The first advice given Bea Benaderet when she entered show business as a 12-year-old singer on radio in San Francisco was: "Change your name.""They told me no one could remember it, no one could pronounce it, no one could spell it," said Bea the other day. She pronounces it Ben-a-DER-et. "I guess they were right," she added. "I played Blanche Morton for six years on the old 'Burns and Allen Show' and for six years they spelled my name wrong in the credits."
Bea laughed. This doesn't bother her. She liked the name Benaderet when she was 12, and she still likes it.
It certainly hasn't stood in the way of a career that has steadily risen through radio and television comedy from the role of Gertrude Gearshift, the telephone operator on the old Jack Benny radio shows, through the role of Cousin Pearl that she played this last year on "The Beverly Hillbillies" (on the cover).
It has finally led her to the threshold of stardom.
Bea is shucking the homely raiment of Cousin Pearl for the homely raiment of Kate Bradley, keeper of a country hotel in "Petticoat Junction" next fall. The new show begins Sept. 24 and will occupy the half-hour between Red Skelton and Jack Benny on Tuesday nights on CBS.
The show is another creation by Paul Henning, who brought the "Hillbillies" to life - if you call that living. Perhaps I have a dirty mind, but the premise smacks of the old stories of the farmer's daughter and the traveling salesman. Bea plays a widow with three beautiful daughters, and she operates a hotel largely occupied by traveling salesmen. The hotel is a stop on a narrow-gauge railroad that travels between Hootersville and Pixley Junction - nowhere crossing a main line.
Says Bea: "That train is the real star of the show."
Bea is delighted with Kate and the show: "Kate's a warm and humorous woman, struggling to raise her three daughters. It's a contemporary story in rural America. But there's such a feeling of serenity to it - it's a place I'd like to be."
She has an expert cast aiding in the show, including Edgar Buchanan and Smiley Burnett. The three daughters are Jeanine Riley, Pat Woodell and Linda Kaye.
Bea takes her new stardom in stride. "It was a long time coming," she said, "but I've been so lucky. I made the transition from radio to television with no trouble. And I've hardly ever been out of work.
"I really felt like a star for the first time the other day. I drove onto the studio lot and found they had given me a parking place. With my name on it.
"It was misspelled."
[Editor's note - the misspellings of names in this article are exactly as they were originally printed]