Kate Bradley in Petticoat Junction.

She has a statue on the Hollywood Walk of Fame honoring her work in television.

Early life

Beatrice Benaderet was born in New York City on April 4, 1906. Margaret (née O'Keefe), an Irish immigrant, and her father, Samuel David Benaderet, a Turkish Sephardic immigrant, moved the family from New York to San Francisco in 1915 after his participation in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. He opened a 65-year store, making it California's oldest such store at the time of its closing in 1980.

Benaderet was raised Catholic and attended grade school at a Dominican convent. She studied voice and piano, and her first acting performance came at 11 when she portrayed a bearded old man in a school play. She was accepted by a local radio station manager after being paid $10 for one of his children's opera productions. Benaderet made her professional theatre debut at 16 in a production of The Prince of Pilsen, and after graduating from St. Rose Academy, a private, all-girls' high school, she joined his stock company The Players' Guild, appearing in stage productions of works including Polly, Lysistrata, and Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Personal life

While working at KHJ in Los Angeles, Benaderet and her first husband, actor Jim Bannon, met. They married in August 1938 and had two children: Jack (1940–2017) and Maggie (b. 1947 (also known as 1947) However, Bannon's heavy filming and touring schedule for his portrayal of fictional cowboy hero Red Ryder took a toll on their marriage, and she filed for divorce in September 1950. Benaderet married Eugene Twombly, a sound effects technician for film and television who had worked on The Jack Benny Program in 1958, and the pair stayed together until her death in 1968. Jack Bannon made his television debut on Petticoat Junction (and acting as a dialogue coach) later appearing in Lou Grant.

Benaderet, a 1961 explorer dressed in a Flintstones-inspired leopard-print costume to collect funds for City of Hope and March of Dimes, as well as Work 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 receiving a badge on her behalf given by her Petticoat Junction co-star Edgar Buchanan in a public ceremony.

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Career

Benaderet joined the San Francisco radio station KFRC, which then belonged to Don Lee and where she was involved in acting, singing, writing, and producing. She began as a dramatic actress and appeared on numerous television shows, including Meredith Willson, Elvia Allman, and future I Love Lucy producer Jess Oppenheimer. Benaderet honed a variety of dialects, including French, Spanish, New York English, and Yiddish, the latter from voicing a character named "Rheba Haufawitz." She appeared on Salon Moderne as a female announcer, which was unusual in 1930s radio.

Benaderet first moved to Hollywood in 1936 and joined radio station KHJ, making her network radio debut with Orson Welles on The Campbell Playhouse. Gertrude Gearshift, a sarcastic phone operator who blasted Jack Benny with her colleague Mabel Flapsaddle, was the first big break in the industry the following year. (Sara Berner) The pair, who had intended as a one-time appearance, joined the NBC switchboards in Hollywood in early 1947, and Benaderet and Berner took over the NBC switchboards in Hollywood for publicity photographs in early 1947. She appeared in up to five shows a day, causing her rehearsal dates to clash with those of The Jack Benny Scheme, resulting in her live broadcast as Gertrude from a predetermined script when she first entered the studio.

Blanche Morton of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Exhibition; school principal Eve Goodwin on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet; and Iris Atterbury on the Lucille Ball vehicle My Favorite Husband, opposite Gale Gordon. Before joining the main cast as Iris, neighbor, and friend of Ball's character Liz Cooper, Benaderet appeared on several one-time scenes before joining the cast as Iris, neighbor, and acquaintance of Ball's character Liz Cooper. Granby's Green Acres, a possible spinoff of My Favorite Husband, was her one radio lead role and reunited her with Gordon as a husband and wife who leave city life to become farmers, but the show ran only eight episodes.

Benaderet became Warner Bros.' primary voice of adult female supporting characters for their Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes animated shorts, initially sharing duties with Sara Berner starting in 1943. Her characterizations included an obnoxious teenaged bobbysox version of Little Red Riding Hood (1944); Witch Hazel in several Foghorn Leghorn cartoons; and Mama Bear in a series of Three Bears shorts; animator Chuck Jones called one of his favorite portrayals; and a female hen in a series of Bees shorts; Benaderet did not receive on-screen credit for her performance because she was employed by Warner Bros. as a freelance actor who performed peripheral characters, and unlike Mel Blanc, she was not under contract with the studio. She was crowned Warner's top female voice artist by June Foray in 1955.

In a 1984 interview, Benaderet was Lucille Ball's first choice for the role as Ethel Mertz; Ball said she had "no other picture of anyone" for the role. However, Benaderet was forced to decline the bid because she was attached to the television version of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, so Vivian Vance was eventually cast. Benaderet appeared on the first-season episode "Lucy Plays Cupid" on January 21, 1952, as Miss Lewis, a love-starved spinster neighbor.

Benaderet continued her Burns & Allen radio role as Blanche Morton, Gracie's cousin and tenacious supporter in her escapades. She was the only secondary cast member of every episode and the first six shows on television in New York, resulting in Benaderet's commute to Los Angeles, where she was working several radio shows at the time. Blanche's husband Harry was played by four actors during the show's eight years; Larry Keating, the show's last incarnation, was introduced on October 5, 1953, when George Burns arrived and halted a scene of an enraged Blanche preparing to hit Harry with a book. Burns introduced Keating to Benaderet and the audience, but she broke character to exchange pleasantries with Keating. The segment was then revived, and Benaderet struck Keating with the book. Benaderet and Gracie Allen used to shop for their own on-set wardrobe, and she delivered a high-pitched grin for Blanche that became a trademark of the series and was used for comedic effect: "George would say to me, Laugh there, Bea." In 1954 and 1955, Benaderet received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Following Allen's retirement in 1958 at the end of the eighth season, the show was run as The George Burns Show in 1958–59, but it was cancelled after one season due to poor ratings. In 1959, Benaderet appeared on GM and The Restless Gun for the first time.

Benaderet made a name for himself in television in the 1960s, appearing on two shows simultaneously from 1960 to 1964. She appeared in Peter Loves Mary, the 1960 sitcom, a part she gained because of Burns' reference. Out of fear that she had become too closely associated with Burns & Allen, Benaderet said she was "luck" to be in another series. Betty Rubble was first introduced in the Hanna-Barbera primetime animated film The Flintstones during the same year. Benaderet auditioned for Betty and Wilma Flintstone with former radio coworker Jean Vander Pyl, who was engaged in a discussion before the show's co-creator Joseph Barbera, who asked afterward what role they liked. "I said, 'I said, I want to be Wilma,'" Vander Pyl recalled in 1994. "That's fine with me," Bea said. During 1961 and 1962, Benaderet appeared in guest roles on both Hanna-Barbera productions' Top Cat and The Yogi Bear Shows. Betty's debut season of her show Petticoat Junction next year, she continued voicing Betty by recording herself or with her Flintstones co-stars during evening hours until scheduling difficulties pushed her to cancel the role at the end of the fourth season in 1964. Gerry Johnson had her replaced her.

Benaderet befriended Paul Henning, a scriptwriter on Burns & Allen's radio program in the late 1940s. She appeared on 19 episodes of the show she had written between 1947 and 1951. She was one of his regular participants in Burns & Allen's first two seasons, as well as her appearance in three of the most popular sitcoms of the 1960s. After reading the 1961 first script for The Beverly Hillbillies, Benaderet wanted to audition for the role of Granny. Despite feeling that she was too boozy for his vision of the woman as a petite and wiry woman, Henning allowed her to test anyway. Irene Ryan eventually won the role; According to Henning, "Bea took one look at the way Irene performed the role and told me, 'There's your Granny!'" Harriet MacGibbon's suggestion of portraying her Granny's rival Margaret Drysdale as Benaderet's son. Henning created Cousin Pearl Bodine, Jethro Bodine's middle-aged widower, and cousin Jed Clamson (Buddy Ebsen), who convinces her to move from his humble home in the Ozarks after she strikes oil on his property and becomes a millionaire. Benaderet employed a dialect coach to help her learn a hillbilly accent ahead of shooting the pilot. Henning, who was ecstatic with her performance when screening the pilot to potential sponsors, made Cousin Pearl a recurring character in the 1962–63 first season, feuded with Granny, and pursued oil tycoon Mr. Brewster (Frank Wilcox) as a love interest. "Pearl Pearl Pearl," the show's opening theme, was performed by Bluegrass duo Flatt & Scruggs, and Benaderet was seen on the single's cover in 1963. Pearl's curly hair was described as "just my mental picture of the character," Benaderet said. Pearl was the pianoist in silent films, and she loved the high fashion and ridiculous hairdos. She could read and write, and her curled hair suggested that she had a great deal of intelligence."

After years of supporting roles, Paul Henning had long admired Benaderet's talent and strove to create a starring vehicle for her. After the success of Beverly Hillbillies, Ted Turner created Petticoat Junction in 1963, starring Kate Bradley, the widowed proprietor of the Shady Rest Hotel. Cousin Pearl was then ruled out of the Beverly Hillbillies storyline as having returned home. "Kate Bradley is different from the characters I've seen in the past," Benaderet's first straight role: "Kate Bradley is different from the characters I've seen in the past." She must tread a fine line between being amusing and tender. The other women I've encountered were strictly for laughs." After auditioning Katherine's three teenage daughters, Benaderet and producer Richard Whorf auditioned the young actresses who would play Kate's three teenage daughters; she begged Henning to let his 18-year-old daughter Linda read (achievably) for the role of Betty Jo Bradley. Jack Bannon, Linda Henning and Benaderet's uncle, was a member of a young actors' theater company at the time. With a print ad starring an Al Hirschfeld caricature of Benaderet as Cousin Pearl, CBS promoted the show's premiere on September 22, 1963. Petticoat Junction was a huge success, peaking at fifth position in the Nielsen rankings, and it stayed in the top 30 for four seasons on the show from 1963 to 1967. In later seasons, Alan Reed and Jean Vander Pyl, her former Flintstones costars, filmed guest spots.

Henning was allowed to return for a new show with no pilots, which he owed to colleague Jay Sommers due to his busy schedule. Sommers created the Green Acres, a spinoff of her own television show that was based on Granby's Green Acres, which had starred Benaderet in 1950, making it a spinoff of her own comedy program. In the first season, Benaderet filmed six appearances as Kate as both show casts and reflected on several episodes in a process known as "cross-pollination."

Benaderet appeared in six motion pictures from 1946 to 1962, four of whom were uncredited. In Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946) she was selected from two hundred actors for the role of a government file clerk and filming in half an hour, but her scenes were cut from the final print. "Mr. Hitchcock looked me right in the eye and said, 'You want to go back to radio?' she told Radio Life magazine that year after struggling to remember her lines. "Yes," I said. Her first onscreen appearance, which was also uncredited, was in the film On the Town (1949) as one of two women whose main characters (played by Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra) encounter while riding the subway.

Before the project fell through, Benaderet and fellow voice actresses Janet Waldo and Cathy Lewis were due to appear on a televised fashion preview on her former KFRC employer Don Lee's W6XAO network. She duetted with Elvia Allman and Mel Blanc, respectively, on Irving Taylor's novelty album Drink Along With Irving (1960), and "Separate Bar Stools" and "Sub-Bourbon Living" and "Separate Bar Stools.

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