The Beulah character, merely the latest black domestic in a radio program (Rochester on the Jack Benny program was probably the best known), had first appeared on Fibber McGee and Molly in early 1944 and became an instant hit. Portrayed by Marlin Hurt (who had himself been raised by a black maid and had thus picked up some of the "right sound" in childhood, developing a reputation as a good portrayer of blacks on radio), the character soon was delivering lines that became widely popular catch phrases across the country­ "Looove dat man!" and the regular stand-by, "Somebody bawl fo' Beulah?"

     Beulah was played as a central part of the white middle­ class family that employed her. She was good natured and respectful, but not subservient. Indeed she was often sarcastic, though rarely directly to her employers. She ran the household and solved problems-the core of program stories. Her radio friends included a shiftless boyfriend and the next door domestic, among others.

     The weekly series seemed on its way to a long run when Hurt died at age 40 of a heart attack and, lacking its key actor, the program left the air. In the spring of 1947 it rerurned, with yet another white man (Bob Corley) playing the black domestic. Only that fall, when the program switched to CBS as a 15- minute program every weekday, did a black woman (Hattie McDaniel) begin to play the title part.

     The program moved to television for four seasons beginning in 19 50, though lacking some of the comic bite of the radio original. Black characters were played by black actors from the beginning-the first network television series where this was so.