It Beats Being a Dentist

For someone who played a lazy guy, Edgar Buchanan worked an awful lot.

Buchanan will be remembered as Uncle Joe, movin’ kinda slow at the junction, along with a cast of seasoned character actors on Petticoat Junction starting in 1963 to when CBS purged rural shows in 1970. But prior to being cast, he appeared in an estimated 150 TV episodes, in addition to several dozen movies. Buchanan seemed tailor-made for western and country-set shows but his real-life background was in a far different sphere.

Prior to acting, Buchanan was actually Dr. W. Edgar Buchanan. The story is told in this article in the Salt Lake Tribune of November 5, 1963.

Easy-Going Edgar Buchanan Enjoys the Hard Cash
By Richard O. Martin
Tribune Staff Writer
Dr. Edgar Buchanan hasn't pulled a tooth for about 26 years. He's been too busy daydreaming, hunting, fishing, golfing, telling tall tales — and acting.
It's difficult for him to say which of these hobbies he enjoys the most. Although acting happens to be the way he earns a living and has proved to be most profitable, he generally manages not to let it interfere too long with his other pleasurable pastimes.
"I WAS JUST naturally born lazy," says the veteran actor, who discarded his dentist's drill after 10 years of practice in Eugene, Ore., to begin a new career in show business at the age of 34.
"I'm a heck of a dreamer, but don't get the idea that I'm an itinerant loafer," he says.
"I try to make it pay off when I can," he added.
His casual approach to living stems from the fact that he is doing exactly what he has always wanted to do. He doesn't consider acting work.
Nevertheless, he is a skilled craftsman, an inventive performer who always contributes a little extra something to whatever role he happens to play.
IN VIEW OF Mr. Buchanan's avowed laziness, he seems born for the new character he is creating this season on Petticoat Junction (Ch. 5, 7 p.m., Tuesdays), the new comedy series created by Paul Henning, the creator of The Beverly Hillbillies.
PLAYING THE part of daydreaming, cat-napping Uncle Joe — a major supporting character for Bea Benaderet in her starring role as rural hotel proprietress Kate Bradley — is a happy case of type-casting, says the carefree actor.
"Uncle Joe spends half his time dozing away in a wicker rocker on the front porch dreaming up big ideas," he says.
"The only trouble is, he never quite gets around to putting his plans into operation. When he does go into diction he's an hour late and-a dollar short.
"I'M A LOT like that. One of my biggest get - rich - quick schemes was the big strawberry deal, after World War II.
"I got involved with a farmer in the San Fernando Valley, where we were going to make a fortune glowing strawberries.
"After selling 90,000 baskets a season for five years I wound up $7,500 in the hole."
Fortunately, for the nation's economy as well as Mr. Buchanan's, he has stuck to acting. His earnings from more than 150 television shows and 80 feature films have enabled him to enjoy retreats at his ranch in Hidden Hills and his resort home at Lake Arrowhead, Calif., where he can hunt, fish, golf and daydream to his heart's content.

Here’s a syndicated newspaper story that appeared July 12, 1964 (with the accompanying stock photo).

Ed Buchanan Is Happy in Uncle Joe Role
By HANK GRANT
I WAS watching the "Petticoat Junction" cast going through its paces at General Service Studios. Edgar Buchanan, in his role of bumbling Uncle Joe, was convincing Kate (Bea Benaderet) she could get rich if she'd turn her hotel into a honeymoon haven, particularly with the couples he'd be marrying after his appointment as justice of the peace.
To the press agent accompanying me, I noted that Edgar seemed to be getting bigger and bigger roles in the series and a stagehand, obviously an old-timer, retorted: "What do you expect? Edgar's the biggest scene stealer of them all and I was working with him when he stole his first scene over 20 years ago!"
I mentioned this compliment to Edgar. Chuckling in his fascinatingly peculiar, raspy voice, he said, "Some folks have poor memories or maybe they remember only the good things. As a matter of fact, the first picture I did was 'Tear Gas Squad' back in 1939. The critics said it hit a new low for Class C films."

Despite Edgar's modesty in acknowledging his first film effort as a "bomb," he has indeed been a scene stealer in more than 80 feature films and some 150 TV shows. Famed producer-director George Stevens, who sometimes films 20 takes of a scene before he's satisfied, once asked a star to watch Buchanan work and learn something. "There," said Stevens, pointing at Edgar, "is a man with a natural instinct for acting, a gift of timing his every word and gesture almost as if he'd written the script."
Buchanan has no "star" aspirations, being completely happy as a character actor. Not that he isn't now nor hasn't ever been a star. About eight years ago, he was the title star in the "Judge Roy Bean" TV series.
"That," he recalls, "was a fun show. We made about 40 of those half hours at an average of three a week, for $15,000 per show, peanuts, compared to today's going price of $50,000 per half-hour show. I went from being a star in that show to being a featured player in the Hopalong Cassidy series. Made no difference to me, being a star or a featured player.
"Being an actor is all I've ever really wanted. You knew, I was a dentist in Oregon, didn't you? (I didn't know.) Yes, I was a dentist, my father was a dentist and my wife Mildred was a dentist. We got married before we even graduated from dental school.
"Mildred and me, we've got a fine 17-year-old boy who wants to be an actor and why not? Sure beats being a dentist. I was getting a game leg standing on my feet all day. I was getting fat too because who wants to exercise when he stands all day?
"I'll tell you what I tell my son: There's no trick to being an actor if you appraise ail your good features in the same cold light with your bad. I was a character actor at 20, playing elderly roles even then, because I was a slow talker and I had this gravel voice that killed the chance of my ever being a romantic leading man.
"The object of acting is to appear like you're not acting—living the part as they say. Well, the hardest part comes first, seeing your true self, not the irresistible face you imagine you see in the mirror, and projecting that true self in every role you play. There never was any good acting come out of anyone who was concerned about how he looked."
I asked him what he thought about his looks.
"Well," he rasped with a twinkle in his squinting eyes, "I'll just have to confess that my wife says I'm the handsomest man to ever walk on a stage and anyone who calls my wife a liar has got to fight me!"

Petticoat Junction wasn’t full of huge laughs. It was mildly amusing and a little contrived, but it filled the screen for a half hour a week with people you wouldn’t mind knowing if they were real. Many years later, Linda Kaye Henning—the producer’s daughter who was cast as the youngest daughter—insisted the cast really was like a family. It came across on the screen. In an era where there was more and more social unrest, a calm, bucolic programme appealed to many Americans.

Buchanan suffered from spinal fluid problems for a number of years and died not long after a brain operation in 1979 at the age of 76.