The Beverly Hillbillies (1962)

Much as Car 54, Where Are You? was the brainchild and crowning genius of Nat Hiken, who had also scored in the 1950s with The Phil Silvers Show, The Beverly Hillbillies was the master work of Paul Henning, one of the early creators of the sit-com format and one of its greatest practitioners with his string of rural-based comedies. Henning grew up in Independence, Missouri and once met Harry Truman while working at a soda fountain. Since Henning was then unsure of what career path he wanted to pursue, Truman advised him to study law because it would serve him well in many fields. But after enrolling in law school, Henning eventually had to drop out due to lack of funds and having to help his mother financially. From a young age Henning had enjoyed singing, so he auditioned for and was given a spot singing on Kansas City radio station KMBC, which eventually grew to hosting his own show and writing continuity pieces to transition between segments on the show. While working at KMBC Henning met Ruth Barth, who was working for that station as a radio actor. When the Red Horse Ranch program on which Ruth acted traveled to Chicago to make transcription recordings, she informed her boyfriend Paul that Don Quinn, who wrote The Fibber McGee and Molly program, was looking for a second writer, and Henning wound up landing the job. Henning worked for this program for about a year before deciding he wanted to move to California, so he and Ruth married in January 1939 and moved to Hollywood, where he found work writing for radio programs such as one hosted by Rudy Vallee. But then he was hired away by George Burns to write for The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show after being recommended to Burns by two other writers, Frank Galen and Keith Fowler. When the program was adapted for television in 1950, Henning was brought along on the writing staff, thereby helping create one of TV's first sit-coms, though in an interview on televisionacademy.com Henning gives Burns much of the credit for the format they developed.

In the same interview, Henning says that ever since his days of writing for radio he wanted to become a producer because they had final say on scripts. So when he was approached by singer and comedian Dennis Day, of The Jack Benny Program, to help develop and produce Day's new variety-comedy series, Henning leapt at the chance, despite Burns' attempts to talk him out of it, and brought with him fellow writer Stanley Shapiro, who would be a collaborator with Henning on many future projects. The Dennis Day Show ran from 1952-54, and Henning then moved on, with Shapiro, to develop and produce a show for Wizard of Oz star Ray Bolger called Where's Raymond?, which ran for 2 seasons from 1953-55. Irene Ryan and Elvia Allman (Elvira Bradshaw on The Beverly Hillbillies) each appeared in 2 episodes of the program. He was then approached by MCA to develop a program for Bob Cummings, which became The Bob Cummings Show (later rebroadcast as Love That Bob), running for 5 seasons from 1955-59. The show was co-owned by Cummings' and George Burns' production companies, and Henning says that Burns would show up for all of their run-throughs and make suggestions, which Henning says were often quite good. Several actors who appeared on The Bob Cummings Show would become regulars on The Beverly Hillbillies­--Nancy Kulp, Bea Benaderet, Frank Wilcox, and, again, Elvia Allman. While producing The Bob Cummings Show, Henning was recruited by Cummings cast member and writer Dick Wesson to collaborate on writing the episode "The Fishing Contest" for The Real McCoys in 1957, Henning's first venture into writing hillbilly humor, though he says that he had been a fan of the genre dating back seeing a production of Tobacco Road while living in Kansas City. The two would write another episode for The Real McCoys in 1959 titled "The Fighter and the Lady." Henning was subsequently recruited by producer Sheldon Leonard to write the Season 2 episode "Crime-Free Mayberry" for The Andy Griffith Show in 1961. Meanwhile, writing partner Shapiro, who had co-written the screenplay for the Rock Hudson and Doris Day comedy Pillow Talk, recruited Henning to co-write the follow-up feature Lover Come Back, which was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars in 1962.

At this point Henning began to get daily phone calls from Filmways, Inc. executive Al Simon, who had been associate producer on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and The Bob Cummings Show, pleading with him to write a television pilot for his new company. Henning had just completed a cross-country driving trip with his mother-in-law that included visits to many Civil War battle sites, and he began wondering what someone from the Civil War era would think if they could see the country circa 1960. When he coupled this thought with his memories of being a Boy Scout camping in the Ozarks, where some people had resisted the march of history, objecting to paved roads and such, he came up with the idea to transplant hillbillies from a very isolated part of the country to a modern setting. When Henning told Simon and Filmways co-founder Martin Ransohoff about his idea, Ransohoff offered to buy the rights to the Ma and Pa Kettle franchise, but Henning begged him not to do so because he wanted the show to be his own creation. Henning recruited Buddy Ebsen for the part of Jed Clampett after seeing him play backwoods characters, probably in Davy Crockett and Northwest Passage, and finding him to have the right size and movements for the character he had imagined. Bea Benaderet originally lobbied for the part of Granny, but after seeing Irene Ryan's screen test in the role agreed that she was better suited for the part. Donna Douglas had appeared in Lover Come Back, and Simon recommended her for the part of Elly Mae, and Max Baer, Jr. won the part of Jethro because his silly ear-to-ear grin that seemed to indicate there was very little going on behind it mentally. Henning shot a pilot episode, which was then called The Hillbillies of Beverly Hillbillies, and planned to screen it for a test audience but says that the audience's laughter was so loud and constant that some of the dialogue in the screening was drowned out. Nevertheless, Simon and Ransohoff easily sold the program to CBS president James T. Aubrey. The name was changed to The Beverly Hillbillies, which Henning remembered from a musical group he had heard about some time previous.

When the show finally aired in September 1962, it was widely panned by critics in most major publications, but audiences loved it, and the program shot to the top of the ratings within the first three weeks and remained there for its first two seasons. Even the often restrained TV Guide recognized the show's fresh comic style by repeating several of the best lines in their September 15, 1962 Fall Preview issue, such as Jethro being asked why there is no snow in California and replying, "Don't ask me, I didn't take it." The show was so successful that CBS used it to save the critically acclaimed but audience-poor Dick Van Dyke Show, which was rescheduled into the spot following The Beverly Hillbillies to improve its ratings.

The genre of hillbilly humor was hardly new when Henning created the Beverly Hillbillies--in fact, Fritz Goodwin in a November 10, 1962 TV Guide cover story says that it was old "long before Al Capp inked the first polka dot on Daisy Mae's blouse." And the casting of Donna Douglas as Elly Mae and Max Baer, Jr. as Jethro surely was influenced by their resemblance to Capp's characters Daisy Mae and Li'l Abner, respectively. Likewise, Henning makes great use of the comic trope of having the less-educated hillbillies taken advantage of by con men and city slickers of all types only to triumph in the end because they have more sense than they initially appear to, a theme also used frequently on The Andy Griffith Show. But Henning's greatest comic talent is in setting up the viewer for humor based on misdirection, as evidenced by the line from Jethro about snow in California cited above. Another joke repeated throughout the series' 9-year run and mentioned in the September 15, 1962 TV Guide issue mentioned previously has Jed invite someone like Mr. Brewster or Mr. Drysdale for dinner and mention that they are having possum innards, then when the invitee suggests perhaps coming for dinner the day after, Jed replies that the great thing about possum innards is that they taste just as good the second day. Another example of Henning's setup for misdirection comes in an exchange between Miss Hathaway, Jed, and Jethro in "Getting Settled" (October 3, 1962) when they are discussing Jethro's schooling back home where he attended a school called Oxford because it was located where the oxen forded the stream. Hathaway assumes it is the famous British school and surmises that Jethro must have also attended Eaton and asks if he was a champion at cricket. Jed clarifies that while Jethro was indeed a champion at eatin', it was for crawdads because even Jethro wouldn't eat crickets. Henning had been employing this brand of humor dating back to his days writing for The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show as evidenced by one clip included in the featurette Paul Henning & the Hillbillies from The Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1. In this clip Gracie tells George that their grocer is not very smart because he told her that some chickens he was showing her were frozen, and she then tells George that if he was kept all day in the refrigerator he would be frozen, too.

One area where Henning was a true trailblazer was his use of a continuing story arc across multiple episodes, a device rarely used in television of the era (and never for an entire season) and almost never in the sit-com format. But the first 14 episodes of the program that aired in 1962 follow a linked narrative that begins with the discovery of oil on the Clampett property back in the Ozarks in the pilot to their move to Beverly Hills in episode 2, followed by their attempt to cure Mrs. Drysdale of what they believe is alcholism, and Sonny Drysdale's courtship of Elly Mae, which runs across 4 consecutive episodes. Meanwhile, like a good soap opera, there are several subplots interwoven into the main story, most notably Pearl Bodine's pursuit of Mr. Brewster, which develops into a triangle in "No Place Like Home" (December 26, 1962) with the introduction of Pearl's ardent suitor Homer Winch, and Jethro's sister Jethrine's courting by traveling salesman Jasper "Jazzbo" Depew, who first arrives in "Trick or Treat" (October 31, 1962) but continues his sparking in "Jethro Goes to School" (November 14, 1962) and "Elly Races Jethrine" (December 5, 1962). In all of these episodes, references are made back to events depicted in previous episodes, creating a single, flowing narrative in contrast to the prevailing sit-com format in which each episode is a self-contained unit. While Henning's continuing story arc structure has become commonplace today, particularly in drama series, the technique was virtually unheard of in 1962.

The early seasons of The Beverly Hillbillies are no doubt the best. Max Baer, Jr. in an interview also included in The Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1. remarks that after about the first 5 seasons, the plots lost some of their originality. Jed's punchline about possum innards eventually fails to surprise and thus loses much of its comic impact. And the show began to try to remain topical by having Jethro pursue occupations such as a double-naught spy during the spy-crazy mid-60s and a sophisticated international playboy as a nod to Hugh Hefner. But at some point the fish-out-of-water trope loses its plausibility--the Hillbillies would naturally adapt to their new surroundings at least a little bit. However, with the program remaining in the top 20 of the ratings until its final season, the show had to go on--it was too profitable to discard. And long after it was canceled, it certainly left its mark, not just in the reunion TV movie and reboot feature film of 1993 when one also considers all the Beverly Hills-themed fish-out-of-water films that came in its wake--Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Ninja, and Down and Out in Beverly Hills, to name just a few. And then, of course, there were the other Henning spin-offs--Petticoat Junction and Green Acres, which were also hugely successful in their early years. Eventually CBS pulled the plug on them all because they were more interested in appealing to a more sophisticated urban audience, not fully realizing that a large, rural-based audience can still be pretty influential. All one has to do is look to recent political history to see how misguided ignoring rural America can be.

Besides creating, producing, and writing almost all the early episodes, Paul Henning, who, again, had a previous career in music, composed the theme song for The Beverly Hillbillies, which was performed by Lester Flatt and Earl Scuggs and sung by Jerry Scoggins. The incidental music featured throughout the program was composed by guitarist Perry Botkin, Sr., whose son Perry Botkin, Jr. was also a successful composer. Botkin, Sr. was born in Springfield, Ohio in 1907 and by the 1920s was playing in Wayne Euchner's big band in Indiana. Over the course of his career, Botkin, Sr. played with many of the biggest names in music, including Paul Whiteman, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Fred Astaire, and Al Jolson. For 17 years he served as Bing Crosby's musical director and appeared on recordings such as Hoagy Carmichael's "Hong Kong Blues" in 1938 and "Ole Buttermilk Sky" in 1946, some of Frank Sinatra's recordings for Columbia in the 1940s, and played banjo on Spike Jones' "Clink Clink, Another Drink." In 1958 he scored the feature film Murder by Contract and reused some of the cues from that score for driving scenes on The Beverly Hillbillies. As an actor, Botkin, Sr. appeared in the feature films Birth of the Blues, Main Street to Broadway, and Pete Kelley's Blues and played himself on two episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. He died October 14, 1973 at the age of 66.

The first season half of the second have been released on DVD by MPI spread out over two 4-disc sets called The Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. Seasons 2 through 5 have been released on DVD by CBS/Paramount. Because Orion Television, which acquired Filmways in 1982, failed to renew the copyrights on the program's first 55 episodes and let them fall into the public domain, many of these Season 1 and Season 2 shows have also been issued on DVD by low-budget video companies. The versions of these 55 episodes included in the Ultimate Collection sets are taken from the Henning Estate archives.

The Actors

For the biography of Bea Benaderet, see the 1960 post on The Flintstones. For the biography of Raymond Bailey, see the 1961 post on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. For the biography of Frank Wilcox, see the 1961 post on The Untouchables.

Buddy Ebsen

Christian Ludolf Ebsen, Jr. was born April 2, 1908 in Belleville, IL. His father was a physical fitness instructor at a local German athletic and social club and created a public swimming pool and spa called the Ebsen Natatorium by damming up several springs on the family property. An aunt gave Ebsen, Jr. the nickname "Buddy." When Buddy was 12, his family relocated to Florida, eventually settling in Orlando where his father ran a dance studio. Ebsen later recalled that his father taught all five children (Buddy was the only boy) ballet, but he resisted it because it was considered girlish, that is, until the Charleston dance craze of the 1920s. Initially Buddy aspired to a medical career since one of his sisters suffered from epileptic seizures, but after two years of study he had to abandon that idea when he ran out of money and decided to pursue a career in show business instead. He moved to New York in 1928 and first landed a spot in the chorus of the Florenz Ziegfeld production Whoopee, which starred Eddie Cantor. In 1930 he teamed up with his sister Vilma and while performing in Atlantic City was spotted and heralded by newspaper columnist Walter Winchell (Ebsen would end up marrying Winchell's assistant Ruth Cambridge). The publicity led to a featured spot in the vaudeville show Broadway Stars of Tomorrow at the prestigious Palace Theatre. After starring in the Broadway productions Flying Colors and Ziegfeld Follies of 1934, Buddy and Vilma were signed by MGM Studios and moved to California in 1935, both appearing in the 1936 feature Broadway Melody of 1936. When the studio separated the pair, Vilma married, returned to New York, and retired from show business, while Buddy continued appearing in features such as Captain January with Shirley Temple, Born to Dance with Eleanor Powell, and Broadway Melody of 1938 with Judy Garland. Despite turning down MGM's offer of a 7-year contract because studio boss Louis Meyer said he wanted to own him and then told him he would never work in show business again when Ebsen rejected the MGM offer, Ebsen was originally cast as first the scarecrow, until Ray Bolger said he preferred the role, and then the tin man in The Wizard of Oz. But the aluminum-based makeup Ebsen had to wear as the tin man caused serious health problems that nearly killed him, essentially coating his lungs with aluminum so that he could barely breathe and causing his fingers and toes to cramp. Ebsen spent two weeks in the hospital and another six weeks recovering, by which point he had been replaced by Jack Haley using a safer silver-colored makeup, but Ebsen believed that he still appears in the final cut of the film in some of the group long shots and singing on numbers such as "We're Off to See the Wizard." After his near-death experience with MGM, he returned to Broadway and at the same time became an expert sailor and sailing instructor before joining the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II. His interest in sailing continued throughout his life, even designing and building his own catamaran Polynesian Concept with which he won the 1968 Transpac Los Angeles-to-Honolulu boat race and led to a book he wrote about sailing also titled Polynesian Concept. After being discharged from the Coast Guard in 1946, Ebsen returned to Broadway in Show Boat before resuming his movie career, though now he was being cast only in B-grade westerns like Under Mexicali Skies and Rodeo King and the Senorita at a great reduction in salary. Things got so bad a William Morris, Jr. Agency agent advised him to retire. But Ebsen pushed on, eventually adding TV roles on drama anthology series beginning with The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre in 1949. His career was revived in 1954 when he was cast in the Disney mini-series Davy Crockett. Director Norman Foster lobbied for Ebsen in the title role, but when Walt Disney saw Fess Parker in the feature film Them! he insisted on casting Parker in the lead part and Ebsen was relegated to playing Crockett's friend George Russel. Despite the reduced role in Davy Crockett, the experience led to other recurring TV roles, including Sheriff Matthew Brady on Corky and White Shadow in 1956 and Sgt. Hunk Marriner on Northwest Passage in 1958-59. In the early 1960s he began getting frequent guest spots on series such as Maverick, The Twilight Zone, and The Andy Griffith Show, but it was his appearance as Holly Golightly's estranged husband in Breakfast at Tiffany's that caught the attention of The Beverly Hillbillies creator Paul Henning.

When Henning pitched the show idea to Ebsen, the actor was initially taken aback that his character would be the series straight man, so he made a deal with Henning that his character would always be the one in control of the family's money so that he would never get lost in the story. Unlike his castmates, Ebsen's career did not suffer from being pigeonholed as his Beverly Hillbillies character after the series was canceled in 1971. He starred in a series of TV movies and made occasional guest appearances on Night Gallery, Bonanza, and Alias Smith and Jones before being given his next series playing the elderly detective title character Barnaby Jones, which ran for eight seasons from 1973-80. And though his career slowed when this series ended--Ebsen was then 72--he followed up a Beverly Hillbillies reunion TV movie and a pair of appearances on The Yellow Rose in 1984 with another recurring role as the title character's uncle on Matt Houston from 1984-85.  Ebsen also actively worked to defeat his Beverly Hillbillies castmate Nancy Kulp's run for a U.S. House of Representatives seat for the state of Pennsylvania in 1984, campaigning for her opponent because he believed that Kulp was too liberal (Ebsen had also campaigned for Barry Goldwater's presidential bid in 1964). At this point, Ebsen slowed down considerably with only a couple of TV movies and one TV guest spot over the next several years, but he made an appearance in the 1993 feature revival of The Beverly Hillbillies--playing Barnaby Jones--and voiced a character in a 1999 episode of King of the Hill, his last film credit. Ebsen was not limited to his acting career: besides his sailing exploits, he wrote several plays that were performed, wrote lyrics for the 1965 Beverly Hillbillies tie-in LP, took up painting to create a series of folk-art style works featuring Jed Clampett and his dog Duke, as an avid coin collector co-founded the Beverly Hills Coin Club, and at age 93 published his first novel, Kelly's Quest, in 2001. It would be his only novel because he died of respiratory failure two years later on July 6, 2003 at the age of 95.

Irene Ryan

Born Jessie Irene Noblette (some sources say Noblitt) in El Paso, Texas on October 17, 1902, the daughter of an Army sergeant originally from North Carolina, Ryan got the show business bug early by winning an amateur talent contest singing "Pretty Baby" at the Valencia Theater in San Francisco. She dropped out of school at age 14 and lied about her age to land a job with a California theater stock company. Four years later she joined a traveling musical and comedy troupe and while on the road met and married her first husband Tim Ryan. Together they created an act billed as Tim and Irene in which she played the ditzy wife who exasperated her husband, much like George Burns and Gracie Allen. After vaudeville died off, they took their act to radio where Tim and Irene became a hit and spawned nearly a dozen short films in the latter 1930s. When the couple divorced in the early 1940s, Irene found work on other radio programs such as Texas Star Theater and those hosted by Rudy Vallee and Bob Hope, as well as touring in Hope's USO shows. Irene and Tim Ryan were reunited professionally in a series of 1940s feature films, including Sarong Girl, Melody Parade, The Sultan's Daughter, and Hot Rhythm, but she also found steady work in supporting roles apart from Ryan in The Beautiful Cheat, The Woman on the Beach, My Dear Secretary, Bonzo Goes to College, and The WAC From Walla Walla. In 1946 she remarried to producer Harold E. Knox, who produced such TV shows as Dangerous Assignment and Judge Roy Bean in the early to mid-1950s. Ryan herself began landing guest spots on TV programs in the mid-1950s, beginning with Where's Raymond?, The Danny Thomas Show, and The Whistler. The closest she came to a recurring role before The Beverly Hillbillies was three appearances as Cynthia Boyle on the short-lived sit-com Bringing Up Buddy in 1961.

But all of that would change with The Beverly Hillbillies. Reportedly Paul Henning was considering Bea Benaderet for the role of Granny until Ryan read for the role with her trademark feistiness, which sold Henning and producer Al Simon, even though Ryan was less than 6 years older than her on-screen son-in-law Buddy Ebsen. Ryan received two Emmy nominations for her portrayal of Granny and, having divorced Knox before the series began, invested her money wisely so that by the time the show ended she was, like her on-screen son-in-law, a millionaire. Having no heirs, she decided to found The Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship awards to help young actors participating in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. While her post-Beverly Hillbillies film work was limited to a single appearance on Love, American Style, she was reportedly offered a series of her own with a character resembling Granny but decided instead to make her Broadway debut in the Bob Fosse-directed musical Pippin in 1972, which garnered her a Tony nomination. Her performance of the show-stopper "No Time at All" led to an immediate record contract with Motown, which released her recording of the song as a single. A lifelong chain-smoker, Ryan suffered a stroke while performing in a Los Angeles production of Pippin and was rushed to the hospital, where it was discovered that she was also suffering from a brain tumor. She died on April 26, 1973 at the age of 70.

Donna Douglas

Doris Ione Smith was born September 26, 1932 in Pride, Louisiana, an only child who grew up as a kind of tomboy, playing softball and basketball in high school, who loved animals, exactly like her Beverly Hillbillies character Elly Mae Clampett. She married Roland Bourgeois at age 17 immediately after high school, and the couple had one child, son Danny Bourgeois, before divorcing soon thereafter in 1954. In 1957 she won both the Miss Baton Rouge and Miss New Orleans beauty contests and then moved to New York to launch a show business career. Initially she found work modeling for toothpaste ads but later said she abandoned that career because it required her to be too skinny. She soon found work on TV as the Letters Girl on Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall and a similar role in 1959 as the Billboard Girl on The Steve Allen Plymouth Show. This eventually led to dramatic acting roles on series such as Tightrope, U.S. Marshal, and Bachelor Father as well as a couple of feature film appearances in Career and Li'l Abner also in 1959. In 1960 she had a crucial role in one of the most memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone titled "Eye of the Beholder" in which her stunning beauty is considered abominable in a society where pig-like disfigured faces are considered the norm. By 1961 she was getting numerous guest spots on TV series and even appeared 4 times as Barbara Simmons, the detective agency's secretary on Checkmate. She also played Tony Randall's secretary in the Doris Day-Rock Hudson romantic comedy Lover Come Back, co-written by Beverly Hillbillies creator Paul Henning. She was one of over 500 actresses who auditioned for the part of Elly Mae and later recalled that part of her audition included milking a goat, which she said she had no problem doing since she had milked cows back in Louisiana.

During her tenure on The Beverly Hillbillies, Douglas appeared as a guest on only one other TV program, The Defenders in 1964, and one feature film, starring opposite Elvis Presley in Frankie and Johnny in 1966. When the show ended in 1971, she married the show's director Robert M. Leeds and found occasional guest work on shows such as Love, American Style, Adam-12, and McMillan and Wife in the 1970s. After turning down a part on what she described as a prime-time soap opera that she considered immoral and unable to shake being typecast for her Beverly Hillbillies role, Douglas became a licensed real estate agent and pursued a career as a gospel singer, releasing three albums in the 1980s and giving motivational speeches at churches across the country. She was also active in charitable work benefitting church-based children's homes and published a pair of Christian-oriented children's books. She appeared in the 1981 reunion TV movie The Return of the Beverly Hillbillies and took part in a 1993 episode of The Jerry Springer Show that included Ebsen and Max Baer, Jr., as well as appearing at various TV memorabilia conventions. Also in 1993 she and professional partner Curt Wilson filed a $200 million lawsuit against Disney and stars Whoopi Goldberg and Bette Midler for allegedly plagiarizing the screenplay for the film Sister Act from the book A Nun in the Closet to which Douglas and Wilson owned the rights. They lost that case, and she lost another lawsuit filed against Mattel for producing an Elly Mae Clampett version of Barbie using her photo on the box without her approval. The case ruled that CBS owned the rights to her TV character, not Douglas. Her last TV appearance was playing herself on a 1999 episode of The Nanny. In 2013 she published a cookbook of Southern recipes from other Hollywood stars such as Ebsen, Phyllis Diller, and Debbie Reynolds. Two years later she died from pancreatic cancer on January 1, 2015 at the age of 82.

Max Baer, Jr.

The son of heavyweight boxing champion Max Baer, Sr., Maximilian Adelbert Baer, Jr. was born in Oakland, CA on December 4, 1937. He grew up in Sacramento, where he said he initially got beat up regularly by boys wanting to test how tough he was, since his father had been heavyweight champ, until his father told him to fight back. In a 2017 interview, Baer, Jr. said this experience led him to become a bully and pre-emptively hit anyone who asked about his father. His father's legacy loomed large over Baer, Jr., who strongly objected to Ron Howard's depiction of Baer, Sr. as a monster in the film Cinderella Man about James Braddock, who took the heavyweight title from Baer, Sr. 364 days after he had won it. But Baer, Jr. also became an accomplished golfer, growing up friends with future professional golfer Al Geiberger. In 1968 Baer, Jr. partnered with professional Charlie Sifford to win the Andy Williams San Diego Open pro-am event. And while his show business career reportedly began with a performance of Goldilocks and the Three Bears in England when he was 12 years old, he didn't become a professional actor until he signed with Warner Brothers in 1960, the year after his father died of a heart attack at age 50. As a contract player, Baer, Jr. got bit parts, usually as a heavy, in the gamut of Warners TV series--Cheyenne, Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Surfside 6, Bronco, Sugarfoot, and The Roaring 20's, all in 1960-61. In the same 2017 interview, he claimed that he faked laryngitis to delay his Beverly Hillbillies audition to study records of Andy Griffith and Jonathan Winters on how to deliver a southern accent.

Being cast as Jethro Bodine proved to be both a blessing and a curse for Baer--it vaulted him to stardom on the most popular new show of the early 1960s, but after its cancelation in 1971, he was unable to shake the image producers had of him as Jethro. Frustrated at not being given the chance for other parts, Baer, who had invested in real estate during his Hillbillies days, decided to produce his own film, Macon County Line, which he also co-wrote and appeared in, for $110,000 in 1974. The film wound up making over $25 million, a formula he repeated the next year in The Wild McCullochs, which he also directed. In 1976 Baer became the first producer to turn a song title into a feature film with Ode to Billy Joe, based on Bobbie Gentry's 1967 hit song. The film cost $1.1 million to produce and reaped $27 million at the box office alone. In 1984 he won a $2 million lawsuit against ABC when they tried to prevent him from making a movie based on Madonna's "Like a Virgin." His last directorial effort came in the 1979 feature Hometown U.S.A. Meanwhile, Baer's acting career had fizzled out, though he did make a small number of appearances on Love, American Style, Fantasy Island, Buddy Ebsen's last series Matt Houston, and Murder, She Wrote as well as a couple of TV movies. But after trying to escape his Jethro shadow by refusing to appear in the 1981 reunion TV movie, Baer finally came to accept the Hillbillies' popularity and turned his attention to ventures based on licensing the iconic series. In 1991 he paid CBS $1 million to sublicense the rights to The Beverly Hillbillies and developed a number of casino games and slot machines based on the series. He then attempted to develop a hotel and casino in Carson City, Nevada after buying the land from a former Walmart location, but when this effort was stymied, he sold the parcel and bought another in Douglas County. This project devolved into a lawsuit between Baer and the developers, who had not informed him that they already had entered into a development agreement with the county but had not revealed that it was Baer who actually owned the property. Elsewhere Baer filed a lawsuit against CBS for secretly licensing the Jethro Bodine name to a Des Moines, Iowa barbecue restaurant. Besides his legal troubles, Baer has also not fared well in his romantic life. After his only marriage to Joanne Kathleen Hill ended in divorce in 1971, Baer dated Dallas actress Victoria Principal for a time, but in 2005 she alleged that he had assaulted her during their relationship, a charge he has denied. After this affair, Baer dated model Chere Rhodes, who was 40 years younger than him at the time, but she committed suicide in 2008, shooting herself in the chest at his Lake Tahoe home and citing relationship problems in her suicide note. At age 83, Baer is the lone surviving member of the original cast.

Nancy Kulp

Born Nancy Jane Kulp in Harrisburg, PA on August 28, 1921, Kulp was an only child, the daughter of a traveling salesman and a school teacher. The family later moved to Miami, FL, and Kulp graduated from the Florida State College for Women with a degree in journalism in 1943. She then enrolled at the University of Miami to pursue a Master's Degree in English and French. During her time in graduate school, she also wrote celebrity profiles for the Miami Beach Tropic. In 1944 she enlisted in the WAVES as a part of the Naval Reserve and reached the rank of lieutenant, junior grade while earning an American Campaign Medal before her honorable discharge in 1946. She then worked as a publicity director for a Miami radio station. In 1951 Kulp married Charles Dacus, whom she later said encouraged her desire to become an actress. She moved to Hollywood and initially worked as a film publicist for only three weeks before director George Cukor met her and encouraged her to pursue acting, giving her a bit part in the 1951 feature The Model and the Marriage Broker. She continued to get occasional small parts, often uncredited, in flims such as Shane, The Caddy, and Sabrina, then began getting TV guest spots in 1954 on shows such as Lux Video Theatre, Topper, and December Bride. In 1955 she landed her first recurring role as birdwatcher Pamela Livingstone on The Bob Cummings Show, which is when she came to the attention of Paul Henning, who wrote 97 on the series' 167 episodes. Concurrent with her work on The Bob Cummings Show she had guest spots on other series such as It's a Great Life, Our Miss Brooks, Date With the Angels, and Perry Mason. She also began receiving bigger feature film roles in Forever, Darling, God Is My Partner, and The Three Faces of Eve. Between the end of The Bob Cummings Show and the beginning of The Beverly Hillbillies, Kulp guest starred on Mister Ed, 87th Precinct, The Jack Benny Program, and My Three Sons and appeared in features such as The Last Time I Saw Archie, The Parent Trap, and The Two Little Bears. During this time she also divorced Dacus in 1961 and only a few years before her death would confide to LGBT author Boze Hadleigh that she was a lesbian, though other reports claim she was actually bisexual. Henning reportedly wrote the role of Jane Hathaway particularly for Kulp, and she received an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy for the role in 1967.

During her 9 years on Hillbillies, Kulp still had time to appear in feature films such as Who's Minding the Store, The Patsy, and The Night of the Grizzly, as well as providing the voice of Frou-Frou in The Aristocats, but unlike some of her Hillbillies co-stars she had no trouble finding work after the series ended, largely because she had solidified her character type long before Hillbillies. She appeared 8 times as Mrs. Gruber on The Brian Keith Show in 1973-74, 5 times as May Hopkins on Sanford and Son in 1975-76, and made multiple appearances on The Love Boat and CHiPs in the late 1970s and early 1980s. After returning to Pennsylvania in semi-retirement, she ran as the Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania's 9th Congressional district in 1984 against incumbent Bud Shuster. Though Shuster was the prohibitive favorite, Kulp's campaign wasn't helped by former Hillbillies castmate Buddy Ebsen's radio ad tagging her as "too liberal," an affront she resented for many years, though Ebsen later expressed regret and reconciled with Kulp shortly before her death. After her political defeat, she taught film and drama at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA before returning to live in Palm Desert, CA, where she served on the board of the Screen Actors Guild and did charitable work for Humane Society, United Cerebral Palsy, and the Desert Theater League. Kulp was diagnosed with cancer in 1990 and died the following year at age 69.

Harriet E. MacGibbon

Born in Chicago on October 5, 1905 as Harriet E. McGibbon (no "a"), her father was a physician in Chicago, and her great-grandfather Dr. Elizur Deming of Indiana was a prominent abolitionist who helped runaway slaves through the underground railroad and served in the Indiana state legislature. Young Harriet, after "finishing" Knox School in Cooperstown abandoned her matriculation to Vassar to pursue a career on the stage, studying with Franklin H. Sargent at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. She finally broke into acting in a 1925 Broadway production of Beggar on Horseback, which toured the eastern U.S., including Boston in 1928. While in Boston she studied the harp under Alfred Holy of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She toured the country with various stock companies as well as various other Broadway productions. From 1934 to 1937 she played the role of Lucy Kent in Home Sweet Home on the NBC Radio Network. Other than a brief, uncredited appearance in the W.C. Fields short The Golf Specialist in 1930, MacGibbon's film career didn't really begin until 1950 with an appearance on the TV program The Billy Rose Show. Her sparse 1950s television work consisted mostly of drama anthology series and 5 appearances on the soap opera The Brighter Day in 1958-59. Beginning with a guest spot on the Charles Bronson drama Man With a Camera in 1959, MacGibbon began getting more frequent roles on early 1960s series such as Hennesey, The Donna Reed Show, My Three Sons, and Hazel and even appeared 3 times as Mrs. Gibney on Peter Loves Mary. Her feature film debut came in the 1961 comedy Cry for Happy starring Glenn Ford and Donald O'Connor, but she would appear in only 5 more feature films (two of them uncredited) in her career, most notably The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Son of Flubber, and Fluffy.

Cast as snooty, social-climber Margaret Drysdale, MacGibbon appeared 55 times in the role over the program's 9-year run. During that time she also had occasional guest spots on Ben Casey, That Girl, Dragnet, Bewitched, and Mod Squad. Her post-Hillbillies career was limited to single appearances on the obligatory Love, American Style, The Doris Day Show, Bridget Loves Bernie, Mannix, and her last credit in a 1980 episode of One in a Million. Her marriage to William R. Kane produced a son, William R. Kane, Jr., who became an art professor at the University of Rhode Island but died 10 years before his mother at the age of 44. After divorcing Kane, MacGibbon married Charles Corwin White, Jr., a Yale graduate, according to their wedding announcement, and the couple remained married until his death on Christmas Day in 1967. MacGibbon outlived her second husband by 20 years, passing away from heart and lung failure on February 8, 1987 at the age of 81.

Louis Nye

The son of Russian immigrants, Louis Neistat was born May 1, 1913 in Hartford, CT, the son of a grocer. Nye aspired to an acting career as early as high school but later said he was prevented from participating in any high school dramas because of his poor marks in algebra. However, he was able to join the Hartford Players troupe and later moved to New York, where he found work as a radio actor for WTIC on soap operas playing parts as diverse as Nazis, rich uncles, and juveniles. He also found occasional stage work, appearing in the revue Winged Victory during World War II. In 1940 he married pianist and songwriter Anita Leonard, whose best-known composition was "A Sunday Kind of Love." He then served in the U.S. Army during the War, assigned to run a recreation hall in Missouri, and during this time he met Carl Reiner, also assigned to entertainment duties during his military service. Upon returning to civilian life, Nye made his television debut in a 1949 episode of The Admiral Broadway Revue and two years later appeared in the theatrical production Flahooley. But his big break came when he became a regular cast member of The Steve Allen Plymouth Show after meeting Steve Allen during an elevator ride. Nye excelled in Allen's "Man on the Street" sketches, taking on the role of bragging country-club member Gordon Hathaway and coining his trademark catchphrase when greeting Allen with "Heigh-ho, Steverino!" The recurring bit earned Nye an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1958, but it also typecast him for most of the rest of his career, as he was often cast as variations of the Hathaway snob in movies and TV guest spots. When Allen's show finally ended in 1960, Nye landed supporting roles in feature films such as Sex Kittens Go to College, Bob Hope and Lucille Ball's The Facts of Life, and The Last Time I Saw Archie. His next recurring TV role came playing dentist Dr. Delbert Gray on The Ann Sothern Show in 1960-61, while he continued to cash in on his Allen show fame with comedy albums Heigh-Ho, Madison Avenue: Songs of the Advertising Game in 1960 and Here's Nye in Your Eye in 1961.

His stint as Sonny Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies, another role bearing a striking resemblance to Gordon Hathaway, lasted for only 5 episodes in 1962 (with a single-episode return in 1966), according to one source because a network executive or sponsor considered the role too effeminate. Nye nonetheless continued to land comic supporting roles in feature films such as The Stripper, The Wheeler Dealers, Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?, and Good Neighbor Sam, performed stand-up in nightclubs, was a frequent guest on talk shows such as The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Mike Douglas Show, and The Merv Griffin Show, was a panelist on games shows such as I've Got a Secret and The Hollywood Squares, and had guest appearances on TV shows such as The Munsters, The Phyllis Diller Show, and Love, American Style. In 1973 he landed a recurring supporting role on the Norman Fell comedy Needles and Pins, but the series lasted for only 14 episodes. The 1970s were more of the same--occasional TV guest spots and feature film cameos, but in 1985 he added animation voicework to his repertoire with several roles on Inspector Gadget and later various voices on Foofur. Though his television work virtually disappeared by the 1990s, Nye never stopped working in other venues and made a triumphant if small return as Jeff Greene's father in Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm from 2000-2002. He died of lung cancer on October 9, 2005 at the age of 92.

Notable Guest Stars

Season 1, Episode 1, "The Clampetts Strike Oil": Ron Hagerthy  (Clipper King on Sky King) plays an oil field worker. Robert Osborne (long-time host on Turner Classic Movies) plays Milburn Drysdale's assistant Jeff Taylor.

Season 1, Episode 6, "Trick or Treat": Phil Gordon (shown on the left, former jazz musician who also served as dialogue coach on Green Acres) plays Jethrine's suitor Jasper "Jazzbo" Depew. Shirley Mitchell (Yvonne Sharp on Sixpenny Corner, Kitty Devereaux on Bachelor Father, Janet Colton on Pete and Gladys, Marge on Please Don't Eat the Daisies, and Clara Appleby on The Red Skelton Hour) plays next-door maid Agnes. Ted Eccles (Tooly on The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, Bobby Chandler on General Hospital, and Brad on Dr. Shrinker) plays a neighbor boy trick or treater.

Season 1, Episode 8, "Jethro Goes to School": Eleanor Audley (shown on the right, played Mother Eunice Douglas on Green Acres and Mrs. Vincent on My Three Sons) plays exclusive elementary school president Millicent Schuyler-Potts. Lisa Davis (Hula Hips Jenkins on The George Burns Show) plays her assistant Diana. Phil Gordon (see "Trick or Treat" above) returns as Jethrine suitor Jasper Depew.

Season 1, Episode 11, "Elly Races Jethrine": Phil Gordon (see "Trick or Treat" above) returns as Jethrine suitor Jasper Depew.

Season 1, Episode 12, "The Great Feud": Lyle Talbot (shown on the far left, see the biography section for the 1960 post on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) plays a jailhouse psychiatrist. Ken Drake (shown on the near left, played Bragan on Not for Hire) plays his colleague.

Season 1, Episode 14, "No Place Like Home": Paul Winchell (shown on the right, voiced Dick Dastardly on Wacky Races, Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines, and Yogi's Treasure Hunt, Clyde and Softie on The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, Fleegle on The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, Goober on Goober and the Ghost Chasers, Revs on Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch, Woofer on Clue Club, Mayor Lumpkin on Trollkins, Marmaduke on Heathcliff, Gargamel on The Smurfs, Zummi Gummi on The Adventures of the Gummi Bears, and Tigger on The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh) plays Pearl Bodine suitor Homer Winch.