She was a favourite of Jack Webb in Dragnet. She turned up on I Love a Mystery and co-starred in Grand Central Station and Whispering Streets on radio. And in November 1955, The Hollywood Reporter revealed she had made the acquaintance of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who signed her as “Mrs. Q” for the Tom and Jerry cartoon Tom’s Photo Finish.

Evidently, the cartoon producers liked her. When they got their own studio, they signed her to be the voice of Cindy Bear.

Now, actress Julie Bennett has been claimed by complications of Covid-19. She died on March 31st at age 88.

Bennett acted in cartoons through the 1980s and then pretty much disappeared. Various sources have revealed what happened. She changed her name to Marianne Daniels and became a personal manager.

Her third cousin has written stating her father was Beverly Hills realtor George Gordon Bennett and her mother’s name was Harriet. Her grandmother was Isabella "Bella" Block Abels. The four of them moved from Lake George, N.Y. to Los Angeles in October 1932 several months after Julie was born on January 24th. Her father changed the family name upon arrival in California. The 1930 U.S. Census reveals Belle Abels living with her daughter Harriet and son-in-law George S(amuel) Israel; the family was in the restaurant business. The ship’s manifest documenting their arrival on the West Coast shows that Julie’s name was Barbera. They returned to the Lake George for several years as that is where the 1940 Census puts them.

Her first voice for the Hanna-Barbera studio was not Cindy, though that was her biggest role for the studio, considering she appeared in the feature film Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear. To the best of my knowledge, the first time she worked for the studio was in the Quick Draw McGraw cartoon Masking For Trouble (1959) as Sagebrush Sal. Prior to that, Daws Butler or Don Messick did almost all the female voices in falsetto. Barbera was looking for new actors when the studio expanded to put Quick Draw on the air, and among the hires were Bennett and Jean Vander Pyl.

Cindy’s voice owed something to Shirley Mitchell’s Leila Ransome on The Great Gildersleeve; I think both characters used the phrase “I do declare!” (Mitchell admitted she borrowed her Southern belle accent from Una Merkel).

Bennett worked for other cartoon studios as well. She provided a few voices for Warner Bros. and filled in for June Foray at the Jay Ward studio on the “Fractured Fairy Tale” cartoons. She turned up at UPA as well.

I hate to do a tally, but it appears Elliot Field is the only voice actor left from the pre-Flintstones days (1960); Jimmy Weldon came on board as Yakky Doodle in cartoons that aired starting in 1961.

She began acting in 1947 at the Oliver Hinsdell Studio of Dramatic Art in Hollywood and quickly went into radio. You can read a few old posts about Miss Bennett by clicking here.

My thanks to reader Luu Hoang for alerting me to the media reports about this, and my sincere sympathies go to her friends.

Time for a little quiz. See if you recognise a certain voice in this broadcast of the Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show from October 5, 1952. Advance the show to about the 16:00 mark. She’s on for about 45 seconds with Phil and the great Elliott Lewis.



Off the air, she looked like this:



But you probably know her better as this:



Yes, it’s Julie Bennett, voice of Cindy Bear, originally hired to work at Hanna-Barbera in 1959 in the role of Sagebrush Sally in a Quick Draw McGraw cartoon. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera knew her before this; Variety reported on January 31, 1955 that she would be “narrating” Tom and Jerry cartoons for MGM, then revealed on August 27, 1956 that she would be voicing for them (there’s been speculation Bennett is the babysitter in Tot Watchers, one of the last T&Js).

I started writing this post 3½ years ago then set it aside, hoping some information would come to light about her, such as when she was born, if Julie Bennett is actually her name and what she is doing today. Nothing has surfaced, so I’ll have to give up the plan.

Bennett doesn’t seem to have done (or have been asked to do) many newspaper interviews. There’s one I found from 1970 consisting of three lines that may have been part of a longer interview. For cartoon fans, there’s no real news in it—all it says is that she was better known for commercials and cartoons than live action stuff. In another interview, the Los Angeles Times talks to her about how models can improve their voices. And during her radio soap opera career, she gave advice about what kind of shoes women should wear. Not weighty stuff.

Perhaps the oddest interview was by Wendy Warren. Warren was a fictional character, the star of the soap opera Wendy Warren and the News, which blurred lines by opening with a real newscast and then storyline banter with veteran CBS newscaster Doug Edwards. Here’s what “Wendy” wrote in her column; I found this in a paper of August 23, 1951:

Instead of following the famous “go West” maxim for success — Julie Bennett reversed it. . . . Born in California, right near Hollywood, Julie studied dramatics with Max Reinhardt, and dialects with Alice Harries — then she came to New York to try for radio. Her versatile voice was an immediate asset, and Julie began getting parts immediately.
Then she heard that auditions were being held over at NBC for a new “Chichi” on “Life Can Be Beautiful.” . . . This has always been Julie’s favorite dramatic serial, and she went over to try out—winding up as one of four selected from several hundred. . . . The role went to Teri Keane—but Julie so impressed the producers that she now has the key role of “Eunice” on the show. In real life, the slender, auburn-haired Californian is still single, so serious about her career that she names as her hobby “studying acting,” and so pretty that a Marine Corps Battalion in Korea has named her as its pin-up girl.

“Stage, screen and radio” certainly describes Julie’s early career. Her name pops up in Variety. I found these squibs between 1948 and 1950. Her first regular series roles were on the affiliate-rich, cash-poor Mutual network.

September 15, 1948
SHERLOCK HOLMES With John Stanley, Ian Martin, Barry Thompson, Charles D. Penman, Julie Bennett, Anthony Kemble Cooper; Cy Harrice, announcer; Albert Buhrman, organist. Writer: Howard Merrill; Director: Basil Loughrane.
30 Mins.; Sun., 7 p.m. (EDT)
TRIMOUNT CLOTHING
Mutual, from New York

January 26, 1949
Julie Bennett appearing as Helen Palmer in the comedy-farce “At War With the Army,” at the Bushnell Theatre in Hartford, Conn., staged by Ezra Stone.

October 5, 1949
I LOVE A MYSTERY With Russell Thorson, Jim Bowles, Tony Randall, Les Tremayne, Julie Bennett, Laurette Fillbrandt, Vilma Kurer; Frank McCarthy, announcer. Producer-Director-Writer: Carlton E. Morse
15 Mins.; Mon.-Fri., 7:45 p.m.
MBS, from New York

October 19, 1949
Julie Bennett, in from Coast for Manhattan radio-TV originations, into "Theatre Guild of the Air" next Sunday and on "M-G-M Theatre of the Air" Friday.

January 25, 1950
Julie Bennett into lead of "Grand Central Station" this Sat. (28).

February 8, 1950
Julie Bennett into "Portia Face's Life" and "Man Against Crime" TVer this Friday.

April 12, 1950
Julie Bennett into "Aldrich Family" tomorrow (13) and NBC's "To Ricky With Pride" on Tuesday (18).

June 28, 1950
Julie Bennett to Coast for month's legit engagement.

August 3, 1950
Julie Bennett, one of Gotham's top radio actresses, is returning home after what started out to be a three-week vacation. When the word got around she was in town there was a deluge of calls and just to accommodate some old friends she worked five shows.

October 4, 1950
Julie Bennett into MBS' "Nick Carter" Sunday (8) and a featured role on ABC-TV's Chico Marx show Monday (9).

November 29, 1950
Julie Bennett into “Big Town” TV lead tomorrow (Thursday).

December 6, 1950
Julie Bennett into "Life Can Be Beautiful".

She got even busier in the 1950s with television work on the West Coast. Interestingly, she turned down the role of a stripper in “Playrights ‘56” (even though it’s not as if she would be taking off anything on ‘50s TV) and voiced Jimmy Stewart’s three-year-old granddaughter in The FBI Story. And she picked up cartoon work at Warner Bros., UPA and (briefly) for Jay Ward.

Bennett can probably be happy that Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear came out in 1964 instead of two and half decades later when she might have been replaced by someone like Tiffany to maximise box office appeal. Years ago, cartoon stars with their original voices were deemed enough to attract an audience. The movie had a media preview at Yellowstone Park on May 30th and premiered in the entertainment mecca of Salt Lake City on June 3rd.

Allow me to sidetrack (remember, the main reason for this post didn’t pan out) and pass on some stories about the film from Variety.

June 4, New York

Mrs. Margaret G. Twyman, community relations director of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, will send a letter this week to 160 women's clubs and film councils lauding Columbia's “Hey There, It's Yogi Bear.” Mrs. Twyman's letter urges support for "such a happy film" as the Hanna-Barbera animated color feature, which she describes as "a delightful movie for the whole family."

June 10, Los Angeles
The phone company by early evening last night had pulled the plug on a publicity stunt engineered by Columbia to puff a pic.
Col set up 10 telephone lines for kids to call a certain number—WE 72000—in a bally for opening June 17 of the Hanna-Barbera animated feature, "Hey, There, It's Yogi Bear." It was figured by the phone company that more than 100,000 overflow calls came in. That jammed the Webster exchange for two hours. Hence phone company disconnected the setup, which was interfering with regular important calls.
Columbia today plans adding another 10 lines for stunt, but with the understanding that should the exchange area be seriously disrupted company will be forced to close out the phone gimmick for good.

June 19
Six words in almost microscopic six-point type which threaten to add $3,800 to cost of Columbia's "Hey, There, It's Yogi Bear" ads in the L.A. Times have been yanked by Col ad manager Jack Burwick.
Line, which reads "Original Soundtrack Album on Colpix Records," escalates the entire 42-inch ad into the “national rate” category, a difference, according to Burwick, of $19 an inch. Film ads normally qualify for "local" rate sans disk plug because pic screens in local theatres, but when a record is advertised, ad becomes "national" because it is something offered in stores nationally.
Times apparently overlooked line for first two days of advertising, then advised Burwick of discovery yesterday. Rather than pay upped rate, Burwick elected to drop the line. Burwick reports that MGM has had similar experiences with "Unsinkable Molly Brown" shellac plugs.
Times' ad censor Marvin Reimers, meanwhile, insists rate variance between the two ad classifications is not as great as Burwick claims, though Burwick asserts he got rate scoop from Herb Marx, the Times entertainment ad topper. Reimers says difference would be closer to $12.60 an inch.
Burwick plans to take beefs to Times ad execs after consulting with Col homeoffice. He is peeved with paper on other counts, among them censorship which he deems arbitrarily applied despite fact that MP'AA passes all ads prior to Times perusal.

August 5
While evening shows continue to present something of a problem, there apparently is still a nice amount of loot to be made from cartoon features aimed at the kiddie trade. This is the report from Columbia whose Hanna-Barbera cartoon feature, "Hey There, It's Yogi Bear," opened rather slowly in early June but is now picking up a neat boxoffice momentum.
That Col is not exactly disenchanted with the kiddie fare is underscored by the fact that company is presently negotiating for the release of Richard Davis' Italo import, "A Trip to the Moon," featuring a puppet mouse, Topo Gigio, seen this side on various Ed Sullivan tv shows. If the current negotiations are satisfactorily concluded, Col will release the color puppet feature this coming Christmas.
In an effort to combat the dropoff in trade which usually occurs for a kiddie pic at evening showings, Col has been booking "Yogi Bear" with a reissue of its British click, "The Mouse That Roared," or Audie Murphy's "The Quick Gun." In some instances the companion pic is only shown at the evening sessions.

September 2, Denver
Pairing of 20th-Fox's “Cleopatra” with Columbia's “Hey There, It's Yogi Bear” at three Denver drive-ins (Aug. 19-25) may have been an exhibitor's dream of a “well-balanced program,” but it did not excite the friendly wishes of 20th toppers.
Queried as to the unusual booking, a 20th spokesman reported this week that “Yogi” had been added to the three Denver dates without 20th's knowledge and were in actual violation of the “Cleo” contracts.
Latter specify that “Cleo” must play as a single bill. 20th, the spokesman adds, registered strong objections when they learned of it. Col's cartoon epic, it's understood, was played only once a night at the drive-ins as a sort of “curtainraiser.” Exhib paid flat terms for the pic which, 20th is told, did not come out of “Cleo's” percentages.

“Hey, There” did a mixed box-office, but it was enough of one for Columbia to sign a picture deal with Hanna-Barbera. From Weekly Variety of October 7, 1964:

Hanna-Barbara’s Diversification Kick as They Make Like Disney
Say this, too, for Walt Disney—he’s proving an inspiration for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera in the hot pursuit of diversified fortune-making.
Peering past their drawing boards (or over their mahogany desks), the hotshot cartoon impresarios are, a la Disney, drawing a bead on the live-action field (for both theatrical and tv exposure), and, again like the master, are projecting a move into outdoor entertainments via a 90-acre “Jellystone Park” south of San Diego.
The boys, who know a merchandising parlay when they see one (Hanna-Barbera-licensed creations racked up a retail gross last year of more than $120,000,000), are eyeing yet another lucrative tangent (the Disney exemplar ends here)—a coast-to-coast chain of franchised snack shops starring “Yogi-burgers.”
Meanwhile, it’s contract renewal time between H-B and Screen Gems. Negotiations are in progress and expected to produce another hitch (the last extended three years), since it's obviously been a sweet tieup both ways. (But you can bet the animators will drive a good bargain.)
In New York last week, a reflective Joe Barbera contrasted their animation output (of “Tom & Jerry” shorts) over a 20-year span for MGM (48 minutes worth a year with a staff of 190), against their total for last year alone of over 90 hours with a staff of 320. And even at that old leisurely filmville pace, Barbera recalled he still worked many a night.
For the live-action segue, the pair’s blueprints include two for television, an hour adventure series (Bill Anderson and Bill Hamilton are scripting the pilot), and a half-hour gimmick comedy with Malibu beach for a backdrop. Both are ‘65-‘66 candidates. Three more projects are aimed for theatrical release—“Mr. Mysterious,” a costume opus about a travelling magician and his family (based on the novel by Sid Fleischman); “Park Ave. Indians,” initially scripted as a tv pilot but which is undergoing expansion to cinema proportions; and “Father Was a Robot,” which Barbera says is about a “funny, swinging robot” (it better be—he says the metallic marvel was built for $75,000).
None of the three features has a distribution deal as yet. H-B’s first movie entry, the current “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear,” will be followed by a feature treatment of the “Flintstones,” which Barbera says Columbia will release at Christmas, ‘65.
Not to forsake its homescreen cartoon output (the fellows are hardly neglecting the tube, with two shows on the networks, including the new “Jonny Quest” adventure skein, and a pretty goodsized zoo menagerie making it in syndication), H-B has yet four more animal formats on the boards, plus two more action-adventure half-hours in the “Jonny Quest” idiom, plus still another six-minute strip for local kidshow splicing.

Julie continued to both cartoon and live-action work, as well as commercials (DuPont, Stardust Hotel, Atlantic Richfield, Kraft, Montgomery Ward, So. Cal. Edison, the list is pretty long). She also found time to marry ABC programme executive Jerry Bredouw in 1965 (she listed her age as 32; they were divorced in 1971). Her last live action TV work seems to have been in 1990 in a special called “Thansgiving Day” on NBC, with Mary Tyler Moore, Morton Downey, Jr. and Sonny Bono in the cast and produced by Marvin Miller. I understand that Mark Evanier cast her in some Garfield TV cartoons after that but she seems to have faded away from the business.

So, sorry, fans. I would like to have passed on word that Julie is enjoying retirement from show biz somewhere, but I really don’t know. I hope she is. While cartoon fans may know her as a stereotypical Southern voice, she did much more than that in the fields of comedy and drama, on camera and behind a microphone. She was a trailblazer, being one of the first women to voice TV cartoons in the ‘50s. And she even put up with TV’s self-proclaimed Loudmouth (Morton Downey, Jr., not Fred Flintstone). That’s quite a lot in one career.

You hear their voices on cartoons but, of course, you never see them. They’re the great voice actors that Hanna-Barbera hired. Most of them had training in the days of radio drama and comedy before television bludgeoned it to death. Some did live action television, so their faces may be familiar.



We’ve posted pictures of some of them here before—Daws Butler, Don Messick, Doug Young, the casts of The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Top Cat. And you’ve seen others elsewhere on the internet. But I’ve got a file folder with photos and clippings that I don’t think have been posted, so I’m doing it now.

This is not intended as a complete, definitive photo gallery, so don’t ask “Why isn’t there a picture of Lennie Weinrib?” and then list every cartoon role he ever played. I’m just putting up a miscellany of graphic files I’ve accumulated. Some are trade ads, others are publicity head shots.



Daws Butler improved every cartoon he appeared in, and some needed a lot of help. This shot must be from the early ‘50s when he was working with Stan Freberg, and comes from a biography about him broadcast years ago on PBS. Daws had so many great voices, it’s impossible to pick a favourite. I do have a favourite one-shot voice, though. It’s when Daws did his Fred Allen impression in the Huckleberry Hound cartoon “Skeeter Trouble.” My dad came into the living room when the cartoon was on and remarked that it was Fred Allen. “No, dad, it’s Daws Butler,” I replied. It’s the only time I ever corrected my father; kids didn’t do that back then. But this was important. We were talking cartoons, after all. (You can also hear Daws as Fred Allen in the August 1956 CBS Radio Workshop production “An Analysis of Satire”).



Mel Blanc was the King of Theatrical Cartoon Actors. There was no one better. He was a tremendous actor, yet he failed when handed a starring role in a radio sitcom in 1946, though the one-dimensional characters and trite concept were the reasons. He didn’t work for Hanna-Barbera until The Flintstones came along. He was Secret Squirrel and, well, a bunch of other characters that didn’t do a lot for me. This trade newspaper ad is from 1950, which gives you an idea what roles Mel thought were his most important at the time.



I love Howie Morris. One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen is Howie as Uncle Goopy on the This is Your Life send up on Sid Caesar’s show. His first H-B role, to the best of my knowledge, was Jet Screamer on The Jetsons, though he was pretty funny as Harlan, Cogswell’s lackey. He starred as Atom Ant, tried to enliven Magilla Gorilla cartoons as Mr. Peebles and got a Kellogg’s cereal gig as the voice of Hillbilly Goat, pushing Sugar Stars. He also told off Joe Barbera in language not fit for television, thus resulting in a change of cartoon addresses to the Filmation studio.



Know who this is? He’s in character as Solomon Levy on The Goldbergs radio show. It’s Alan Reed. This trade ad shot is from 1943. He carved out a good radio career before being hired as Fred Flintstone. His best role was probably that of hammy poet Falstaff Openshaw on Fred Allen’s show; the Falstaff voice got recycled as “Frederick” in the first season of The Flintstones. Reed did dialects on radio as well; Pasquale on Life With Luigi may be his best-known one.



This is the guy that Reed replaced as Fred Flintstone because he couldn’t keep enough gravel in his voice during recording sessions. It’s a picture of a young Bill Thompson, who theatrical cartoon fans will know as Droopy (MGM) and J. Audubon Woodlore (Disney). Old radio fans remember his long stint on “Fibber McGee and Molly” starting in the late ‘30s, interrupted by a stint in the U.S. Navy during the war. He was billed as “Jackie Coogan’s Double” at age five and went into vaudeville at 12. The Fibber gig dried up about the time MGM closed its cartoon studio, so Thompson got a job in 1957 as a community relations executive for Union Oil. That’s what he was doing when he arrived at Hanna-Barbera. He starred as Touché Turtle but didn’t do a lot of work for the studio. He died in July 15, 1971 at age 58.



Paul Winchell entertained audiences on radio, TV and cartoons. His sneering Dick Dastardly on Wacky Races was great, though I suspect his first H-B “appearances” were on The Banana Splits Show (both of which debuted in 1968). Winchell, of course, was Gargamel in the studio’s take on The Smurfs and popped up on other series, and made a fine Tigger for Disney. He was born Paul Wilchinsky and he, his father Sol (a tailor by trade), mother Clara and sister Rita were in Los Angeles by 1940 where Paul was acting in what was left of vaudeville. As you likely know, he was an energetic ventriloquist. You should check out a What’s My Line show where Winchell is on the panel and the mystery guests are Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. You can read Mark Evanier’s remembrance of Paul Winchell HERE.

Since we’re on the topic of ventriloquists, Yakky Doodle’s voice is still with us. Jimmy Weldon’s fame from his television appearances in California in the 1950s with his puppet Webster Webfoot. This photo is from 1959. Weldon had replaced Shari Lewis on “Hi Mom,” shot in New York, and would very soon be back on the West Coast. Red Coffey had been doing the voice of a little duck in the earliest Hanna-Barbera cartoons but when the duck was given his own series in 1961, Weldon won the role. He’s spent time in retirement, if you want to call it that, as a motivational speaker.

Hanna-Barbera’s utility man was John Stephenson, who came on board after The Flintstones went to air in 1960. Besides Mr. Slate, he grumbled a lot about “if it wasn’t for those meddling kids and their dog,” started out playing Dr. Benton Quest until Joe Barbera or someone decided to replace him with Don Messick, tried out his Cary Grant voice on Top Cat, had supporting roles on Breezly and Sneezly and Squiddly Diddly (yeah, I know, not exactly two of H-B’s greatest), used Paul Lynde-inspired voices in a couple of series and even voiced later incarnations of Doggie Daddy when Doug Young left California in 1966. He seems to have been in every one of those mid-1970s Tom and Jerry TV cartoons, the stiff-looking, talky ones where the cat and mouse are friends. I always enjoyed watching him on Hogan’s Heroes because I recognised his voice from cartoons. He was still doing commercials up to a few years ago as part of Dick Orkin’s stock company and is apparently doing well in his late 80s. The bio is from a mid-‘50s Radio-Television Mirror magazine when Stephenson was on the sitcom The People’s Choice.



I’m not a fan of the Cindy Bear character, but here are some publicity photos of the young woman who played her, Julie Bennett. The first one is from 1950, the second from 1951. I suspect Cindy’s voice was inspired by magnolia-scented Leila Ransom on radio’s The Great Gildersleeve, voiced by Shirley Mitchell (imitating Una Merkel), who had the misfortune of appearing in Hanna-Barbera’s Roman Holidays. Bennett’s first role for the studio was on “Masking For Trouble” (1959), a Quick Draw McGraw cartoon. Her whereabouts today, unfortunately, are unknown.



Okay, I’m cheating now. Gil Mack never appeared in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. But he voiced a number of H-B characters on Golden Records recorded in New York City. Gil racked up credits on some great shows, as you can see by this 1940 trade newspaper ad, but imitating Daws Butler and Don Messick’s characters wasn’t exactly his forte.



And I’m cheating again. Jack Shaindlin and John Seely never voiced characters but their music was prominent behind the voices on the soundtracks of H-B cartoons from 1957 until Hoyt Curtin started writing underscores in 1960. Biographies of both Shaindlin and Seely have been posted elsewhere on the blog. These are trade ads; Seely’s is from 1961 and Shaindlin’s from probably a decade earlier. This is as good a post as any to put them on the blog.



This is a funny photo I grabbed off Facebook. You know who it is. But someone didn’t. The caption reads:

Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland.

One of the joys of being an archivist is finding mistakes and correcting them. We found this photo in the Imogene Coca file, but it's not her. Students of 1950s television or fans of voice actors, might recognize the face as that of Arnold Stang. But when and where did he dress up in drag?

One Google search later and we learned that the picture is from an episode of the "Red Skelton Show," broadcast on April 2, 1957. One of Skelton's recurring sketch characters, "Cookie," is in the Navy and there's a chance for shore leave in Japan as the prize in a drama contest. So Red became a six-foot-three Romeo to shipmate Stang's five-foot-three Juliet.

Arnold Stang had to be a great comedian to be able to hold his own on TV with hammy scene-stealers like Skelton and Milton Berle. Here’s Stang with his alter ego in a more familiar photo you’ve seen here before.



Of course, there were many more actors who settled in front of the microphones at the Hanna-Barbera studios. All of them were talented. All of them made fans laugh, even though they couldn’t see us and, in a case of tit for tat, we couldn’t see them.

Some day, I’ll do a little piece on why inventing Cindy Bear was a stupid idea. Not today, though, as I don’t want to distract from the purpose of this post—to pass on some random clippings about the woman who voiced her—Julie Bennett.

I don’t know much about Miss Bennett, but I do know whoever put the information on the internet, regurgitated by umpteen sites, that she was born January 24, 1943 is full of ( Yowp invites you to fill in the blank here ). By the late ‘40s, she was a fairly accomplished radio actress, as witnessed in this photo and caption from the St. Petersburg Times of November 20, 1949:

A “PRIVATE EYE” LOOK
Julie Bennett is a remarkably dramatic young woman as well evidenced by her supporting roles on Mutual’s "Martin Kane—Private Eye,” adventure series starring William Gargen, Sunday afternoons at 4:30 p.m. on WTSP.
The picture is a .jpg of a .pdf of a scan of a photocopy, but despite the poor quality, anyone can see the subject of the picture is not the age of six.

The Los Angeles Times’ Walter Ames did a little profile on her in his column of March 2, 1953. This should tell you a bit about her in the pre-Hanna-Barbera days:

Julie Is Pretty, Busy Girl
One of Hollywood’s prettiest, as well as busiest, young ladies is Julie Bennett whose voice has been heard on practically all of the top radio shows for the past five years and whose reddish gold-blond hair is now busy decorating filmed TV series all over the screens. I ran into Julie at lunch the other day just after she had completed a role with George Raft in his I Am the Law series. She’s a real looker and before I could get out of the eatery at least a half dozen of Hollywood’s top TV men had requested her name from me.
Julie was born in Beverly Hills and started her career at the age of 6 before studying under Max Reinhardt, [Oliver] Hinsdell and Florence Enright. She really started to move on her career when she departed our climate for New York in 1948. “I like to keep busy and New York producers certainly did that for me,” Julie told me. “It became quite a problem to keep up with the schedule of radio and TV shows and keeping them from conflicting was almost impossible.”
Julie says her toughest assignments came when she was called on to play dialect roles of a 76-year-old woman, a Mongolian native, and a pair of twins in which she talked to herself for 11 pages of script. I’ll keep you posted when you can see her on TV. She’s worth tuning in.

Her earliest appearance on the air, according to the Radio Goldindex, was on The Lux Radio Theatre on September 8, 1947. She was on a bunch of Luxes (what is the plural form of ‘Lux’ anyway?), as well as The Railroad Hour and Family Theatre.

Here are some random clippings from various newspapers. This isn’t mean to be a complete filmography or biography. It’s just some stuff I found interesting.

Feb. 24, 1949, Mt. Vernon Daily Argus
Tickets are now on tale at the box office of the Booth Theatre [New York] where the new farce-comedy "At War with the Army" will open on Tuesday, March 8th. Salty Gracie has replaced Julie Bennett in the role of Helen Palmer in this comedy which now in a two weeks' return engagement at the Wilbur Theatare, Boston. Gary Merrill is playing the leading role, that of Sergeant Robert Johnson.”

Oct. 3, 1949, Don Tranter's Comment On Radio, Buffalo Courier-Express
More programs new to the Monday lanes move onto the radio scene today, most welcome of which to listeners perhaps is Carlton E. Morse's I Love a Mystery ~- teeing off on a Monday-through-Friday basis over Mutual and WEBR from 7.45 to 8 o'clock. ... three feminine roles in this first sequence are to be handled by Julie Bennett, Laurette Fillbrandt and Vilma Kurer. The adventure is titled The Fear That Creeps Like a Cat—and it will consume about three weeks of broadcasting.

Jan. 8, 1951, TV listings
9:00—WNBT (4)—Lights Out, "The Bird of Time," With Jessica Tandy, David Lewis, Julie Bennett and Irving Winter.

Mar. 1, 1952
Radio and stage star Julie Bennett frequently heads the all-Broadway casts in original dramas on CBS’ “Grand Central Station.” She’s also heard often on “Theatre of Today” and “Gangbusters.”

March 20, 1952, Inez Gerhard “Star Dust” column
Julie Bennett, heard on NBC’s “Life Can Be Beautiful”, makes money from her hobby—dialects of all kinds. Radio producers call for Julie whenever a difficult or rare accent is needed, and she never fails to deliver. Asked to explain how she does it, she says she thinks it is because she studies accents carefully, and maybe her keen musical ear helps.

Feb. 2, 1953, Los Angeles Times
BUSY LASS—Julie Bennett has a featured role with Gordon MacRae in “Carousel” on KFI tonight at 8 and also appears with Burns and Allen Thursday on their TV series. She's also set for next week's Racket Squad.

October 30, 1955
Julie Bennett, Vamp in New TV Theater.
Walter F. Kerr, Los Angeles Times
Tomorrow the curtain goes up on NBC Matinee Theater, one of the largest and most ambitious projects of its kind ever undertaken in television. NBC Matinee Theater will provide a daily, hour-long drama "live" in compatible color five days a week, Monday through Friday. Every weekday, 52 weeks a year, this series will unfold coast-to-coast with a with an different story enacted by an entirely different cast. Julie Bennett stars, Albert McCleery is the executive producer, and the series will be seen locally at noon on NBC (4).
The series will open with the appropriately titled play "Beginning Now," by J. P. Marquand, whose short story was adapted for the program by Frank Gilroy. Julie Bennett, known for her vamp roles in both TV and motion pictures, portrays a woman who almost breaks up the family of John Kelsey (Louis Hayward).

Feb. 4, 1955, Hal Eaton, Long Island Star-Journal column
...Waste of pretty puss: Julie Bennett narrating "Tom and Jerry" cartoons...

Sept. 30, 1955, Stephen H. Scheuer syndicated column
Julie Bennett's due to appear in a forthcoming episode of "Superman." But don't worry, fellas, no plastic surgery or special make-up is required. She's not playing the lead!

Nov. 21, 1955, Mel Heimer ‘My New York’ column
The NBC's Matinee Theater on TV seems strikingly adult fare for a daytime program. The lovely Julie Bennett was seen on its first program recently, and seems headed for a career of playing Other Women.

March 30, 1956, Earl Wilson’s column
Pretty Julie Bennett will add glamour to Jack Webb's net series.

May 14, 1956, Walter Ames, L.A. Times
Julie Bennett reports things are jumping on the New York scene. She left Hollywood last week for a vacation. Sid Caesar discovered she was in the big town and grabbed her for a role in his 8 o clock KRCA (4) show tonight. She’ll play, of all things, a sexy Broadway actress who sets the plot for the commuter skit.

June 18, 1957, Steven H. Scheuer TV Key-Notes column
THAT JACK Webb's no dope. Thursday’s Dragnet rerun features a scintillating performance by Julie Bennett, who's good looking enough to make most people forget how formula the show is.

Aug. 13, 1958, Walter Winchell column
Things Like This Make You Think: That voice of Brigitte Bardot in the trailers for her new film belongs to a starlet named Julie Bennett. Has a nicer figure, too. (Is that possible?)

March 13, 1959, Hal Eaton, Long Island Star-Journal column
Julie Bennett, one of TV's most versatile thesps, proves it in the dubbing of "FBI Story." Enacts off-screen voice of Jimmy Stewart's three-year-old grandchild!

April 10, 1961, wire service photo
Bob Hope special with (left to right) ol’ Ski Nose, Phil Harris and Beverly Gregg.

Sept. 12, 1963
Damage of $2000 Caused by Blaze at Brown Derby
...Diners in the undisturbed area included actors Robert Young and Tom Noonan and singer Julie Bennett...

Dec. 3, 1964
on Johnny Carson Tonight Show (with Marni Nixon, Bill Cosby and Phil Foster)

Sept. 26, 1972, AP Columnist Bob Thomas
[Plug for Mark Spitz on a Bob Hope special]
The skit included three kisses by Julie Bennett, a busty redhead who portrayed his nurse.

Jan. 23, 1970
Love American Style “Love and the V.I.P. Restaurant.”

Julie’s cartoon work wasn’t strictly for Hanna-Barbera. Jay Ward borrowed her for the Fractured Fairy Tale “The Fisherman and His Wife” and a couple of others when June Foray was engaged elsewhere. She co-starred in Mr. Magoo’s version of Snow White. And she made some appearances at Warner Bros. when the cartoon studio was winding down; “Dog Tales” (1958) and “The Mouse on 57th Street” (1961) immediately come to mind. And, as you can see above, she did some work at MGM by 1955. It might be her in 1956’s “Busy Buddies” (and MakeItUp-Pedia has it wrong; Janet Waldo is not in that cartoon).

Before she used her Southern belle drawl as Cindy Bear, she can be heard as Sagebrush Sal in Quick Draw McGraw’s Masking For Trouble, broadcast October 17, 1959, likely her first appearance in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.