ALAN writes:

A recent post noted that the top-rated television programs in 1965 included “The Beverly Hillbillies” at No. 2. Since I am likely the only one among your readers who remembers viewing the first episode of that series when it was telecast one evening in September 1962, I would like to say a few things about its virtues.

The intellectuals hated “The Beverly Hillbillies.” They hated it for the same reasons ordinary Americans loved it:  It offered thirty minutes of simple, clean comedy, crisp writing, and characters who were decent, honest, happy, and had plenty of moral fiber.  The critics just could not stand the thought that Americans were enjoying entertainment that included no despair, no messages, no murders, and no pretentious nonsense.  There was nothing dark or cynical or profane for the critics to feast upon and “interpret.”

“The Beverly Hillbillies” projected what Ayn Rand called a “benevolent sense of life.”  The early black-and-white episodes were the best.  They teem with brightness, good cheer, and optimism in the comical situations, misunderstandings, and musical themes heard at intervals throughout.  The comedy ranges from slapstick to word play to understated, self-effacing humor.

Only when viewing them forty years later did I begin fully to appreciate those virtues.  They are evident in many episodes in the early seasons.  In later seasons, the comedy pacing and restraints had largely vanished and the writing became overdone and self-consciously cute.  There were occasional good episodes even in the color seasons, but some of the black-and-white episodes from 1962-’64 stand by contrast as gems of disciplined comedy writing and production.

“The Beverly Hillbillies” was not created by a committee.  It was the creation of an individual:  Missourian Paul Henning, who also wrote the show’s unforgettable theme song.  It also had the considerable talents of Buddy Ebsen and Irene Ryan.

Some of the happiest scenes in the early years feature Buddy Ebsen dancing to the song “Dixie” or the entire cast of characters taking part in square-dancing to the jaunty melody of the theme song, scenes that express the pure joy of song and dance.

Irene Ryan made her character “Granny” the most unforgettable in the series.  Both she and Buddy Ebsen’s “Jed Clampett” lived by a bedrock code of morality by which they stood confident, proud, self-reliant, and opposed to any form of charity.  In fact, that was an exact reflection of their real lives:  Their success in “The Beverly Hillbillies” was preceded by long years of hard work in vaudeville, radio, on the stage, and in movies.

In the wake of Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty” and expansion of the welfare state, a 1968 profile of Irene Ryan reported her “undisguised contempt for the modern ‘somebody-owes-me-a-living’ trend in American life.  ‘They’re putting everybody on the dole,’ she says.  ‘It absolutely ruins ambition in people.  They say ‘I’ll be taken care of.’  It’s the people who know they must take care of themselves who are better off.  They work—and they think.  They don’t let someone else do their thinking for them.  We haven’t seen the outcome of all this yet, but I think this Nation was better off when we weren’t on the dole.  It’s flattened everybody out.  Today, everybody’s alike.  They all look alike.  They all talk alike.  We’re losing all the great, great individuals with great style.’…”

In the same article, her co-star Buddy Ebsen agreed:

“This [1960s’] generation is weak.  Mine and Irene’s is stronger.  I’m grateful for it.  I feel sorry for the younger generation.  So does Irene…..  I tell these kids, the hippies, ‘You’re the greatest conformists in the world.  You all think alike, act alike, react alike.’  What I want is for people to understand that individual responsibility is the price you pay for liberty.  That’s what Irene wants, too….” [Edith Efron, “American Gothic on television and off”, TV Guide, April 20, 1968 ]

Americans are even less likely today than they were in 1968 to understand that wisdom.

The vacuity of rock and roll “music” was depicted perfectly and hilariously by Buddy Ebsen in the episode “The Clampetts Go Hollywood” (Nov. 20, 1963).

“Great clouds of blue gnats!” Granny exclaims in one episode and “Great clouds of buggy dust!” Cousin Pearl exclaims in another, long-forgotten expressions that writer-creator Paul Henning may have remembered hearing during his boyhood in the Missouri Ozarks.

Respect for tradition, honor, courtesy, good manners, family loyalty, and patriarchal authority—all these things can be seen in the Clampett characters in early seasons of “The Beverly Hillbillies”.  One of the most memorable scenes occurs in the episode “Turkey Day” (Nov. 27, 1963) when the Clampett family and their guests are seen in proper dress and sharing Thanksgiving dinner around the “fancy eatin’ table” in their “billyard room”.

Buddy Ebsen’s “Jed Clampett” also had down-to-earth common sense. “But I’m a psychiatrist,” a character says to him in the episode “The Clampetts Get Psychoanalyzed” (May 8, 1963).  “Well, I’d try to get cured of that, if I was you,” Buddy Ebsen says in perfect deadpan response.

Most viewers probably thought the joke was on Jed Clampett, suggesting as it did that he did not understand the “science” of psychiatry.  But I suggest that the joke is on people who think the joke is on Jed Clampett, because his character is not burdened with the kind of learned stupidity by which people who think they are educated and sophisticated fail to see through the pretentiousness and flim-flammery of a fake science like psychiatry.  If Americans today had the good sense of a Jed Clampett, they could put the fools and frauds who pretend to be men of science in their proper place—out of business.  But they are not going to do that anytime soon, because they love being sold scientific-sounding excuses for misbehavior.

Some episodes include memorable appearances by silent screen actress Gloria Swanson, Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper, and veteran character actors Paul Winchell, Jesse White, Rosemary DeCamp, Charles Ruggles, King Donovan, Shirley Mitchell, Charles Lane, Muriel Landers, Peter Whitney, Iris Adrian, Benny Rubin, and Robert Easton.

I met Robert Easton by chance one day in the 1980s in an antiquarian bookshop in downtown St. Louis when he was looking for old books on language and dialects.  He was not, and never wanted to be, a movie star.  He was a talented character actor, particularly adept at portraying slow-talking, seemingly-ignorant backwoods characters.  (Watch him in the episode “Luke’s Boy” from May 26, 1965.)  He was also a dialect coach for many Hollywood actors and actresses.  When he died at age 81 in 2011, his obituary said:

“….Wherever Easton went, he prowled bookstores, eventually turning his home [in California] into a linguist’s paradise with an estimated 500,000 volumes about the languages and cultures of the world.  Bags and boxes of books spilled into every conceivable corner…..” [Elaine Woo, “Robert Easton, 1930-2011: Actor trained stars to do regional accents,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 22, 2011]

Many viewers remarked on the difference between the Clampetts’ life in the Ozark backwoods and their new life in Beverly Hills.  That was one basis for many comical situations.  But the difference between those two ways of life—morally and culturally—was considerably less than the difference between what American entertainment culture was in 1962 and what it is today.  Neither network executives nor ordinary American viewers in 1962 would have approved or excused the filth on television that they approve and excuse today.

When “The Beverly Hillbillies” began in 1962 and quickly became an audience favorite, “Most critics were appalled,” a television historian tells us.  They “felt its phenomenal success was sad proof of the level to which American taste had fallen…..” [Mary Ann Watson, The Expanding Vista:  American Television in the Kennedy Years, Oxford Univ. Press, 1990, p. 53 ]

Let’s get that straight:

According to the “critics” in 1962, clean comedy that families could enjoy was appalling.  But the degrading violence, toilet humor, profanity, and vulgarity that American television offers today elicit no such concern from the “critics”.  Perhaps they “feel” that such things are proof of the level to which American taste has risen.

The lead character of “Jed Clampett” was a white man who possessed and exercised patriarchal authority firmly.  That may have been one reason why hip critics and intellectuals denounced the show, appearing on network television as it did in 1962 at a time when the traditional patriarchal authority of American white men was coming under increasing attack from three directions:  The young (the youth revolution), the women (feminism), and the blacks (“civil rights” agitation).

[It was of course no coincidence that precisely those three groups were targeted by Communists in the 1920s.  They knew that American white men would pose the greatest obstacle to their plans to Communize America.  So they adopted the stratagem of weakening American white men by means of prolonged agitation among and within those three groups on the basis of half-truths and fairy tales about how they had been victimized by evil white men.  See R.M. Whitney, Reds in America, The Beckwith Press, 1924, Chapters Three, Eleven, and Twelve. ]

There were two rare dramatic moments in early-season episodes and both involved patriarchal authority:  The lovely scene with Jed and his daughter in the second episode (“Getting Settled”, Oct. 3, 1962), and the scene with Jed in a courtroom refusing to be silenced by a slick attorney (ozark, May 1, 1963).

At age 12 when “The Beverly Hillbillies” first appeared on television in 1962, I had no idea who Buddy Ebsen and Irene Ryan were.  I did not know that both were veteran entertainers, or that he had worked on Broadway with Eddie Cantor and danced with Shirley Temple to the delightful song-and-dance number “At the Codfish Ball” in “Captain January” (1936), or that she had had her own radio program and accompanied Bob Hope on USO tours during World War II.  Their talents and Paul Henning’s writing are what made that series the popular success that it was among people who still knew how to enjoy decent entertainment.

Philosopher Richard Weaver and actor Buddy Ebsen were two years apart in age.  Each of them lived to see the increasing emphasis on youth in American life and neither of them approved of it.  Richard Weaver wrote:

“The decision of modern man to live in the here and now is reflected in the neglect of aging parents, whom proper sentiment once kept in positions of honor and authority.  There was a time when the older generation was cherished because it represented the past; now it is avoided and thrust out of sight for the same reason…”[Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Conseqences, 1948, p. 28 ]

“The slogan today is to forget and live in the future.  Wherever we look in the ‘progressive’ world we find encouragement not to remember.  Increasingly the past is looked upon as a burden.  ….People evince in their very manner a pride in letting go of what has happened and jumping at anything new…..

“Again the need appears to speak up against the uncritical adulation of youth.  It is anomalous that a civilization of long history and great complexity should defer to youth rather than to age.   …Deferring to youth is another way of weakening continuity [ between generations ]…..” [Richard Weaver, Visions of Order, 1964, pp. 41, 53]

       Compare that with what Buddy Ebsen told a reporter from San Francisco in 1981:

“In the old days, white-bearded ones were respected for their wisdom.  They controlled the tribe or the clan.  Today, if you’re over 65, they want to shut you off, just when you’re smart enough to come up with some of the answers.  Today everything big and new is good and everything old and small is bad.”

It’s time, he said, “for us to re-examine our discarded values.  So many people are mysteriously unhappy but don’t know why.  I think it’s a loss of innocence.  Kids nowadays are pushed into advanced sexual experiences and then they say, ‘What else have you got?’  They pollute their bodies with overdoses and they forget about the intoxication of a beautiful sunrise or sunset.  They should be enjoying their eyesight instead of taking it for granted.  Or looking at colors.  There are so many things we’ve forgotten because we’re engrossed in progress…..but progress to what?  To where?…..”

        [Quoted by John Stanley, “Remembering a Buddy Named Ebsen”]

I know exactly what he meant about the priceless possession of eyesight and the beauty that can be seen in the natural world just for the looking.  But people as engrossed in material excess and diversions as Americans are today will remain blind and deaf to the wisdom of such men.

For several generations now and through a continuing display of moral inertia or spinelessness, Americans have taught their children to accept garbage as entertainment.  People who absorb that frame of mind, as most Americans have now done, could no more understand the moral and esthetic restraints in clean comedy like Paul Henning’s “Beverly Hillbillies” than they could understand a century-old book with no pictures.  Against the indescribable filth that Americans today teach their children to accept as entertainment, those early seasons of “The Beverly Hillbillies” loom as a ray of sunshine from a different moral universe and far better time in American culture.

— Comments —

Paul A. writes:

I’m not sure where I should come down on this. Catholics are not prudish, and should have some fun, along with the wider culture. But I am pretty suspicious of the media – even in the “good ol’ days” sixties.

A review of the first episode shows that the first jokes are about Ellie-May: Her lack of femininity and her abundant breasts. Ellie-May has not even been on stage yet, but we are set up for her two-dimensional personality, which perdures for the whole series, in three jokes. She is a sexy, powerful, young woman, who can out do any male in physical pursuits. Much like modern feminism, with the difference that modern feminism has cast aside any aspiration to retaining sexiness or youth.

The first episode, which is indeed set in the 1960’s, shows that the Clampetts are ignorant of the telephone (circa 1874)and the airplane (circa 1914), including the helicopter. They are unfamiliar with any other modern conveniences. It is not just that they do not have access to them. It is that the world has passed them by, and they are completely ignorant of the progress that Modern Man has made. The strapping young Jethro is portrayed as being in school – an accomplishment- having reached 5th grade. For these backward rubes, a mature adult male is struggling with an education of the most basic sort.

I wonder if a Jed Clampett / Jethro hybrid is not the precursor to the Homer Simpson of the 90’s? A character who demonstrates certain masculine traits, while at the same time, continually shows that he is out of his depth, and adrift in the new and improved world. There is probably a PhD dissertation wrapped up in this concept.

I would also suggest that this sitcom only reinforced the idea of fly-over country. The area (outside of the power centers) where ignorant hayseeds cling to their guns, religion, and whatever, demeaning themselves in the eyes of the elites, and thus demonstrating that their values is only utilitarian, if that.

I guess that my question is: How would public opinion and culture have been shaped if Hollywood had given us sitcoms that showed the absurdity of the Sixties sex culture, along with its rebellions and self-destruction? Certainly, there is a lot of material that could showcase liberal foolishness while reinforcing a father role model, femininity, and basic morals. Why was that not done? Why was, for example, Archie Bunker not given a bit more dignity and “meathead” (Rob Reiner) not shown as the fool and buffoon the he continues to be in real life? I guess I’d chalk up the Beverly Hillbillies as more of an attack on the American Culture than anything showing its remaining appeal.

Mark Jaws writes:

I am 61 years old and I very well remember that first episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. If memory serves me correctly, it was on Wednesday nights at 8:30. Andy Griffith came on Monday nights. Bonanza was on Sunday nights. When I was old enough I was allowed to stay up and watch “The Big Valley,” which followed Beverly Hillbillies. Ah, we Baby Boomers were fortunate enough to live when we did .

It’s too bad that by 1970 everything turned sour and the second generation of Jewish immigrants started calling the shots. The original Hollywood Jewish moguls were usually immigrants themselves who had profound respect for American culture and its people. Just as Saker discussed in his article on the destruction of western Europe, the problem with immigrants who are “the other” lies rarely with the immigrants themselves, but with their children, as we are seeing with Algerians, Tunisians, and Moroccans in France.

Nonetheless, I want to praise Alan for a simply splendid article. His analysis of communist infiltration and aggression against white (Gentile) men was spot on. Destroy the white Gentile male and you destroy the American culture.

A reader writes:

The Beverly Hillbillies (Season 1 – Ep. 1) The Clampetts Strike Oil

6:11 Encouraging sexual attraction in others?
23:44 Masonic sign?

The Beverly Hillbillies (Season 1 – Ep. 2) Getting Settled

1:36 Masonic sign?
5:15 Masonic sign?
11:59 Gesture by Baphomet?

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