July 7, 2003
BLOODY HELL
So Buddy Ebsen is dead at 95. That sucks. Watching Jed Clampett buck dance in the foyer was one of the highlights of my childhood. Of course he was always Bloody Ebsen to me after a MAD spoof in the mid-seventies.
I didn't realize he had a cameo in the Hillbillies movie as Barnaby Jones. That's because after 5 minutes I turned off that horseshit, spit three times, and crossed myself to ward off the evil eye. They didn't just fuck up that movie. They fucked it up bad. The casting was abysmal. Jim Varney as Jed Clampett? Varney couldn't carry Buddy's brogans. In their defense, however, I must add: how do you cast human cartoon characters? The originals were iconic. Where are you going to find the irrational exuberance of Max Baer, the tough-assed naivete of Donna Douglas, or the spastic mannerisms of Irene Ryan? I always had great affection for Milbourne as well. Buddy was the standout, bemused yet knowing. You half expected him to wink at the camera.
Guess I'll go sit by my cement pond for a few and whistle the Ellie May in Pretty Clothes Les Paul riff for a few.
You write about Ellie May and, simultaneously, Buddy Ebsen ebbs? Start writing more about the Clintons.
I knew Ebsen only as Jed. I never saw Barnaby Jones and I was too young to remember his earlier work. I remember my oldest brother once telling me that Buddy got his start as a hoofer, and was by all accounts a great one.
The Bevely Hillbillies was genius and ethos. After all, when your comic shudder had subsided, you knew the Clampetts were RIGHT, whatever it was that was happening. They were right because they were human. The only human in Beverly Hills was Jane Hathaway, her humanity emphasized by her lusting like Caldwell's Ellie Mae for Jethro Bodean.
I never saw the movie version. It couldn't be as good; it simply could not be. It takes a special comedic talent to inhabit characters as broadly drawn as those, and to make us love them. Granny had the added quality of making even our parents seem reasonable.
Kudos to Zell Miller for hammering CBS for trying to cast a reality Hillbillies series. Think about that. Here in Savannah, Georgia we have Highway 17, also known as Ogeechee Road. This is a roughly 12 mile stretch of used car lots, trailer parks, and filthy motels that were used by white peolpe in the 60s and 70s to cheat on their spouses. A perfect place NOT to get caught, because for God's sake what would your wife be doing on Highway 17? The area now is dominated by white and black people selling crack and ass, living in trailer parks, and routinely committing petty misdemeanors as an instinctive illustration of their incompatibility with society in general, as well as the occasional felony to express their individuality. A typical year includes about 2 or 3 Ogeechee Road killings, usually easily solved and prosecuted, because subtlety is not a dominant trait. They drive 20 year old Firebirds with the wrong license plate.
This is the jaudiced eye television wanted to bring to an entire area of the Appalaichan (sic) South. Zell Miller, his principles controlling him more closely every day he draws nearer to the end of a political career, is stopping them.
Yet this is the man who gave the keynote speech at the 1992 Democratic Convention, exhorting Bill and Hillary to conquer America, although they preferred simply to fuck it instead.
How many more closet conservatives inhabit the Democratic Party? Are there any more who are secretly ashamed of themselves and their ilk? Or is Zell miller the sole aberration, the exception which exists only to prove the rule?
The Beverly Hillbillies made us ashamed of our pretensions, sugercoating the morality with often raw good humor. We need Jed Clampetts now, more than ever, with their inherent good sense and righteouseness. Perhaps ultimately the Beverly Hillbillies will tell us more about America in the 60s than all the protests on college campuses ever could.
Posted by: Jack Straw at July 7, 2003 10:59 PM