The 1960’s were one of the most compelling and turbulent decades of 20th Century America, as evidenced by not only the civil rights movement that resulted in equal rights for African-Americans and other ethic and racial minorities, but also the growing youth movement and the controversial Vietnam War that would end up outraging a generation of Americans.
And yet, the 1960’s were also one of the most interesting – and offbeat decades in television history, as escapism helped millions of viewers escape the increasingly dark realities of the outside world, if only temporarily. Therefore, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the most popular TV shows of the 1960’s were not only offbeat in terms of originality, but also – in some cases – just plain goofy (but in a good way). That certainly describes a good many TV shows of that particular decade, including one that would outlast most of them, even as the 1960’s gave way to the 1970’s: The Beverly Hillbillies.
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The Beverly Hillbillies, one of what a generation of viewers and critics would call the “rural sitcom,” owed both its success and enduring popularity mainly to its immediate forbearers – most notably, The Real McCoys and The Andy Griffith Show; some of the episodes of both TV series were written by veteran film and TV writer/producer Paul Henning, who also had great success writing and producing The Bob Cummings Show in the 1950’s.
When it came time to create The Beverly Hillbillies, Henning – a native of Independence, MO who once encountered fellow Independence native and future U.S. president Harry Truman long before entering show business – found inspiration in the camping vacations he took in the Ozark Mountains, particularly the local residents who lived in the four states where the Ozarks are located, including Henning’s home state of Missouri. But in developing the TV series, Henning decided to go a bit further by having a family of hillbillies – the Clampetts – become extremely wealthy after discovering oil in the hills of Tennessee, then moving them out west to live in a lavish mansion in Los Angeles’s Beverly Hills section. To further convince CBS and Filmways – who joined forces to produce The Beverly Hillbillies – Henning, who was a radio singer prior to becoming a writer/producer, wrote what would become the show’s theme song – “The Ballad Of Jed Clampett” – telling how the Clampetts became rich and ended up in southern California. To quote a familiar cliché, the rest is history.
To play widowed patriarch Jed Clampett, Henning cast veteran film and TV actor Buddy Ebsen, whose career went back to the 1930’s, when he proved his dancing talents in a number of popular movie musicals of that period (and who almost got the role of the Tin Man in The Wizard Of Oz [MGM, 1939]); Ebsen was also no stranger to TV – before taking on the role of Jed Clampett, the actor was best known to 1950’s TV audiences as Davy Crockett’s sidekick Georgie Russell on several episodes of Walt Disney’s Disneyland TV series. Though Ebsen would later play Barnaby Jones in the 1970’s TV mystery series of the same name, he would always be associated with the role of the good-natured (and – more often than not -- wiser) Jed Clampett.
Henning then cast veteran character actress Irene Ryan as Jed’s mother-in-law Daisy “Granny” Moses, the self-styled mountain doctor who preferred using her herbs, potions, and tonics to help cure the Clampetts whenever they were ailing instead of modern-day procedures (at least those that existed in the 1960’s) – and who wasn’t completely harmless for an elderly grandmother, as several generations of TV viewers who’ve watched the series in reruns already know by now. Actress Donna Douglas – who appeared in the 1960 Twilight Zone episode “Eye Of The Beholder” (as well as the Rock Hudson/Doris Day film comedy Lover Come Back [Universal, 1962], co-written by Henning) – was cast as Jed’s beautiful tomboy daughter Elly May, an all-around animal lover who could more than hold her own against any male in physical combat (and any other sports), though she left much to be desired when it came to cooking. Max Baer, Jr., son of the famous boxer, was cast as Jed’s naive and totally clueless nephew Jethro Bodine, who claimed to be a genius (even after graduating from the sixth grade in Beverly Hills in later seasons) in just about everything, but proved to be anything but – though his appetite for food would prove to be bigger than both his I.Q. and ego combined. (Baer also played Jethro’s twin sister Jethrine during the show’s first season [and in drag, no less] – her voice was provided by Henning’s daughter Linda, who would go on to star in Petticoat Junction, which debuted on CBS the following season [1963-64]). Rounding out the cast was character actor Raymond Bailey as Milburn Drysdale, the cunning skinflint president of the fictional Commerce Bank of Beverly Hills, who would wind up not only having the Clampetts as their richest depositors, but also as their next-door neighbors – and actress Nancy Kulp as Mr. Drysdale’s bank secretary Jane Hathaway, who was far more rational and sensible than her boss, and who had a not-so secret crush on Jethro; both Bailey and Kulp appeared in nearly all of The Beverly Hillbillies’ episodes during its first seven seasons – and would graduate to full-time regulars by the start of its eighth season in 1969-70.
