The Beverly Hillbillies

I'm a long time fan of The Beverly Hillbillies. I recently did some research on the internet to find out more about the mansion used in the series. "The Kirkeby Mansion" built in 1938 is actually in Bel Air. the 1938 French neoclassical-style mansion at 750 Bel Air Road, built by Lynn Atkinson (and later sold to hotelier Arnold Kirkeby after Atkinson's wife refused to move into a house she thought too ostentatious.) Kirkeby agreed with the production company to let them use his estate on the condition that the actual address was not given out to the general public. The address (750 Bel Air Rd.)leaked out and before long tourists became a problem. I've found a satellite view of the property recently and found out that the front gate was completely taken out and the house can no longer be seen from the street. The new entrance is down the road. Too bad really because the estate with it's still meticulously manicured spectacular seventeenth century style formal french garden is among the most beautiful in California.

The "Hillbillies" has vaudville like gags. Nothing but pure comedy. Just plain great. It's stood the test of time.

The casting was perfect. Buddy Ebsen is a favorite. Donna Douglas is the most beautiful woman I've seen. Could be my favorite TV show of all time.

Several series have tried to be funny based on the "misunderstanding" principal, but "The Beverly Hillbillies" did it first and funniest. The characters included Jed, a poor but wise mountain man who used his good old country wisdom and saying to rationalize everything, Granny, the world's oldest Confederate widow with moonshine in one hand and a shotgun in the other, Jethro, the idiot savante who thought he was a genius and then Elly Mae, the demurely sexy tom boy who could fight like a wild cat. Add to this the cheap and opportunistic banker Milburne Drysdale and his voice of reason, Jane Hathaway, who starts out as the only normal person in the series but who later turns out to be as crazy as the rest because of her Birdwatchers Club, and you have a recipe for disaster. This show had a great cast and numerous wonderful episodes and storylines that continued sometimes for eight to ten episodes, a thing unusual for a Sixties series. My favorite character is and always be Shorty Kellums, the short innkeeper from back home who was quite the ladies man up until the next storyline.

The Hillbillies was the funniest show of the 60's. In fact, I'm in my 20's and I prefer the classics to the sitcom wasteland of today. I catch them atleast twice a day on TV Land and they always make me laugh hard. The best episodes were the ones where somebody (or some critter) drank Granny's moonshine by accident. Then the fun would really begin. I didn't see anyone mention Harriet MacGibbon as Mrs. Drysdale and that's a shame because she was hilarious, always getting into fights with Granny and fainting. The comedy team of Raymond Bailey and Nancy Kulp had some of the best chemistry in TV history. Their reactions as they played off each other (and off the Clampetts) were side-splitting. Drysdale and Hathaway were a major factor in the show's success. I agree with someone else who commented that Irene Ryan should be up there in the same class with Lucille Ball. It's tragic that her name is all but forgotten today. But Granny lives on in the hearts of her fans.

I remember The Beverly Hillbillies from when I was a little kid, and then when I was 12 years old we had cable TV for the first time and I was able to catch it three times a day! That's when one of the stations decided to run all the episodes in their original sequence, starting from the first episode. Now Walmart has been selling Beverly Hillbillies' DVD's of 16 episodes at a time for around $10. It's a great deal, but the only drawback is that whoever puts out these DVD's didn't get the rights to use any of the opening and closing theme songs. There's plenty of good banjo playing, but no narration by Jerry Scoggins and no closing tune. Still the episodes are extremely enjoyable.

Of course some of it is cornball and dated, but this sitcom beats the pants off any current shows I've seen. Contrary to what some reviewers here have said, the Clampetts always seem to come out on top of every situation by simply being themselves. If that means they're stupid and backwards, then I'd rather be that than something else. By being themselves, decent and simple, they unintentionally expose everyone else's agenda's, phoniness, and crookedness, whether it's Mr. Drysdale's love affair with Clampett money or just some interloper trying to seduce Elly Mae, or whatever. I also find their unabashed Southern pride to be refreshing in today's stifled and overly-militant PC world. Again, they're simply being themselves. Maybe it helped that Irene Ryan was from Texas, Donna Douglas was from Louisiana, and Buddy Ebsen was from rural Illinois. I guess Max Baer was just a natural as Jethro, and he later dwelt on mainly Southern themes in his post-Jethro life as a film producer. PC or not, the show is funny!!