three teenaged daughters; 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. 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. Benaderet filmed six appearances as Kate in the first season as both shows' casts intermingled on several episodes in a process dubbed "cross-pollination". 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". Her first onscreen appearance, also uncredited, was in the film On the Town (1949), as one of two women whom the main characters (played by Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra) encounter while riding the subway. 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 Benaderet and her first husband, actor Jim Bannon, met while employed at KHJ in Los Angeles. They married in August 1938 and had