Radio on ''
Granby's Green Acres'' in 1950 In 1926, Benaderet joined the staff of San Francisco radio station
KFRC, which was under the new ownership of
Don Lee and where her duties included acting, singing, writing, and producing. Initially seeking work as a dramatic actress, she switched to comedy and performed on multiple programs, in particular the
Blue Monday Jamboree variety show, Benaderet honed a variety of
dialects such as French, Spanish,
New York City English, and
Yiddish, the latter from voicing a character named "Rheba Haufawitz". a rarity in 1930s radio. Benaderet relocated to Hollywood in 1936 and joined radio station
KHJ, making her
network radio 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). 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. 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. 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. 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.
Voice acting Beginning in 1943, 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.
Witch Hazel in
Bewitched Bunny (1954); the spinster hen
Miss Prissy in several
Foghorn Leghorn cartoons;
Tweety's owner "
Granny" including the
Academy Award-winning
Tweetie Pie (1947); Benaderet did not receive onscreen credit for her work because she was employed by Warner Bros. as a freelance actor who voiced peripheral characters, and unlike
Mel Blanc, was not under contract with the studio. In 1955, she was succeeded by
June Foray as Warner's premier female voice artist.
Television Benaderet was Lucille Ball's first choice as
Ethel Mertz for the sitcom
I Love Lucy; Ball said in a 1984 interview that she had "no other picture of anyone" for the role. However, Benaderet had to turn down the offer since she was contracted to the television adaptation of
The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, so
Vivian Vance was eventually cast. Benaderet guest-starred on the January 21, 1952, first-season episode "Lucy Plays Cupid" as the character of Miss Lewis, a love-starved spinster neighbor. She was the only secondary cast member who appeared in every episode 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. Benaderet and
Gracie Allen regularly shopped for their own on-set wardrobe 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. Benaderet garnered two
Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in
1954 and
1955. 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. 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. Benaderet considered herself "lucky" to be cast in another series out of fear that she had become too closely associated with
Burns & Allen. 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
Collaboration with Paul Henning In the late 1940s, Benaderet befriended
Paul Henning, a scriptwriter on the radio production of
Burns & Allen. She appeared on the 19 episodes of the show he had written between 1947 and 1951. She became one of his regular players in the first two seasons of
Burns & Allen, a two-episode guest appearance on
The Bob Cummings Show in 1956–57, and her involvement in three of the most successful sitcoms of the 1960s. After reading the 1961 first script for
The Beverly Hillbillies, Benaderet wanted to
audition for the role of
Granny. Despite considering her to be too buxom for his vision of the character as a small and wiry woman, Henning allowed her to test anyway.
Irene Ryan ultimately won the role; according to Henning, "Bea took one look at the way Irene did the part and said to me, 'There's your Granny! Henning created for Benaderet the supporting character of Cousin Pearl Bodine, the middle-aged widowed mother of Jethro Bodine (
Max Baer Jr.) and cousin of main character Jed Clampett (
Buddy Ebsen), whom she convinces to move from his humble home in the
Ozarks after he strikes oil on his property and becomes a millionaire. Prior to shooting the
pilot, Benaderet enlisted a
dialect coach to help her learn a
hillbilly accent. Impressed with her performance while screening the pilot to potential sponsors, Benaderet described Pearl's curly hair as "just my mental image of the character. ... Pearl played the piano for the
silent movies and she saw such high fashion and ridiculous hairdos. She could read and write, and the curled hair seemed to Pearl the height of smartness." 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. The character of Kate represented Benaderet's first
straight role: "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." 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.
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. 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.
Film and other works Benaderet played bit parts in six motion pictures from 1946 to 1962, four of which were uncredited. She was chosen from 200 actresses for the part of a government file clerk in
Alfred Hitchcock's
Notorious (1946) and completed filming in half an hour, but her scenes were cut from the final print. She told
Radio Life magazine that year that after having struggled to remember her lines, "Mr. Hitchcock looked me right in the eye and asked 'You want to go back to radio?' I said yes". 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
W6XAO 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". == Personal life ==