Beulah

It was a big week for Beulah, the Negro maid on Fibber McGee & Molly's famed air show (NBC, Tues., 9130 p.m., E.W.T.). Her sponsor, Johnson's Wax, gave her a fat, new two-year contract.

Few of Fibber McGee & Molly's millions of listeners know that Beulah is neither female nor Negro. She is a husky, 6-ft., 39-year-old radio actor named Marlin Hurt.

Beulah breezed into the show four months ago with an immediately successful trademark -- "Love that man!" (meaning Fibber McGee). This opulent pronouncement is followed by good-natured philosophizing (e.g., "the proper ingrediums for a woman-hater are one good-lookin' woman an' one homely man").

Beulah first appeared on the air about seven years ago. Hurt, whose father was once head of "second car advertising" (posting the big billboards) for Ringling Brothers Circus, ad-libbed Beulah into a Chicago radio show one quiet night on the Mutual network, and she caught on with her listeners. One Negro listener even proposed marriage.

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