He Didn't Want to be a Yokel

Buddy Ebsen really didn’t want the role that brought him everlasting fame.

He’d played enough rural types over the years, he felt, and wanted something different. But then Paul Henning came up with The Beverly Hillbillies, and felt Ebsen would be right for Jed Clampett. He read the pilot script to Ebsen and the man who had worn buckskin as Davey Crockett’s sidekick agreed to do the series.

Here’s Ebsen in a syndicated newspaper story that appeared around April 14, 1962, a good five months ahead of his debut as head of the Clampett clan. He talks about some of the roles he liked.

Buddy Ebsen Sheds Bumpkin Roles
By ALAN GILL
NEW YORK—The big mop of farm boy hair is mostly gray, with patches of white now, and the sideburns are more Hollywood than Belleville, Ill. The suit is dark and richly tailored. The tie is white. And the outlook from those light blue eyes is sophisticated. But you'd recognize Buddy Ebsen anywhere.
He's still the boy friend of Judy Canova, the sidekick of Davey Crockett, and the long-boned drink of water who danced with Shirley Temple in "Cap'n January" so many years ago. He still gives that slow, stiff stretch of the shoulders before he speaks.
Just under his left eye, there's a piece of tape. "I had a little thing there I had taken off," he said. "Do you tend to be a warty fellow?" he was asked, somewhat crassly. "Oh, yeah, I used to get dozens of warts on my hands when I was a kid back in Belleville."
So there you've got him, warts and all Buddy Ebsen.
Ebsen is in New York at the moment rehearsing for a Westinghouse Presents drama by Tad Mosel, in the illustrious company of Jason Robards Jr., Kim Stanley and Patricia Neal. You'll get a chance to see "That's Where the Town's Going!" Tuesday, 10 p.m.
"I play a kind of alley cat in a small Midwestern town, who's hovering over these two spinsters. Jason Robards breezes in, stirs things up, and then leaves again. At the end, I'm still hovering. "And the thing is, what the girls really need is me."
WILL STAR IN NEW FALL SERIES
He smiled a sweet, bumpkin grin, with a glint of evil in it "See?" Is that the way the part was written? a visitor asked. "Well," Ebsen said, with a stretch of the shoulders, "that may not be what Mosel had in mind, but it's what I have in mind."
Later, Ebsen will go back to Hollywood to film a few episodes for a series he'll star in for CBS next fall. Beverly Hillbillies, it's called, and it concerns an Ozark clan that strikes it rich in oil and moves in on an upper crust community near Hollywood.
"Y'see, I'm a hayseed again," he said, with a note of regret in his voice.
Ebsen didn't exactly start that way. He came to New York in 1926, with only a few coins in his pockets and the notion of being a doctor in his mind. He soda-jerked for a while and then, suddenly, he had a spot with his sister Vilma in the Ziegfeld show, "Whoopee."
The dance team of Vilma and Buddy Ebsen was a headliner for years on the vaudeville circuit—part of a troupe called Benny Davis and His Future Stars. Then came "Flying Colors," the Follies and Hollywood. "Broadway Melody of 1936" was the first one, then Broadway stardom in "Yokel Boy," then back to the movies for a string of hayseed parts.
PART IMPORTANT THING NOW
Not long ago, Ebsen and his business manager came to a conclusion.
"We decided that we'd make the part the thing and not the money. We'd talk about the money later. So, along came 'Breakfast at Tiffany's and we grabbed it. In ‘The Interns’ I play the head of a hospital. There's no smell of the barn in that one.
“I like to get out of the overalls whenever I can. And no more buckskins, for me, no, sir! In hot weather, you melt in 'em, and in winter, they hang on you like a wet fish. I don't know how the pioneers could stand 'em.
"Now a part I’d like is 'Dodsworth.' My wife is an actress and one day she and I might just do it together. I’m in a playwriting group at UCLA and I have a play written—pretty good, too—and a musical book I have some hopes about."
Did he ever play a villain?
"Well, there are dirty dog villains and gray villains. I can do a gray one okay. My favorite part was in a cowboy movie where I was a coldblooded murderer but so charmin’, a real likable feller when I wasn't bumpin’ somebody off."
To look at him, there's nothing gray or dirty dog about Buddy Ebsen, no, sir.

Critics hated the Hillbillies. They wanted sophisticated, erudite television, and they saw the show as a continued dumbing down of American culture—improbable situations played out in front of a laugh track heard everywhere else. They couldn’t understand why the show quickly became a smash hit. That was addressed by the Los Angeles Times service’s TV columnist. The story originally ran on November 12, 1962.

Hillbillies Corn? Nation’s All Ears
BY CECIL SMITH
"Everybody keeps asking why," said Buddy Ebsen. "Why, why, why?
"I don't know why. If I knew why people watch one show instead of another, I wouldn't be working here—I'd be a millionaire."
Buddy grinned his slow, easy, grin, scratched his stubbly chin. The whys being tossed at him concern why the Beverly Hillbillies, an innocuous comedy, waist-deep in corn, is the phenomena of this TV season.
I was on the set the other day just after Mr. Nielsen's busy figures had determined that the Hillbillies had nudged Lucille Ball out of the top spot on the rating polls and in five short weeks had become the most popular show on television, watched each Wednesday night by some 35 million people.
Even writer-creator Paul Henning is astonished at this smashing success because it seems to cross all levels of life, delighting sophisticates and rustics alike, as popular in New York as it is in Nashville. Perhaps the best answer to why comes from Ebsen, the Grandpa Clampett of the series, who says: "We were born into such a plethora of agony shows that people grabbed something that took 'em away."
It was a happy set, spreading across a vast sound-stage, duplicating the formal elegance of the Beverly Hills mansion the hillbillies bought with their oil millions. They were shooting a swimming pool scene with Donna Douglas and Max Baer Jr.
It has been said of blond Donna that she may do for bluejeans what Lana Turner did for the sweater. As effective as the beautiful Donna is in bluejeans, you should check her in a skin-tight bathing suit. She's one of the seven wonders of the world. Maybe all seven.
The incredibly talented Dick Wharf, who directs the show, shrugged, and said: "It's a comic strip. It means nothing, preaches nothing, says nothing—it's just for fun. And with this great cast—with Ebsen and Irene Ryan and Bea Benadaret and the others—it's a ball to do."
I'm always amazed at Wharf. A splendid actor, a fine director, an excellent painter, a noted sculptor he's a Renaissance man. Donna, who studies metaphysics, says: "It's just that he's a Gemini. Geminis are directed by the brain and they can do many things."
Donna wrinkled her pretty forehead and added: "I went home last week to Baton Rouge and to a football game and people kept surrounding me and yelling, 'Hi, Elly Mae.' I don't know about this. It's scary."
Irene Ryan, grandma of the show, wriggled her toes in the old Army brogans she wears. "They wanted to get some different shoes, but I went back to these. They're my funny shoes. I feel funny everytime I put 'em on."
Buddy Ebsen shook his head. "Hillbillies," he said. "When Paul Henning mentioned hillbillies to me, I started to run for the hills. I'd played too many hillbillies. But then he told me about 'em and he got me to laughing and here I am."
Maybe that's the real answer to why the Beverly Hillbillies are the country's TV delight. When they mentioned hillbillies, everybody headed for the hills. But then they got to laughing and . . .

Ebsen played Clampett for nine years before taking a breather and moving on to a non-hayseed TV role that lasted eight years—detective Barnaby Jones. Both were good parts, but I imagine fans of ordinary folk getting the best of city slickers every week enjoyed Ebsen as Clampett more than a jug of white lightning after a weekend hayride.