Episode Transcript
Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.
Use Ctrl + F to search
0:05
On the evening of January eighth, four,
0:09
nearly half of American households
0:11
tuned to their TV sets to CBS
0:14
for an epic matchup. No, it was
0:16
huge at the Juggernauts. It was a classic
0:19
one. No, it wasn't Muhammad Ali versus
0:21
Sunny. Listen, I
0:26
don't accom peaceable or do I
0:28
have to take you? It
0:30
was a fight between a feisty grandmother
0:33
and a kangaroo she had mistaken
0:35
for a giant jack
0:37
rabbit. Giant jack rabbits. I had
0:40
him card. This
0:45
was the actual premise of an episode
0:47
of the classic sitcom The Beverly
0:49
Hillbillies. And while it may seem
0:52
preposterous, you have to understand
0:54
this aired less than two months after
0:56
the assassination of President John
0:59
F. Kennedy. In fact, earlier
1:01
that same day, the new President, Lyndon
1:03
Johnson delivered his first
1:06
State of the Union address to a still
1:08
traumatized nation. And
1:10
you know, here's this little old, you know, hillbilly
1:12
lady confused by what of kangaroo is?
1:15
You don't get more escapist than that. The
1:20
Beverly Hillbillies, a classic fish
1:22
out of water story featuring the Backwoods
1:24
Clampet family who Strike It Rich
1:27
went on to become one of the most successful
1:30
sitcoms of all time, averaging
1:32
upwards of fifty million viewers
1:35
during its run, the kind of numbers
1:37
you never see today outside of Super
1:39
Bowl profits.
1:42
Sword and CBS greenlit a
1:44
whole host of new shows catering
1:46
to audiences who couldn't get enough of
1:49
country themed programming. This
1:59
was the height of rural representation
2:02
on network TV. JE Manhattan,
2:04
just give me that country shid. But
2:07
by the end of the decade, the network
2:10
put the Clampet clan and all
2:12
of their country cousins out to pasture.
2:15
These city folks don't
2:17
want our tang around I whatever,
2:19
put that notion in your here. They even put
2:21
down Lassie
2:26
anything in the country, anything that was not in
2:28
a city with breaking concrete, Bye bye.
2:31
In this episode, we'll investigate
2:33
what caused the largest slaughter
2:36
in sitcom history and meet
2:38
the man who wielded the axe. He
2:41
and I literally whacked
2:43
the hell out of that schedule and cancel about
2:45
a dozen and a half shows from
2:47
CBS Sunday Morning and Simon
2:50
and Schuster. I'm Morocca
2:52
and this is Mobituaries, This
3:01
mobid, the rural purge
3:05
March sixteenth, nine death
3:09
of the country broadcasting system
3:17
Big Wheels had the network started
3:20
spinning. The
3:22
verdict was that heha had to
3:24
go to city
3:26
slickers don't believe in grinning
3:30
and who the heckniques jokes and coma.
3:33
That's Hehaw co host and country
3:35
music legend Roy Clark singing
3:38
about the rural purge in n two,
3:41
one year after CBS canceled
3:43
the musical variety show, consigning
3:45
it to syndication. They canceled all
3:48
the singing and the picking, but
3:51
the scubborn little Donkey wouldn't
3:53
leave, and then
3:55
little Fella is still alive and kicking.
4:03
That song is is smart, it's
4:06
satirical. I mean it's about the rural
4:08
purge. I think it's about rural people
4:10
in general feeling left behind. And
4:12
I think this is them saying, you know, the
4:14
networks don't care about us, like we're forgotten,
4:17
and this is a show that remembers that we're here. Sarah
4:20
s. Gridge hails from Virginia and
4:22
wrote a book all about the sitcom slaughter
4:25
route to CBS and rural
4:27
comedies in the nineteen sixties, And
4:29
so how much TV did you have to watch to
4:31
write this book. I was watching
4:33
about four hours a day over the course
4:35
of about a year, year and a half. So basically
4:38
you were an average American. Yeah, except
4:40
that I was having to take notes and look for themes
4:43
and um, you know, so it was work after
4:45
all. Let's go back to the beginning,
4:47
okay, and by which I mean the beginning of
4:50
television, because life didn't really
4:52
exist before television. What
4:54
is CBS in the late forties and
4:56
nineteen fifties, what is its image?
4:59
CBS is the Sterling Network
5:01
in the forties and fifties is
5:03
CBS They calumb me a broadcasting
5:06
system also known as
5:08
the Tiffany Network. Now,
5:10
in those early days, the only people with
5:12
access to TV signals lived
5:14
in cities at that point. They're they're
5:17
putting a lot of programming on that features immigrants,
5:19
that features Jewish families, that
5:21
features people of color. They're trying
5:23
to appeal to the demographics of the place where
5:26
they're making the shows. Amos and Andy,
5:28
which revolved around a group of African
5:30
American friends in Harlem, was originally
5:33
created and voiced by white actors
5:35
on radio. On TV, the
5:37
show still played to racial stereotypes,
5:40
but the cast was entirely African American,
5:43
the first show with an all black cast,
5:46
something that wouldn't be seen on CBS again
5:48
until the nineteen seventies. And
5:50
this one really surprised me. More
5:52
than sixty years before The Goldberg's
5:55
premiered on ABC, there
5:59
was The gold Egs on CBS.
6:01
Just hearing from your relatives in Europe after
6:03
not hearing for so many years. That's beautiful
6:06
and Jade, did you count how many times they
6:08
asked? And the characters are obviously
6:10
Jewish, yes, And that's a big part of the stuff,
6:13
the story. They don't try to hide that, it's emphasized.
6:16
And then unfortunately what happens with The Goldbergs
6:18
is that one of the lead characters
6:20
is included in one of those lists. Sarah
6:23
is referring to lists of communist
6:25
sympathizers, which included
6:27
actor Philip Loebe, who played the
6:30
male lead on The Goldbergs. This
6:32
was all at the height of the Red Scare, with
6:35
the government investigating so called
6:37
communist infiltration of American
6:40
institutions, including the
6:42
media. FBI director
6:44
j Edgar Hoover reportedly dubbed
6:47
CBS the communist broadcasting
6:49
system. Not the image you
6:51
wanted in Cold War America.
6:54
Around the same time, TV signals
6:56
were beginning to spread beyond urban centers
6:59
into a America's heartland. So
7:01
it was audios to those ethnic
7:04
comedies. So CBS is
7:06
entertainment slate becomes whitewashed.
7:08
Basically, yes, um, they're trying to find
7:11
something that's going to appeal to the largest
7:13
possible demographic, and so they
7:15
start out by saying, Okay, quiz shows,
7:18
that's a great way to go check before
7:20
Yes, let's check before questions.
7:24
That is until CBS and NBC
7:27
came under investigation for rigging
7:29
the results. But
7:32
there was a new television craze riding
7:34
to the rescue.
7:40
Westerns are popular across the
7:42
board. Every network is doing them, and that's
7:45
emphasizing new American ideals.
7:47
It's the idea of the West and
7:50
American individualism and being
7:52
rugged and masculine and
7:55
you know Western from the title. I mean,
7:57
there's no kidding around here, right Gunsmoke
8:04
starring James gunn Smoke, I
8:06
mean is just a monster. Oh
8:08
yeah, absolutely. There were about forty one Westerns
8:11
on television at one time, and this is across three
8:13
networks. Wow. Westerns
8:15
were especially popular with the expanding
8:18
rural and southern markets, and
8:20
it was those markets CBS was
8:22
aiming at with its very first rural
8:25
comedy, premiering in nine six,
8:29
The Andy Griffith Show starring
8:33
Andy Griffin. So The
8:35
Andy Griffith Show is one of the great shows
8:37
of all time, one of the great family sitcoms of
8:39
all time, maybe the best show
8:41
about small town life ever made.
8:44
You may remember Alan Seppondwall from
8:46
our season one episode on sitcom
8:48
character Deaths and Disappearances. Allan
8:51
is the chief TV critic for Rolling Stone,
8:54
and if you couldn't tell, he's a big fan
8:56
of The Andy Griffith Show. Andy Griffith
8:58
plays Sheriff Andy Taylor of maybe Are, a small
9:00
town in North Carolina. He has a deputy,
9:02
Barney Fife, played by the great Don Notts,
9:04
who is who is really eager
9:07
but also completely bumbling. So and
9:09
you will not allow him to put a bullet
9:11
in his gun that you've come very near shooting yourself
9:14
in the foot. You know, they ain't exactly much
9:16
of a call for one legged deputy.
9:18
You're combining some of the elements of
9:20
the western with some of the elements of
9:23
the rural comedy. So you've got a sheriff.
9:25
He's kind of standing in as that law
9:28
figure in Mayberry
9:30
is kind of an idol. I mean it's for for
9:32
a lot of people, right, it's a fantasy. I
9:34
mean the only the only lawbreaker
9:37
is the town drunk and he locks himself in at
9:39
night. I didn't get mindfull eight hours
9:41
in one. I don't get mindfull eight hours. I'm
9:43
grouchi. Do you mind? The
9:46
Andy Griffith Show became such a breakout
9:48
success that it birthed its own
9:50
set of lesser quality spinoffs
9:53
throughout the nineteen six U
9:59
s mc gomer
10:01
Pyle was originally Mayberry's lovably
10:04
dim weighted filling station attendant,
10:07
and Jim
10:10
Nighbors played him. You know, I had
10:12
a lot of catchphrases, you know, golli and
10:15
shazam uh.
10:18
And then at a certain point they decided to have him
10:20
enlist in the Marines, and later in the decade
10:23
there was Mayberry RFD. Note
10:25
to our urban listeners, r f D stands
10:28
for Rural Free Delivery. It's
10:30
basically the Andy Griffith Show without Andy.
10:32
It's it's Andy Griffith was ready to move on,
10:34
but they wanted to keep the show going. Now,
10:37
this burgeoning rural comedy
10:39
cornucopia isn't happening on its
10:41
own. Someone's green lighting
10:43
these shows. James Aubrey is
10:45
really the mastermind of the rural
10:47
craze at CBS. I just have to
10:49
say his name is mud to
10:52
me because he canceled
10:54
the Judy Garland show. Yeah
10:57
so, and and that is just
11:00
that's a capital crime in my opinion.
11:03
The types of shows championed by
11:05
James Aubrey invited a rebuke
11:07
in from Federal
11:09
Communications Chairman Newton Minno,
11:12
who thought the networks could do better. When
11:14
television is good, nothing,
11:18
not the theater, not the magazines
11:20
or newspapers, nothing is better. But
11:24
when television is bad, nothing
11:27
is worth. This is what came to be known
11:29
as the vast Wasteland speech.
11:32
I can assure you that what you will observe
11:35
is a vast wasteland. You
11:38
will see a procession of game shows,
11:40
formula, comedies about totally unbelievable
11:42
families, blood and thunder, ma'am,
11:45
violence, say it is a murder
11:48
Western badmans. He is arguing that he did
11:50
not feel television was living up to its vast
11:52
potential, the kind of potential that a network
11:54
like CBS had displayed often throughout
11:56
the fifties, and of course, about
11:58
a year and a half after that speech, I think after
12:01
maybe a little bit of soul searching, maybe
12:03
there was they felt a little bit chastened. The
12:06
Beverly Hillbillies premieres. You
12:10
know, we thought about what you said, Newton Minno, but
12:12
we really liked this Clampitt family pitch,
12:15
and oh boy, did that corn
12:18
yield a prophet. This
12:25
is Beverly Hills, dared
12:28
dwell, the rich, the famous,
12:31
the glamorous. In September nine, CBS
12:34
premiered a new series about
12:36
one of the most exclusive enclaves
12:39
in the country, home to sportsman
12:42
play boys, gilbillies,
12:45
Hillbillies. Who
12:48
are these people? Where
12:50
are they from? And why did they
12:52
come to Beverly Hills. The
12:55
Beverly Hillbillies was one of the most
12:57
popular shows on television in the ninth
13:00
seen sixties. Well as as a wise
13:02
man once saying, it's it's the story of a man
13:04
named Jed. He was a poor mountaineer. He
13:06
barely kept his family fed. But
13:08
then one day he was shooting at some food and
13:11
you know what happened. Up through the ground
13:13
came bubble and crude oil that is
13:15
black Gold, Texas. T Jed,
13:18
along with his daughter Ellie May, nephew
13:20
Jeff Throw and Granny decided to pack
13:23
up and moved to Beverly Hills.
13:25
That is yeah, movie stars swimming pools.
13:28
The Beverly Hillbillies was the brainchild
13:30
of comedy writer Paul Henning, who
13:32
would come to California by way of Independence,
13:35
Missouri, which also happened to be
13:37
the hometown of President Harry Truman.
13:40
Young Paul got his start as a soda
13:42
jerk at the local drug store. And who
13:44
should come in there but Harry Truman, And
13:47
he talked with him a couple of times.
13:49
That's Henning's daughter Linda, and
13:52
Harry you know, said, well, one thing
13:54
you ought to do is go to law school. He said, it'll
13:56
never hurt you to get a degree
13:58
in law. Well, thank god he didn't
14:01
stick with that. Yes, the
14:04
inspiration for the Hillbillies came from
14:06
Henning's summers in the Ozarks.
14:08
I think he observed people and
14:10
he loved the honesty.
14:14
Uh. He always called Jed
14:16
one of nature's noblemen, Jed
14:18
Clampett. Yeah, he must have known
14:21
somebody kind of like Jed.
14:24
I would think, Now I know
14:26
that Ellie May was
14:29
partially based on me because I'm
14:31
an animal nut. And can we just say
14:33
the actors who played these roles.
14:36
I mean Irene Ryan who played Granny.
14:38
She was a great actress. Oh she's wonderful.
14:40
She was great. And she came in to see Daddy
14:43
to read for him, dressed
14:45
kind of as Granny, and Daddy
14:48
took one look at her and thought, here she is,
14:50
you know, this is Cranny. Veteran Hollywood
14:52
actor Buddy Ebsen played Jed
14:55
Quick aside. Ebsen was the original
14:57
choice to play the tin Man in The Wizard of Oz.
15:00
Well, people that asked me to
15:02
what I attribute to success of the Hill it
15:05
was people humor, genuine
15:07
humor, Paul Hitting, It's
15:09
a genius. Who out there do you
15:11
think he was writing the show for. I
15:15
think the people he he basically
15:17
knew, which was in between
15:20
the two coasts, you know, just
15:22
your basic people. He certainly wasn't
15:24
writing for the critics. Reviewers
15:26
called the series painful to sit through
15:28
and the most shamelessly
15:31
corny show in years. Even the
15:33
Hillbillies should take Umbridge
15:35
as a TV critic, what's your take on the Beverly
15:37
Hillbillies I don't think that's
15:39
a show I would review very positively were
15:41
to debut today. Look, they made a lot of
15:43
money off of it, so some somebody
15:45
was being smart about something, even though everyone on that
15:48
show is so dumb. Turns out even some
15:50
of the folks working inside CBS
15:52
at the time were flummixed. Here's
15:54
the late newsman Mike Wallace. I
15:57
confess I didn't really understand what
15:59
was going on. I mean, this was, after
16:01
all, the Network
16:03
of all the Stars
16:06
and suddenly Beverly
16:09
Hillbillies. But
16:11
Sarah Eskridge thinks, to critics then and
16:13
now have it backwards. It's very subversive
16:16
because I think what you see with this family
16:19
um is that they make fools out of the people
16:21
that are around them in Beverly Hills. I tell
16:23
you, Jed, this place is full of the laziest,
16:26
greasiest, unfriendliest mess of people.
16:28
I ever did lay my eyes all okay,
16:30
And there's an old tradition of this, right, like the country
16:33
folk who are in fact to have horse sense,
16:35
who are smarter than the city slickers, and the
16:37
ways that matter exactly, and so you know, they
16:40
might not be well versed in twentieth
16:42
century consumer culture. But they're well versed
16:45
in family, They're well versed in
16:47
how to survive off the lands. They're well
16:49
versed in how to be a good friend and community
16:51
member. The rural comedies were beginning
16:54
to reshape CBS. Meanwhile,
16:57
sitting atop the network was a
16:59
man known for his fine taste and
17:01
air udition, William Paley, the
17:03
legendary chairman of CBS.
17:06
I mean, sort of very sophisticated guy.
17:08
What does he think of these shows? He
17:11
is less than pleased. By the time to Beverly
17:13
Hillbillies comes along, you start hearing CBS.
17:15
It's not the communist broadcast system anymore,
17:17
but it's now the country broadcast system. However,
17:20
the money that they're minting from
17:22
these shows helps ease the pain a little bit.
17:24
Yeah, no, it was huge. This was you
17:26
know. They aired one of the most watched
17:28
episodes of television ever, in which
17:31
Granny goes in punches kangaroo
17:34
that she mistakes for a giant jack rabbit.
17:36
Yes, is she trying to cook the jack rabbit?
17:40
Why are you asking me these questions? I don't know.
17:42
Well, I'll tell you this story. That's
17:44
Linda Henning again. One day I looked
17:46
out of my dressing room window and
17:49
saw Granny who I thought was Granny.
17:52
It turned out to be the stunt man
17:54
dressed like Granny, riding
17:56
a kangaroo that had
17:58
been saddled down the street. So
18:02
that's the kind of thing you'd sometimes run
18:04
into when you worked there. That didn't
18:06
happen on the set of All in the Family, not
18:10
at all. No, no kangaroos
18:12
on that set. Linda Henning was
18:14
nearby because she was working on the
18:16
set of her father's latest hit sitcom,
18:19
Petticoat Junction. Come
18:22
ride a little train that is rolling
18:24
down the tracks to the Junction. I
18:28
really didn't know much about Petticoat, and quite
18:30
frankly, there isn't much to know.
18:33
I'll let the show's theme song explain. There's
18:37
a little hotel call the Shady
18:39
Rest at the Junction. It
18:43
is run by Kate. Come and be her
18:46
guest at the junto.
18:50
The show takes place at a hotel along
18:52
a spur of a railroad that's been cut
18:54
off from the main track. Once
18:56
a week, a new visitor will check in.
18:59
That's the whole show, Like, nothing really much happens.
19:01
It's just sort of lingering around the hotel.
19:03
The train station, a little bit of the town. B
19:06
Benadrrett played family matriarch
19:08
and hotel owner Kate. As long
19:10
as you're a guest in my hotel,
19:12
you're entitled to shady rest hospitality.
19:15
But TV fans of all ages may
19:17
know her far better for another role.
19:20
What's going on, Bernie? What are you up
19:22
to? B Benadrrett was Betty Rubble.
19:25
I loved Betty Rubble flint
19:27
Stones she was. She
19:29
was wonderful, kind of my mentor.
19:32
The widowed Kate had three daughters
19:34
whose names were forever confused,
19:36
Billy Joe, Betty Joe, and Bobby Joe. And I
19:39
was Betty Joe the youngest. I'll admit
19:41
I'm not doing so well in my mind or subjects,
19:44
but I'm leading my class in basketball, gymnastics,
19:46
and ice hockey. Probably the most
19:48
memorable image from the show was from
19:51
the opening credits, with all three teenage
19:53
girls peering out from the inside
19:55
of a water tower with their petticoats
19:58
hanging over the side. Lynn Double
20:00
was the Redhead. I would get fan
20:02
letters from girls who'ld say, when I
20:04
come home from school, uh, we
20:07
play petticoat junction and I'm
20:09
you now along that Railroad was
20:11
the fictional Hooterville, and
20:13
thanks to the continuing country comedy
20:15
craze, the Paul Henning universe
20:18
expanded a third and final time
20:20
in n with
20:22
Green Acres. How do you feel about
20:24
New York City, Mr Douglas, I
20:26
hate it. Mrs Douglas disagrees.
20:30
I certain Green Acres was
20:32
the reverse Beverly Hillbillies. A
20:34
city slicker lawyer played by Eddie
20:36
Albert convinces his socialite
20:38
wife played by Ava Gabore to
20:41
move to the country. My wife, good
20:44
fine acres.
20:46
We are exactly
20:49
that's a great theme song. So they moved. They moved to Hooterville.
20:51
They start running a farm instead of him being a
20:53
big city lawyer. Uh. And then weirdly
20:56
she fits in much better than he does. Even though
20:58
it was his idea. The show was edge. You're
21:00
more imaginative than the Beverly Hillbillies
21:03
or Petticoat Junction that you know. There's
21:05
a pig with a full name, Arnold zipfle
21:08
Um. Square eggs. Yeah, there's an episode
21:10
where the hen starts laying square eggs.
21:12
Things were very strange and surreal and just
21:14
much more creative than they tended
21:16
to get on the other two shows. And by the way, we
21:18
need to do a better job educating our children.
21:21
I mean, too many young people who
21:23
think that Jaja go Boar was
21:25
the star. Ja Ja
21:27
Gabor came to Gilligan's Island on
21:29
a speedboat and didn't rescue
21:32
them for reasons passing understanding.
21:34
Is that true? Yes, but a vagabar
21:37
was Lisa on Green Acres. You know they had another
21:39
sister, Magda. I did not. Yeah,
21:41
she didn't really do much. She was a socialite. Zeppo
21:44
said, there you go, exactly. She was
21:46
a zeppo, which is better than
21:48
being there is still yet another one,
21:51
gummo, gummo. Okay, okay early,
21:53
So at least she was a Zeppo. Since the
21:55
worlds of Paul Hennings shows all
21:57
overlapped, there were plenty of opportunities
22:00
for crossover episodes. His
22:02
daughter Linda remembers, and when I
22:04
did the Hillbillies, Granny and
22:06
and Jed and everybody came out
22:09
to Hooterville to the Shady Rest Hotel,
22:11
and Granny mistook the dog who had jumped
22:14
in the baby carriage for my child
22:16
for a lot of animal confusion with Danny.
22:20
One thing all the rural comedies had
22:22
in common, they seem to exist
22:25
in a parallel universe. You know, when
22:27
I watched these shows, and I didn't watch petticoat
22:29
Junction, but when I watched certainly Green
22:31
Acres and UM
22:33
and Andrew Griffith Show and Beverly Hillbillies,
22:36
you know, I would look for clues about what
22:38
was going on in the world at that time, and
22:41
if they were there, boy, they're hard to find. Now.
22:43
Those those shows are entirely designed to get
22:45
like create a big impenetrable
22:48
wall between the world outside your window
22:50
and the one being projected on your TV s hermetically
22:53
sealed, so it's very escapist.
22:55
All of these horrible things that are happening in the country,
22:58
um that are that seemed to be tearing the entry apart.
23:00
None of that's happening in rural comedy. No
23:03
special episodes acknowledging the
23:05
assassinations of JFK, m
23:07
l K or RFK. No
23:10
references to violence in the South
23:12
linked to the Civil rights movement. The
23:14
Andy Griffith Show, that's supposed to be Mount Airy, which
23:16
is a stone's throw from Greensboro
23:18
where the first sit in took place in and
23:21
that took place within just a couple of months
23:23
of the show airing. And I gotta tell you, when you
23:25
think of Sheriff Andy, I mean, if you say
23:27
to me law enforcement
23:30
officer the South nineteen sixties,
23:32
I think Bull Connor right in
23:34
Alabama, in African Americans being
23:37
attacked with water hoses, exactly, and
23:39
and he's completely the exact opposite.
23:41
And I think that it's presenting
23:43
a kinder, gentler self and what's being
23:46
shown on the news. And pretty much all
23:48
the characters on these shows are
23:50
white. Absolutely with
23:52
the rural comedies, you will have black guest
23:55
stars. You will have um,
23:57
maybe a storyline that revolves around
24:00
one black character, which happened in the Andy Griffith
24:02
Show, but I think total that Um,
24:04
it's a story where Obie's football coach,
24:07
Um is also playing the piano and
24:09
teaches him that it's okay to be cultured. And also,
24:12
like sports, if things are sort of planned
24:14
and worked out, it's always possible
24:16
to pursue several interests at the same time. It's
24:19
the only episode out of two forty
24:21
nine that features a speaking black character.
24:25
You know, Sammy Davis Jr. Guest start
24:27
on The Beverly Hillbillies in a later season
24:30
as a cop as a cop which is which
24:32
is kind of odds is an interesting choice
24:34
and not just a copy is an Irish cop.
24:39
That's sorry, I didn't have the pleasure
24:41
of making the like of the Oaks.
24:43
And of course he nails the accent because he's Sammy
24:45
Davis Jr. And can do anything. Big
24:47
fan here that I think that might have been my favorite
24:49
five minutes I watched in the entire year and a half
24:51
that I was watching Rural Comedy
24:59
nine were in Vietnam. Certainly
25:01
wasn't being mentioned on these shows. Remember
25:04
Gomer Pyle, you know, the character
25:06
who moved from Mayberry to a marine
25:08
base in the mid nineteen sixties. You
25:10
know, the fact that he's a marine. He wouldn't He would have
25:12
been in donang Um faster than he could have stabbed
25:14
his fingers and you know, and yet somehow
25:16
he never gets deployed out if his friends gets
25:18
deployed, no one gets killed. And it doesn't
25:21
get any more cut off from the main world
25:23
than Petticoat Junction. Remember,
25:25
the entire premise was built around
25:27
a train that was quite literally
25:30
cut off from the main line. Yet
25:32
Linda Henning defends the value of escapism.
25:36
She remembers receiving fan mail from
25:38
servicemen who were watching her show overseas.
25:41
Oh, it moved me a lot,
25:44
and I was glad that
25:46
there was something that talked about
25:48
escape, that there was something that they could
25:50
say that maybe would take them away
25:53
from some of the horror
25:55
of what they were experiencing. But
25:57
a new generation of viewers wanted
26:00
an escape from escapism
26:03
from television. In Hollywood,
26:05
Ladies and Gentlemen beat the Smothers
26:08
Brothers with
26:11
the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the
26:13
late nineteen sixties, CBS
26:15
ventured out of the bubble with a show
26:18
that dared to address current events.
26:27
They were clean cuts, war suits. They
26:29
looked like the boys next door, but their comedy
26:32
was very subversive and they seemed to have their finger
26:34
on the pulse of the music scene
26:36
especially, and so they had all of these wonderful
26:38
musical groups. Their comedy had
26:41
a lot of double entendres that were considered risque.
26:43
They had Pete Seeger come on to sing an anti
26:46
war song. It was a very big deal. Yes,
26:48
And and that's part of the problem is that as
26:50
they become more popular, they
26:52
also start to become more political. Are
26:55
you aware of what the Smothers Brothers is
26:57
replaced with I
26:59
don't remember, oh my yes,
27:02
oh my god. The Smothers Brothers were
27:04
too much, too soon for CBS
27:07
and the words of the network brass. The Brothers
27:09
were unwilling to accept the criteria
27:12
of taste established by CBS,
27:15
and we're pulled off the air in nine nine
27:17
they're replaced by this you know, country
27:20
music variety show, which could
27:22
not be more philosophically or stylistically
27:24
opposite of what the Smothers were doing. It's
27:30
um I mean, it does seem like it's
27:32
designed to appeal to every possible Southern stereotype.
27:35
And um, I confess, out of all the rural
27:37
comedies, that's the only one that I actually was
27:41
watched growing up. Was not on
27:43
purpose. And my grandparents loved heiha. Why
27:45
do you think they loved it? Because
27:47
they liked the music. The music, And let's let's just
27:50
point out Roy Clark and Buck Owens, the hosts,
27:53
great musical talents.
27:55
They're gonna put me in a movie. They're
27:58
gonna make a big star out of me, you
28:00
know, a film about a man
28:02
who sat alonely but all I gotta do
28:04
is at naturally. Yeah,
28:07
he's great just incredible musicians,
28:10
but they loved the music. The jokes were corny,
28:13
would be putting it mildly. What's
28:15
the difference between a hair dresser and
28:17
a sculptor. Well,
28:20
a hairdresser curls up and dies and
28:22
a sculptor makes faces
28:23
and buff You kind
28:26
of had to watch between your fingers because
28:28
I felt a little embarrassed for them that they were doing
28:30
it. But they, you know, the older folks,
28:32
and my wife loved that show. So it
28:35
was on and he Hall was a hit,
28:37
but it turned out to be a last stand
28:40
for rural comedy. With
28:42
the arrival of a new sheriff at CBS,
28:45
he Hall was about to get the old
28:48
Heath ho In.
29:00
Through the saloon doors comes
29:03
Fred Silverman, and he detests
29:06
rural comedy with a passion that exceeds
29:08
a thousand burning suns um. He thinks
29:10
that rural comedy is stupid. Fred
29:14
Silverman would go on to become a network
29:17
television legend known as
29:19
the Man with the Golden Gut, responsible
29:21
for Roots, Mash and Scooby
29:24
Doo. But back in he
29:27
was the brash, thirty three year old,
29:29
brand new head of programming at CBS,
29:32
and he had one mission to
29:34
rid the network of rural
29:37
comedy. Fred Silverman called
29:39
those rural comedies shit kicking.
29:42
Is that necessarily an insult? I don't think
29:44
anything that you use the
29:46
words ship to describe is probably
29:48
going to be considered a positive. Well, if I say you're
29:51
the ship, not you, that would be a compliment,
29:53
But okay, sort of. I
29:55
don't say that. Um. I think
29:57
that he thinks that people who watch those shows
29:59
are people who are literally
30:02
kicking ship for a living. Fred Silverman did
30:04
not really strike me as the kind of guy who
30:06
would kick back and watch petticoat Junction
30:08
or some of these other shows. But it's really a matter
30:10
of changing demographics. Earlier, Nielsen
30:12
was largely just measuring audiences, how
30:14
many people are watching, how many how sets are
30:17
tuned in. At a certain point, they were able
30:19
to break it down and say, this number of people
30:21
in the city are watching versus this number of people in rural
30:23
America. You know, these households
30:25
that are wealthy versus these households that are blue
30:27
collar. But a lot of people were still watching.
30:30
People still like these shows. Fred
30:32
Silverman, his business people were saying, look,
30:35
we can't sell advertising on these because
30:37
the only people are watching them are the hicks from the
30:39
sticks, And we want to be able to sell
30:41
ads to people in big cities with big disposable
30:44
income, because that's where advertisers
30:46
want. Here's Fred Silverman in
30:48
Choots House in one. Something had
30:51
to be done, and I think
30:53
there was total agreement. Bob bodho
30:55
is president of the network, his boss, Jack Schneider
30:58
and Paley said
31:00
let's let's bite the boat.
31:02
Silverman and his bosses began with
31:04
a little target practice. Petticoat
31:07
Junction was the first to buy the
31:09
farm. Linda Henning remembers,
31:12
I still to this day think it
31:14
was kind of lousy what
31:17
they did. We never heard from
31:20
the powers that be at CBS. Nobody
31:22
bothered to call us the Beverly Hillbillyes,
31:25
Green Acres and Hehaw were
31:27
soon primed for slaughter. Were
31:29
scheduled for Tuesday night. As
31:32
Fred Silverman saw it, let Tuesday
31:34
be the receptacle for all the crap that
31:36
that we we weren't able to cancel yet.
31:39
Meanwhile, CBS began experimenting
31:41
with more urban and gritty fair
31:44
The results of those experiments were mixed.
31:47
You've got an appointment with the interns
31:50
on Friday. These weren't about unpaid employees.
31:53
They were young doctors, and the tagline
31:55
was the interns, It's
31:57
about what it's all about. Wait,
32:00
wait, you're using that tagline for a doctor show.
32:02
I guess so, I mean by Jean Paulsard,
32:04
I mean, it's just it feels like a Seinfeld tagline
32:07
or something. And then there was the Storefront Lawyers,
32:09
And this was an earnest attempt to sort
32:11
of be attuned to what was going on in the
32:13
world, change within the establishment,
32:16
young advocates practicing law in
32:19
Century City to pay the bills in
32:21
the ghetto, to pay their dues. Both
32:24
shows were canceled after one season,
32:27
but hope was not lost. That
32:30
same season, a certain show
32:32
about a girl who turned the world on with
32:34
her smile from the
32:42
Silverman realized that the Mary
32:44
Tyler Moore Show was the kind of show
32:46
that could restore luster to the Tiffany
32:49
Network. And I looked at Mary Tyler
32:51
Mona said, this is such a terrific show. We
32:53
got this sitting in the middle of Allas
32:57
Ship Kicker shows. And then halfway
32:59
through the nineteen seventies seventy one season,
33:02
CBS took a chance on producers
33:04
Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin and
33:06
their new comedy All in the
33:08
Family, This country coming to anyhow?
33:11
What what else
33:14
we get out of Vietnam or something? Don't
33:18
be a wise guy, smart,
33:21
controversial, thrilling television
33:23
that made people laugh and think, and
33:26
for Archie Bunker to live, Jed
33:28
Clampett would have to die. Fred
33:31
Silverman explained, I work from
33:33
Amber Dame of Bob Wood, who was president
33:36
of the network, and uh he and
33:38
I literally whacked the
33:40
hell out of that schedule and cancel about
33:42
a dozen and a half shows. The casualty
33:44
list eventually included all
33:47
the rural comedies, the largest
33:49
slaughter in sitcom history.
33:52
TV legend ed Sullivan was collateral
33:54
damage due to his older skewing
33:56
audience. Silverman's like wielding
33:58
a machete through this cornfield,
34:01
gleefully, gleefully. So. One actor
34:03
may have put it best when he lamented CBS
34:06
canceled everything with a tree in
34:08
it, anything in the country, anything that was
34:11
not in a city with breaking concrete. Bye
34:13
bye. Yeah. I would not have wanted to be a CBS switchboard
34:15
operator in the
34:17
death of these programs wasn't only a
34:19
gut punch for fans, it was personal
34:22
for creators like Paul Henning. I
34:24
think he took it very personally,
34:26
because I mean he had poured all of
34:29
his blooded, sweat and tears into these shows, well,
34:31
certainly into Beverly Hillbillies,
34:33
and he was quite an
34:35
introvert anyway, and
34:37
he he kind of withdrew after
34:40
that. Now it's tempting to paint
34:42
Fred Silverman as the villain in this story,
34:45
but we actually owe him a debt of gratitude.
34:48
During Silverman's tenure at CBS,
34:50
the Norman Lear Universe expanded
34:53
to include Maud and One Day
34:55
at a Time and Good Times,
34:57
and the Jefferson's Became Two was
34:59
the first CBS sitcom's featuring
35:02
largely African American casts
35:04
since the days of Amos and Andy.
35:06
He basically created this new, sophisticated
35:09
Golden Age of sitcom's,
35:11
arguably the best era for sitcom's in
35:14
the medium's history. Did Fred Silverman
35:16
have to be ruthless? I think
35:18
he did um because I think if you look
35:20
at CBS from like, you know, seventy two
35:22
to seventies six or so, when they had you
35:25
know, all in the family, Mary Tyler Moore, the Bob
35:27
Newhart Show, Mash Carol Burnett.
35:29
They were airing those five shows on one
35:32
night for a season. That's probably the best night
35:34
of programming in the history of network
35:36
television. That's amazing. It is amazing,
35:39
and I don't know that that would have been post like could
35:41
you imagine a network airing All in
35:43
the Family and Pettico Junction.
35:46
Do you think that Southern audiences
35:49
felt abandoned when
35:51
CBS acts all those shows. I
35:55
think so because if
35:57
you think about Southern re presentation
36:01
since then, you see pockets,
36:03
but it's nowhere near as prevalent as
36:05
it was during the sixties. Even if these were
36:08
caricatures in many ways. Yeah, but at
36:10
the same time, they're still they have hearts
36:12
there, they have substance, and they have a soul. I,
36:15
like many of you listening, discovered
36:17
the rural comedies and reruns usually
36:19
after I got home from school. They
36:21
were corny and funny, but I
36:23
had no idea of their former glory.
36:26
How many tens of millions used to watch
36:28
them in prime time and how
36:30
many were still watching them when they were canceled.
36:33
I can understand why many people in
36:35
the middle of the country might have felt aggrieved
36:38
that Network executives on the coasts
36:41
thought they weren't the right market or
36:43
desirable demographic. The
36:46
rural Purge happened almost fifty years
36:48
ago, and yet there's
36:50
something very contemporary about the story.
37:00
Awesome. As
37:05
for he Hawk, remember Roy Clark
37:07
singing about the rural Purge at the beginning
37:09
of the episode, Well he
37:12
had the last laugh. When the show
37:14
was resurrected in first run syndication.
37:23
The show lived for another twenty
37:26
five years.
37:36
We'd like to conclude this mobituary
37:38
with an in memorium for the victims
37:41
of the Rural Purge. Green
37:46
Acres, Petty
37:48
co Chunction, The
37:51
Beverly Hillbillies, The
37:54
Red Skelton Show,
37:56
The Ed Sullivan Show, Family
38:01
Affair, Hehaw,
38:06
Hogan's Heroes, The
38:08
Jackie Gleason Show, The
38:11
Jim Neighbor's Hour, Mayberry
38:15
r f D, The
38:19
New Andy Griffith Show, and
38:23
Lassie.
38:33
Next Time on Mobituaries, The
38:36
story of how Aies Pop
38:38
Song. It is a song with velocity right,
38:41
so big and bold and brash.
38:44
Product two thousand nineteen Sports
38:46
Team Back to Life. I
38:48
will go to my grave singing
38:51
or champ Yes, I will. I
39:00
certainly hope you enjoyed this mobituary.
39:02
May I ask you to please rate and review our
39:05
podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries
39:07
on Facebook and Instagram, and
39:10
you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca.
39:12
You can subscribe to Mobituaries wherever
39:15
you get your podcasts. This episode
39:17
of Mobituaries was produced by Megan
39:20
Marcus. Our team of producers
39:22
also includes Harry Wood and me
39:24
Morocca. It was edited
39:27
by Meg Dalton and Nathan Miller
39:29
and engineered by Nathan Miller. Additional
39:32
editing by Sam Egan. Indispensable
39:35
support from Genia Staneski, Lucy
39:37
Kirk, Richard Rohrer, and everyone
39:39
at CBS News Radio. Special
39:41
thanks to David Bushman at the Paley
39:43
Center for Media. Our theme music
39:46
is written by Daniel Hart and, as
39:48
always, undying thanks to Rand
39:50
Morrison and John Carp without
39:52
whom Mobituaries couldn't
39:54
live. Hi,
40:02
It's mo. If you're enjoying Mobituaries
40:05
the podcast, May I invite you
40:07
to check out Mobituaries the book.
40:10
It's chock full of stories not
40:12
in the podcast. Celebrities
40:14
who put their butts on the line, sports
40:17
teams that threw in the towel for good, forgotten
40:20
fashions, defunct diagnoses,
40:22
presidential candidacies that cratered
40:25
whole countries that went to put and
40:27
dragons, Yes, dragons,
40:29
you see. People used to believe the dragons will real
40:31
until just get the book.
40:33
You can order Mobituaries the book from
40:36
any online bookseller, or stop
40:38
by your local bookstore and look for
40:40
me when I come to your city. Tour information
40:43
and lots more at mobituaries
40:45
dot com
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More