Speaker 1: On the evening of January eighth, four, nearly half of
Speaker 1: American households tuned to their TV sets to CBS for
Speaker 1: an epic matchup. No, it was huge at the Juggernauts.
Speaker 1: It was a classic one. No, it wasn't Muhammad Ali
Speaker 1: versus Sunny. Listen, I don't accom peaceable or do I
Speaker 1: have to take you? It was a fight between a
Speaker 1: feisty grandmother and a kangaroo she had mistaken for a
Speaker 1: giant jack rabbit. Giant jack rabbits. I had him card.
Speaker 1: This was the actual premise of an episode of the
Speaker 1: classic sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. And while it may seem preposterous,
Speaker 1: you have to understand this aired less than two months
Speaker 1: after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In fact,
Speaker 1: earlier that same day, the new President, Lyndon Johnson delivered
Speaker 1: his first State of the Union address to a still
Speaker 1: traumatized nation. And you know, here's this little old, you know,
Speaker 1: hillbilly lady confused by what of kangaroo is? You don't
Speaker 1: get more escapist than that. The Beverly Hillbillies, a classic
Speaker 1: fish out of water story featuring the Backwoods Clampet family
Speaker 1: who Strike It Rich went on to become one of
Speaker 1: the most successful sitcoms of all time, averaging upwards of
Speaker 1: fifty million viewers during its run, the kind of numbers
Speaker 1: you never see today outside of Super Bowl profits. Sword
Speaker 1: and CBS greenlit a whole host of new shows catering
Speaker 1: to audiences who couldn't get enough of country themed programming.
Speaker 1: This was the height of rural representation on network TV.
Speaker 1: JE Manhattan, just give me that country shid. But by
Speaker 1: the end of the decade, the network put the Clampet
Speaker 1: clan and all of their country cousins out to pasture.
Speaker 1: These city folks don't want our tang around I whatever,
Speaker 1: put that notion in your here. They even put down
Speaker 1: Lassie anything in the country, anything that was not in
Speaker 1: a city with breaking concrete, Bye bye. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we'll investigate what caused the largest slaughter in sitcom history
Speaker 1: and meet the man who wielded the axe. He and
Speaker 1: I literally whacked the hell out of that schedule and
Speaker 1: cancel about a dozen and a half shows from CBS
Speaker 1: Sunday Morning and Simon and Schuster. I'm Morocca and this
Speaker 1: is Mobituaries, This mobid, the rural purge March sixteenth, nine
Speaker 1: death of the country broadcasting system Big Wheels had the
Speaker 1: network started spinning. The verdict was that heha had to
Speaker 1: go to city slickers don't believe in grinning and who
Speaker 1: the heckniques jokes and coma. That's Hehaw co host and
Speaker 1: country music legend Roy Clark singing about the rural purge
Speaker 1: in n two, one year after CBS canceled the musical
Speaker 1: variety show, consigning it to syndication. They canceled all the
Speaker 1: singing and the picking, but the scubborn little Donkey wouldn't leave,
Speaker 1: and then little Fella is still alive and kicking. That
Speaker 1: song is is smart, it's satirical. I mean it's about
Speaker 1: the rural purge. I think it's about rural people in
Speaker 1: general feeling left behind. And I think this is them saying,
Speaker 1: you know, the networks don't care about us, like we're forgotten,
Speaker 1: and this is a show that remembers that we're here.
Speaker 1: Sarah s. Gridge hails from Virginia and wrote a book
Speaker 1: all about the sitcom slaughter route to CBS and rural
Speaker 1: comedies in the nineteen sixties, And so how much TV
Speaker 1: did you have to watch to write this book. I
Speaker 1: was watching about four hours a day over the course
Speaker 1: of about a year, year and a half. So basically
Speaker 1: you were an average American. Yeah, except that I was
Speaker 1: having to take notes and look for themes and um,
Speaker 1: you know, so it was work after all. Let's go
Speaker 1: back to the beginning, okay, and by which I mean
Speaker 1: the beginning of television, because life didn't really exist before television.
Speaker 1: What is CBS in the late forties and nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: what is its image? CBS is the Sterling Network in
Speaker 1: the forties and fifties is CBS They calumb me a
Speaker 1: broadcasting system also known as the Tiffany Network. Now, in
Speaker 1: those early days, the only people with access to TV
Speaker 1: signals lived in cities at that point. They're they're putting
Speaker 1: a lot of programming on that features immigrants, that features
Speaker 1: Jewish families, that features people of color. They're trying to
Speaker 1: appeal to the demographics of the place where they're making
Speaker 1: the shows. Amos and Andy, which revolved around a group
Speaker 1: of African American friends in Harlem, was originally created and
Speaker 1: voiced by white actors on radio. On TV, the show
Speaker 1: still played to racial stereotypes, but the cast was entirely
Speaker 1: African American, the first show with an all black cast,
Speaker 1: something that wouldn't be seen on CBS again until the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. And this one really surprised me. More than
Speaker 1: sixty years before The Goldberg's premiered on ABC, there was
Speaker 1: The gold Egs on CBS. Just hearing from your relatives
Speaker 1: in Europe after not hearing for so many years. That's
Speaker 1: beautiful and Jade, did you count how many times they asked?
Speaker 1: And the characters are obviously Jewish, yes, And that's a
Speaker 1: big part of the stuff, the story. They don't try
Speaker 1: to hide that, it's emphasized. And then unfortunately what happens
Speaker 1: with The Goldbergs is that one of the lead characters
Speaker 1: is included in one of those lists. Sarah is referring
Speaker 1: to lists of communist sympathizers, which included actor Philip Loebe,
Speaker 1: who played the male lead on The Goldbergs. This was
Speaker 1: all at the height of the Red Scare, with the
Speaker 1: government investigating so called communist infiltration of American institutions, including
Speaker 1: the media. FBI director j Edgar Hoover reportedly dubbed CBS
Speaker 1: the communist broadcasting system. Not the image you wanted in
Speaker 1: Cold War America. Around the same time, TV signals were
Speaker 1: beginning to spread beyond urban centers into a America's heartland.
Speaker 1: So it was audios to those ethnic comedies. So CBS
Speaker 1: is entertainment slate becomes whitewashed. Basically, yes, um, they're trying
Speaker 1: to find something that's going to appeal to the largest
Speaker 1: possible demographic, and so they start out by saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: quiz shows, that's a great way to go check before Yes,
Speaker 1: let's check before questions. That is until CBS and NBC
Speaker 1: came under investigation for rigging the results. But there was
Speaker 1: a new television craze riding to the rescue. Westerns are
Speaker 1: popular across the board. Every network is doing them, and
Speaker 1: that's emphasizing new American ideals. It's the idea of the
Speaker 1: West and American individualism and being rugged and masculine and
Speaker 1: you know Western from the title. I mean, there's no
Speaker 1: kidding around here, right Gunsmoke starring James gunn Smoke, I
Speaker 1: mean is just a monster. Oh yeah, absolutely. There were
Speaker 1: about forty one Westerns on television at one time, and
Speaker 1: this is across three networks. Wow. Westerns were especially popular
Speaker 1: with the expanding rural and southern markets, and it was
Speaker 1: those markets CBS was aiming at with its very first
Speaker 1: rural comedy, premiering in nine six, The Andy Griffith Show
Speaker 1: starring Andy Griffin. So The Andy Griffith Show is one
Speaker 1: of the great shows of all time, one of the
Speaker 1: great family sitcoms of all time, maybe the best show
Speaker 1: about small town life ever made. You may remember Alan
Speaker 1: Seppondwall from our season one episode on sitcom character Deaths
Speaker 1: and Disappearances. Allan is the chief TV critic for Rolling Stone,
Speaker 1: and if you couldn't tell, he's a big fan of
Speaker 1: The Andy Griffith Show. Andy Griffith plays Sheriff Andy Taylor
Speaker 1: of maybe Are, a small town in North Carolina. He
Speaker 1: has a deputy, Barney Fife, played by the great Don Notts,
Speaker 1: who is who is really eager but also completely bumbling.
Speaker 1: So and you will not allow him to put a
Speaker 1: bullet in his gun that you've come very near shooting
Speaker 1: yourself in the foot. You know, they ain't exactly much
Speaker 1: of a call for one legged deputy. You're combining some
Speaker 1: of the elements of the western with some of the
Speaker 1: elements of the rural comedy. So you've got a sheriff.
Speaker 1: He's kind of standing in as that law figure in
Speaker 1: Mayberry is kind of an idol. I mean it's for
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, right, it's a fantasy. I
Speaker 1: mean the only the only lawbreaker is the town drunk
Speaker 1: and he locks himself in at night. I didn't get
Speaker 1: mindfull eight hours in one. I don't get mindfull eight hours.
Speaker 1: I'm grouchi. Do you mind? The Andy Griffith Show became
Speaker 1: such a breakout success that it birthed its own set
Speaker 1: of lesser quality spinoffs throughout the nineteen six U s
Speaker 1: mc gomer Pyle was originally Mayberry's lovably dim weighted filling
Speaker 1: station attendant, and Jim Nighbors played him. You know, I
Speaker 1: had a lot of catchphrases, you know, golli and shazam uh.
Speaker 1: And then at a certain point they decided to have
Speaker 1: him enlist in the Marines, and later in the decade
Speaker 1: there was Mayberry RFD. Note to our urban listeners, r
Speaker 1: f D stands for Rural Free Delivery. It's basically the
Speaker 1: Andy Griffith Show without Andy. It's it's Andy Griffith was
Speaker 1: ready to move on, but they wanted to keep the
Speaker 1: show going. Now, this burgeoning rural comedy cornucopia isn't happening
Speaker 1: on its own. Someone's green lighting these shows. James Aubrey
Speaker 1: is really the mastermind of the rural craze at CBS.
Speaker 1: I just have to say his name is mud to
Speaker 1: me because he canceled the Judy Garland show. Yeah so,
Speaker 1: and and that is just that's a capital crime in
Speaker 1: my opinion. The types of shows championed by James Aubrey
Speaker 1: invited a rebuke in from Federal Communications Chairman Newton Minno,
Speaker 1: who thought the networks could do better. When television is good, nothing,
Speaker 1: not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers, nothing is better.
Speaker 1: But when television is bad, nothing is worth. This is
Speaker 1: what came to be known as the vast Wasteland speech.
Speaker 1: I can assure you that what you will observe is
Speaker 1: a vast wasteland. You will see a procession of game shows, formula,
Speaker 1: comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, ma'am, violence,
Speaker 1: say it is a murder Western badmans. He is arguing
Speaker 1: that he did not feel television was living up to
Speaker 1: its vast potential, the kind of potential that a network
Speaker 1: like CBS had displayed often throughout the fifties, and of course,
Speaker 1: about a year and a half after that speech, I
Speaker 1: think after maybe a little bit of soul searching, maybe
Speaker 1: there was they felt a little bit chastened. The Beverly
Speaker 1: Hillbillies premieres. You know, we thought about what you said,
Speaker 1: Newton Minno, but we really liked this Clampitt family pitch,
Speaker 1: and oh boy, did that corn yield a prophet. This
Speaker 1: is Beverly Hills, dared dwell, the rich, the famous, the glamorous.
Speaker 1: In September nine, CBS premiered a new series about one
Speaker 1: of the most exclusive enclaves in the country, home to
Speaker 1: sportsman play boys, gilbillies, Hillbillies. Who are these people? Where
Speaker 1: are they from? And why did they come to Beverly Hills.
Speaker 1: The Beverly Hillbillies was one of the most popular shows
Speaker 1: on television in the ninth seen sixties. Well as as
Speaker 1: a wise man once saying, it's it's the story of
Speaker 1: a man named Jed. He was a poor mountaineer. He
Speaker 1: barely kept his family fed. But then one day he
Speaker 1: was shooting at some food and you know what happened.
Speaker 1: Up through the ground came bubble and crude oil that
Speaker 1: is black Gold, Texas. T Jed, along with his daughter
Speaker 1: Ellie May, nephew Jeff Throw and Granny decided to pack
Speaker 1: up and moved to Beverly Hills. That is yeah, movie
Speaker 1: stars swimming pools. The Beverly Hillbillies was the brainchild of
Speaker 1: comedy writer Paul Henning, who would come to California by
Speaker 1: way of Independence, Missouri, which also happened to be the
Speaker 1: hometown of President Harry Truman. Young Paul got his start
Speaker 1: as a soda jerk at the local drug store. And
Speaker 1: who should come in there but Harry Truman, And he
Speaker 1: talked with him a couple of times. That's Henning's daughter Linda,
Speaker 1: and Harry you know, said, well, one thing you ought
Speaker 1: to do is go to law school. He said, it'll
Speaker 1: never hurt you to get a degree in law. Well,
Speaker 1: thank god he didn't stick with that. Yes, the inspiration
Speaker 1: for the Hillbillies came from Henning's summers in the Ozarks.
Speaker 1: I think he observed people and he loved the honesty. Uh.
Speaker 1: He always called Jed one of nature's noblemen, Jed Clampett. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he must have known somebody kind of like Jed. I
Speaker 1: would think, Now I know that Ellie May was partially
Speaker 1: based on me because I'm an animal nut. And can
Speaker 1: we just say the actors who played these roles. I
Speaker 1: mean Irene Ryan who played Granny. She was a great actress.
Speaker 1: Oh she's wonderful. She was great. And she came in
Speaker 1: to see Daddy to read for him, dressed kind of
Speaker 1: as Granny, and Daddy took one look at her and thought,
Speaker 1: here she is, you know, this is Cranny. Veteran Hollywood
Speaker 1: actor Buddy Ebsen played Jed Quick aside. Ebsen was the
Speaker 1: original choice to play the tin Man in The Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz. Well, people that asked me to what I
Speaker 1: attribute to success of the Hill it was people humor,
Speaker 1: genuine humor, Paul Hitting, It's a genius. Who out there
Speaker 1: do you think he was writing the show for. I
Speaker 1: think the people he he basically knew, which was in
Speaker 1: between the two coasts, you know, just your basic people.
Speaker 1: He certainly wasn't writing for the critics. Reviewers called the
Speaker 1: series painful to sit through and the most shamelessly corny
Speaker 1: show in years. Even the Hillbillies should take Umbridge as
Speaker 1: a TV critic, what's your take on the Beverly Hillbillies
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a show I would review very
Speaker 1: positively were to debut today. Look, they made a lot
Speaker 1: of money off of it, so some somebody was being
Speaker 1: smart about something, even though everyone on that show is
Speaker 1: so dumb. Turns out even some of the folks working
Speaker 1: inside CBS at the time were flummixed. Here's the late
Speaker 1: newsman Mike Wallace. I confess I didn't really understand what
Speaker 1: was going on. I mean, this was, after all, the
Speaker 1: Network of all the Stars and suddenly Beverly Hillbillies. But
Speaker 1: Sarah Eskridge thinks, to critics then and now have it backwards.
Speaker 1: It's very subversive because I think what you see with
Speaker 1: this family um is that they make fools out of
Speaker 1: the people that are around them in Beverly Hills. I
Speaker 1: tell you, Jed, this place is full of the laziest, greasiest,
Speaker 1: unfriendliest mess of people. I ever did lay my eyes
Speaker 1: all okay, And there's an old tradition of this, right,
Speaker 1: like the country folk who are in fact to have
Speaker 1: horse sense, who are smarter than the city slickers, and
Speaker 1: the ways that matter exactly, and so you know, they
Speaker 1: might not be well versed in twentieth century consumer culture.
Speaker 1: But they're well versed in family, They're well versed in
Speaker 1: how to survive off the lands. They're well versed in
Speaker 1: how to be a good friend and community member. The
Speaker 1: rural comedies were beginning to reshape CBS. Meanwhile, sitting atop
Speaker 1: the network was a man known for his fine taste
Speaker 1: and air udition, William Paley, the legendary chairman of CBS.
Speaker 1: I mean, sort of very sophisticated guy. What does he
Speaker 1: think of these shows? He is less than pleased. By
Speaker 1: the time to Beverly Hillbillies comes along, you start hearing CBS.
Speaker 1: It's not the communist broadcast system anymore, but it's now
Speaker 1: the country broadcast system. However, the money that they're minting
Speaker 1: from these shows helps ease the pain a little bit. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it was huge. This was you know. They aired one
Speaker 1: of the most watched episodes of television ever, in which
Speaker 1: Granny goes in punches kangaroo that she mistakes for a
Speaker 1: giant jack rabbit. Yes, is she trying to cook the
Speaker 1: jack rabbit? Why are you asking me these questions? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Well, I'll tell you this story. That's Linda
Speaker 1: Henning again. One day I looked out of my dressing
Speaker 1: room window and saw Granny who I thought was Granny.
Speaker 1: It turned out to be the stunt man dressed like Granny,
Speaker 1: riding a kangaroo that had been saddled down the street.
Speaker 1: So that's the kind of thing you'd sometimes run into
Speaker 1: when you worked there. That didn't happen on the set
Speaker 1: of All in the Family, not at all. No, no
Speaker 1: kangaroos on that set. Linda Henning was nearby because she
Speaker 1: was working on the set of her father's latest hit sitcom,
Speaker 1: Petticoat Junction. Come ride a little train that is rolling
Speaker 1: down the tracks to the Junction. I really didn't know
Speaker 1: much about Petticoat, and quite frankly, there isn't much to know.
Speaker 1: I'll let the show's theme song explain. There's a little
Speaker 1: hotel call the Shady Rest at the Junction. It is
Speaker 1: run by Kate. Come and be her guest at the junto.
Speaker 1: The show takes place at a hotel along a spur
Speaker 1: of a railroad that's been cut off from the main track.
Speaker 1: Once a week, a new visitor will check in. That's
Speaker 1: the whole show, Like, nothing really much happens. It's just
Speaker 1: sort of lingering around the hotel. The train station, a
Speaker 1: little bit of the town. B Benadrrett played family matriarch
Speaker 1: and hotel owner Kate. As long as you're a guest
Speaker 1: in my hotel, you're entitled to shady rest hospitality. But
Speaker 1: TV fans of all ages may know her far better
Speaker 1: for another role. What's going on, Bernie? What are you
Speaker 1: up to? B Benadrrett was Betty Rubble. I loved Betty
Speaker 1: Rubble flint Stones she was. She was wonderful, kind of
Speaker 1: my mentor. The widowed Kate had three daughters whose names
Speaker 1: were forever confused, Billy Joe, Betty Joe, and Bobby Joe.
Speaker 1: And I was Betty Joe the youngest. I'll admit I'm
Speaker 1: not doing so well in my mind or subjects, but
Speaker 1: I'm leading my class in basketball, gymnastics, and ice hockey.
Speaker 1: Probably the most memorable image from the show was from
Speaker 1: the opening credits, with all three teenage girls peering out
Speaker 1: from the inside of a water tower with their petticoats
Speaker 1: hanging over the side. Lynn Double was the Redhead. I
Speaker 1: would get fan letters from girls who'ld say, when I
Speaker 1: come home from school, uh, we play petticoat junction and
Speaker 1: I'm you now along that Railroad was the fictional Hooterville,
Speaker 1: and thanks to the continuing country comedy craze, the Paul
Speaker 1: Henning universe expanded a third and final time in n
Speaker 1: with Green Acres. How do you feel about New York City,
Speaker 1: Mr Douglas, I hate it. Mrs Douglas disagrees. I certain
Speaker 1: Green Acres was the reverse Beverly Hillbillies. A city slicker
Speaker 1: lawyer played by Eddie Albert convinces his socialite wife played
Speaker 1: by Ava Gabore to move to the country. My wife,
Speaker 1: good fine acres. We are exactly that's a great theme song.
Speaker 1: So they moved. They moved to Hooterville. They start running
Speaker 1: a farm instead of him being a big city lawyer. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then weirdly she fits in much better than he does.
Speaker 1: Even though it was his idea. The show was edge.
Speaker 1: You're more imaginative than the Beverly Hillbillies or Petticoat Junction
Speaker 1: that you know. There's a pig with a full name,
Speaker 1: Arnold zipfle Um. Square eggs. Yeah, there's an episode where
Speaker 1: the hen starts laying square eggs. Things were very strange
Speaker 1: and surreal and just much more creative than they tended
Speaker 1: to get on the other two shows. And by the way,
Speaker 1: we need to do a better job educating our children.
Speaker 1: I mean, too many young people who think that Jaja
Speaker 1: go Boar was the star. Ja Ja Gabor came to
Speaker 1: Gilligan's Island on a speedboat and didn't rescue them for
Speaker 1: reasons passing understanding. Is that true? Yes, but a vagabar
Speaker 1: was Lisa on Green Acres. You know they had another sister, Magda.
Speaker 1: I did not. Yeah, she didn't really do much. She
Speaker 1: was a socialite. Zeppo said, there you go, exactly. She
Speaker 1: was a zeppo, which is better than being there is
Speaker 1: still yet another one, gummo, gummo. Okay, okay early, So
Speaker 1: at least she was a Zeppo. Since the worlds of
Speaker 1: Paul Hennings shows all overlapped, there were plenty of opportunities
Speaker 1: for crossover episodes. His daughter Linda remembers, and when I
Speaker 1: did the Hillbillies, Granny and and Jed and everybody came
Speaker 1: out to Hooterville to the Shady Rest Hotel, and Granny
Speaker 1: mistook the dog who had jumped in the baby carriage
Speaker 1: for my child for a lot of animal confusion with Danny.
Speaker 1: One thing all the rural comedies had in common, they
Speaker 1: seem to exist in a parallel universe. You know, when
Speaker 1: I watched these shows, and I didn't watch petticoat Junction,
Speaker 1: but when I watched certainly Green Acres and UM and
Speaker 1: Andrew Griffith Show and Beverly Hillbillies, you know, I would
Speaker 1: look for clues about what was going on in the
Speaker 1: world at that time, and if they were there, boy,
Speaker 1: they're hard to find. Now. Those those shows are entirely
Speaker 1: designed to get like create a big impenetrable wall between
Speaker 1: the world outside your window and the one being projected
Speaker 1: on your TV s hermetically sealed, so it's very escapist.
Speaker 1: All of these horrible things that are happening in the country,
Speaker 1: um that are that seemed to be tearing the entry apart.
Speaker 1: None of that's happening in rural comedy. No special episodes
Speaker 1: acknowledging the assassinations of JFK, m l K or RFK.
Speaker 1: No references to violence in the South linked to the
Speaker 1: Civil rights movement. The Andy Griffith Show, that's supposed to
Speaker 1: be Mount Airy, which is a stone's throw from Greensboro
Speaker 1: where the first sit in took place in and that
Speaker 1: took place within just a couple of months of the
Speaker 1: show airing. And I gotta tell you, when you think
Speaker 1: of Sheriff Andy, I mean, if you say to me
Speaker 1: law enforcement officer the South nineteen sixties, I think Bull
Speaker 1: Connor right in Alabama, in African Americans being attacked with
Speaker 1: water hoses, exactly, and and he's completely the exact opposite.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's presenting a kinder, gentler self
Speaker 1: and what's being shown on the news. And pretty much
Speaker 1: all the characters on these shows are white. Absolutely with
Speaker 1: the rural comedies, you will have black guest stars. You
Speaker 1: will have um, maybe a storyline that revolves around one
Speaker 1: black character, which happened in the Andy Griffith Show, but
Speaker 1: I think total that Um, it's a story where Obie's
Speaker 1: football coach, Um is also playing the piano and teaches
Speaker 1: him that it's okay to be cultured. And also, like sports,
Speaker 1: if things are sort of planned and worked out, it's
Speaker 1: always possible to pursue several interests at the same time.
Speaker 1: It's the only episode out of two forty nine that
Speaker 1: features a speaking black character. You know, Sammy Davis Jr.
Speaker 1: Guest start on The Beverly Hillbillies in a later season
Speaker 1: as a cop as a cop which is which is
Speaker 1: kind of odds is an interesting choice and not just
Speaker 1: a copy is an Irish cop. That's sorry, I didn't
Speaker 1: have the pleasure of making the like of the Oaks.
Speaker 1: And of course he nails the accent because he's Sammy
Speaker 1: Davis Jr. And can do anything. Big fan here that
Speaker 1: I think that might have been my favorite five minutes
Speaker 1: I watched in the entire year and a half that
Speaker 1: I was watching Rural Comedy nine were in Vietnam. Certainly
Speaker 1: wasn't being mentioned on these shows. Remember Gomer Pyle, you know,
Speaker 1: the character who moved from Mayberry to a marine base
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen sixties. You know, the fact that
Speaker 1: he's a marine. He wouldn't He would have been in
Speaker 1: donang Um faster than he could have stabbed his fingers
Speaker 1: and you know, and yet somehow he never gets deployed
Speaker 1: out if his friends gets deployed, no one gets killed.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't get any more cut off from the
Speaker 1: main world than Petticoat Junction. Remember, the entire premise was
Speaker 1: built around a train that was quite literally cut off
Speaker 1: from the main line. Yet Linda Henning defends the value
Speaker 1: of escapism. She remembers receiving fan mail from servicemen who
Speaker 1: were watching her show overseas. Oh, it moved me a lot,
Speaker 1: and I was glad that there was something that talked
Speaker 1: about escape, that there was something that they could say
Speaker 1: that maybe would take them away from some of the
Speaker 1: horror of what they were experiencing. But a new generation
Speaker 1: of viewers wanted an escape from escapism from television. In Hollywood,
Speaker 1: Ladies and Gentlemen beat the Smothers Brothers with the Smothers
Speaker 1: Brothers Comedy Hour in the late nineteen sixties, CBS ventured
Speaker 1: out of the bubble with a show that dared to
Speaker 1: address current events. They were clean cuts, war suits. They
Speaker 1: looked like the boys next door, but their comedy was
Speaker 1: very subversive and they seemed to have their finger on
Speaker 1: the pulse of the music scene especially, and so they
Speaker 1: had all of these wonderful musical groups. Their comedy had
Speaker 1: a lot of double entendres that were considered risque. They
Speaker 1: had Pete Seeger come on to sing an anti war song.
Speaker 1: It was a very big deal. Yes, And and that's
Speaker 1: part of the problem is that as they become more popular,
Speaker 1: they also start to become more political. Are you aware
Speaker 1: of what the Smothers Brothers is replaced with I don't remember,
Speaker 1: oh my yes, oh my god. The Smothers Brothers were
Speaker 1: too much, too soon for CBS and the words of
Speaker 1: the network brass. The Brothers were unwilling to accept the
Speaker 1: criteria of taste established by CBS, and we're pulled off
Speaker 1: the air in nine nine they're replaced by this you know,
Speaker 1: country music variety show, which could not be more philosophically
Speaker 1: or stylistically opposite of what the Smothers were doing. It's
Speaker 1: um I mean, it does seem like it's designed to
Speaker 1: appeal to every possible Southern stereotype. And um, I confess,
Speaker 1: out of all the rural comedies, that's the only one
Speaker 1: that I actually was watched growing up. Was not on purpose.
Speaker 1: And my grandparents loved heiha. Why do you think they
Speaker 1: loved it? Because they liked the music. The music, And
Speaker 1: let's let's just point out Roy Clark and Buck Owens,
Speaker 1: the hosts, great musical talents. They're gonna put me in
Speaker 1: a movie. They're gonna make a big star out of me,
Speaker 1: you know, a film about a man who sat alonely
Speaker 1: but all I gotta do is at naturally. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: great just incredible musicians, but they loved the music. The
Speaker 1: jokes were corny, would be putting it mildly. What's the
Speaker 1: difference between a hair dresser and a sculptor. Well, a
Speaker 1: hairdresser curls up and dies and a sculptor makes faces
Speaker 1: and buff You kind of had to watch between your
Speaker 1: fingers because I felt a little embarrassed for them that
Speaker 1: they were doing it. But they, you know, the older folks,
Speaker 1: and my wife loved that show. So it was on
Speaker 1: and he Hall was a hit, but it turned out
Speaker 1: to be a last stand for rural comedy. With the
Speaker 1: arrival of a new sheriff at CBS, he Hall was
Speaker 1: about to get the old Heath ho In. Through the
Speaker 1: saloon doors comes Fred Silverman, and he detests rural comedy
Speaker 1: with a passion that exceeds a thousand burning suns um.
Speaker 1: He thinks that rural comedy is stupid. Fred Silverman would
Speaker 1: go on to become a network television legend known as
Speaker 1: the Man with the Golden Gut, responsible for Roots, Mash
Speaker 1: and Scooby Doo. But back in he was the brash,
Speaker 1: thirty three year old, brand new head of programming at CBS,
Speaker 1: and he had one mission to rid the network of
Speaker 1: rural comedy. Fred Silverman called those rural comedies shit kicking.
Speaker 1: Is that necessarily an insult? I don't think anything that
Speaker 1: you use the words ship to describe is probably going
Speaker 1: to be considered a positive. Well, if I say you're
Speaker 1: the ship, not you, that would be a compliment, But okay,
Speaker 1: sort of. I don't say that. Um. I think that
Speaker 1: he thinks that people who watch those shows are people
Speaker 1: who are literally kicking ship for a living. Fred Silverman
Speaker 1: did not really strike me as the kind of guy
Speaker 1: who would kick back and watch petticoat Junction or some
Speaker 1: of these other shows. But it's really a matter of
Speaker 1: changing demographics. Earlier, Nielsen was largely just measuring audiences, how
Speaker 1: many people are watching, how many how sets are tuned in.
Speaker 1: At a certain point, they were able to break it
Speaker 1: down and say, this number of people in the city
Speaker 1: are watching versus this number of people in rural America.
Speaker 1: You know, these households that are wealthy versus these households
Speaker 1: that are blue collar. But a lot of people were
Speaker 1: still watching. People still like these shows. Fred Silverman, his
Speaker 1: business people were saying, look, we can't sell advertising on
Speaker 1: these because the only people are watching them are the
Speaker 1: hicks from the sticks, And we want to be able
Speaker 1: to sell ads to people in big cities with big
Speaker 1: disposable income, because that's where advertisers want. Here's Fred Silverman
Speaker 1: in Choots House in one. Something had to be done,
Speaker 1: and I think there was total agreement. Bob bodho is
Speaker 1: president of the network, his boss, Jack Schneider and Paley
Speaker 1: said let's let's bite the boat. Silverman and his bosses
Speaker 1: began with a little target practice. Petticoat Junction was the
Speaker 1: first to buy the farm. Linda Henning remembers, I still
Speaker 1: to this day think it was kind of lousy what
Speaker 1: they did. We never heard from the powers that be
Speaker 1: at CBS. Nobody bothered to call us the Beverly Hillbillyes,
Speaker 1: Green Acres and Hehaw were soon primed for slaughter. Were
Speaker 1: scheduled for Tuesday night. As Fred Silverman saw it, let
Speaker 1: Tuesday be the receptacle for all the crap that that
Speaker 1: we we weren't able to cancel yet. Meanwhile, CBS began
Speaker 1: experimenting with more urban and gritty fair The results of
Speaker 1: those experiments were mixed. You've got an appointment with the
Speaker 1: interns on Friday. These weren't about unpaid employees. They were
Speaker 1: young doctors, and the tagline was the interns, It's about
Speaker 1: what it's all about. Wait, wait, you're using that tagline
Speaker 1: for a doctor show. I guess so, I mean by
Speaker 1: Jean Paulsard, I mean, it's just it feels like a
Speaker 1: Seinfeld tagline or something. And then there was the Storefront Lawyers,
Speaker 1: And this was an earnest attempt to sort of be
Speaker 1: attuned to what was going on in the world, change
Speaker 1: within the establishment, young advocates practicing law in Century City
Speaker 1: to pay the bills in the ghetto, to pay their dues.
Speaker 1: Both shows were canceled after one season, but hope was
Speaker 1: not lost. That same season, a certain show about a
Speaker 1: girl who turned the world on with her smile from
Speaker 1: the Silverman realized that the Mary Tyler Moore Show was
Speaker 1: the kind of show that could restore luster to the
Speaker 1: Tiffany Network. And I looked at Mary Tyler Mona said,
Speaker 1: this is such a terrific show. We got this sitting
Speaker 1: in the middle of Allas Ship Kicker shows. And then
Speaker 1: halfway through the nineteen seventies seventy one season, CBS took
Speaker 1: a chance on producers Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin and
Speaker 1: their new comedy All in the Family, This country coming
Speaker 1: to anyhow? What what else we get out of Vietnam
Speaker 1: or something? Don't be a wise guy, smart, controversial, thrilling
Speaker 1: television that made people laugh and think, and for Archie
Speaker 1: Bunker to live, Jed Clampett would have to die. Fred
Speaker 1: Silverman explained, I work from Amber Dame of Bob Wood,
Speaker 1: who was president of the network, and uh he and
Speaker 1: I literally whacked the hell out of that schedule and
Speaker 1: cancel about a dozen and a half shows. The casualty
Speaker 1: list eventually included all the rural comedies, the largest slaughter
Speaker 1: in sitcom history. TV legend ed Sullivan was collateral damage
Speaker 1: due to his older skewing audience. Silverman's like wielding a
Speaker 1: machete through this cornfield, gleefully, gleefully. So. One actor may
Speaker 1: have put it best when he lamented CBS canceled everything
Speaker 1: with a tree in it, anything in the country, anything
Speaker 1: that was not in a city with breaking concrete. Bye bye. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I would not have wanted to be a CBS switchboard
Speaker 1: operator in the death of these programs wasn't only a
Speaker 1: gut punch for fans, it was personal for creators like
Speaker 1: Paul Henning. I think he took it very personally, because
Speaker 1: I mean he had poured all of his blooded, sweat
Speaker 1: and tears into these shows, well, certainly into Beverly Hillbillies,
Speaker 1: and he was quite an introvert anyway, and he he
Speaker 1: kind of withdrew after that. Now it's tempting to paint
Speaker 1: Fred Silverman as the villain in this story, but we
Speaker 1: actually owe him a debt of gratitude. During Silverman's tenure
Speaker 1: at CBS, the Norman Lear Universe expanded to include Maud
Speaker 1: and One Day at a Time and Good Times, and
Speaker 1: the Jefferson's Became Two was the first CBS sitcom's featuring
Speaker 1: largely African American casts since the days of Amos and Andy.
Speaker 1: He basically created this new, sophisticated Golden Age of sitcom's,
Speaker 1: arguably the best era for sitcom's in the medium's history.
Speaker 1: Did Fred Silverman have to be ruthless? I think he
Speaker 1: did um because I think if you look at CBS
Speaker 1: from like, you know, seventy two to seventies six or so,
Speaker 1: when they had you know, all in the family, Mary
Speaker 1: Tyler Moore, the Bob Newhart Show, Mash Carol Burnett. They
Speaker 1: were airing those five shows on one night for a season.
Speaker 1: That's probably the best night of programming in the history
Speaker 1: of network television. That's amazing. It is amazing, and I
Speaker 1: don't know that that would have been post like could
Speaker 1: you imagine a network airing All in the Family and
Speaker 1: Pettico Junction. Do you think that Southern audiences felt abandoned
Speaker 1: when CBS acts all those shows. I think so because
Speaker 1: if you think about Southern re presentation since then, you
Speaker 1: see pockets, but it's nowhere near as prevalent as it
Speaker 1: was during the sixties. Even if these were caricatures in
Speaker 1: many ways. Yeah, but at the same time, they're still
Speaker 1: they have hearts there, they have substance, and they have
Speaker 1: a soul. I, like many of you listening, discovered the
Speaker 1: rural comedies and reruns usually after I got home from school.
Speaker 1: They were corny and funny, but I had no idea
Speaker 1: of their former glory. How many tens of millions used
Speaker 1: to watch them in prime time and how many were
Speaker 1: still watching them when they were canceled. I can understand
Speaker 1: why many people in the middle of the country might
Speaker 1: have felt aggrieved that Network executives on the coasts thought
Speaker 1: they weren't the right market or desirable demographic. The rural
Speaker 1: Purge happened almost fifty years ago, and yet there's something
Speaker 1: very contemporary about the story. Awesome. As for he Hawk,
Speaker 1: remember Roy Clark singing about the rural Purge at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the episode, Well he had the last laugh.
Speaker 1: When the show was resurrected in first run syndication. The
Speaker 1: show lived for another twenty five years. We'd like to
Speaker 1: conclude this mobituary with an in memorium for the victims
Speaker 1: of the Rural Purge. Green Acres, Petty co Chunction, The
Speaker 1: Beverly Hillbillies, The Red Skelton Show, The Ed Sullivan Show,
Speaker 1: Family Affair, Hehaw, Hogan's Heroes, The Jackie Gleason Show, The
Speaker 1: Jim Neighbor's Hour, Mayberry r f D, The New Andy
Speaker 1: Griffith Show, and Lassie. Next Time on Mobituaries, The story
Speaker 1: of how Aies Pop Song. It is a song with
Speaker 1: velocity right, so big and bold and brash. Product two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen Sports Team Back to Life. I will go
Speaker 1: to my grave singing or champ Yes, I will. I
Speaker 1: certainly hope you enjoyed this mobituary. May I ask you
Speaker 1: to please rate and review our podcast. You can also
Speaker 1: follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Morocca. You can subscribe to Mobituaries
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of Mobituaries was
Speaker 1: produced by Megan Marcus. Our team of producers also includes
Speaker 1: Harry Wood and me Morocca. It was edited by Meg
Speaker 1: Dalton and Nathan Miller and engineered by Nathan Miller. Additional
Speaker 1: editing by Sam Egan. Indispensable support from Genia Staneski, Lucy Kirk,
Speaker 1: Richard Rohrer, and everyone at CBS News Radio. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to David Bushman at the Paley Center for Media. Our
Speaker 1: theme music is written by Daniel Hart and, as always,
Speaker 1: undying thanks to Rand Morrison and John Carp without whom
Speaker 1: Mobituaries couldn't live. Hi, It's mo. If you're enjoying Mobituaries
Speaker 1: the podcast, May I invite you to check out Mobituaries
Speaker 1: the book. It's chock full of stories not in the podcast.
Speaker 1: Celebrities who put their butts on the line, sports teams
Speaker 1: that threw in the towel for good, forgotten fashions, defunct diagnoses,
Speaker 1: presidential candidacies that cratered whole countries that went to put
Speaker 1: and dragons, Yes, dragons, you see. People used to believe
Speaker 1: the dragons will real until just get the book. You
Speaker 1: can order Mobituaries the book from any online bookseller, or
Speaker 1: stop by your local bookstore and look for me when
Speaker 1: I come to your city. Tour information and lots more
Speaker 1: at mobituaries dot com