"Petticoat Junction" Actress Bea Benaderet 1968 Valhalla Cemetery

Beatrice "Bea" Benaderet (April 4, 1906 – October 13, 1968) was an American actress born in New York City and raised in San Francisco, California. She appeared in a wide variety of television work, which included a starring role in the 1960s television series Petticoat Junction and Green Acres as Shady Rest Hotel owner Kate Bradley, supporting roles as Blanche Morton in The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and as the voice of Betty Rubble during the first four seasons of The Flintstones, and in The Beverly Hillbillies as Pearl Bodine. She did a great deal of voice work in Warner Bros. animated cartoons of the 1940s/1950s.

"Pearl Bodine"

Benaderet was diagnosed with cancer in 1967, which led to her departure from Petticoat Junction in what was hoped would be a temporary absence, during which time Rosemary DeCamp was brought in to play "Aunt Helen" in scripts obviously written for Benaderet's character Kate. However, Benaderet was well enough to return for a few additional episodes in the fall of 1968 before being written out permanently. Shortly after the death of Benaderet, June Lockhart was brought in to play a female doctor who had set up her practice at the Shady Rest hotel, and thus became the show's surrogate mother figure.

"Kate Bradley"

On October 13, 1968, Benaderet died in Los Angeles, California at the Good Samaritan Hospital from lung cancer and pneumonia.

She was entombed in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Her second husband Eugene Twombly died of a heart attack on the day of her funeral (four days after her death), and was interred beside her. Twombly had been a sound-effects artist for a number of radio and television shows, including The Jack Benny Program, on which Benaderet had been a regular cast member.