Mark Lewis: Hollywood Knew Women 60 Years Ago.

Remembering “The Beverly Hillbillies”

Have you ever seen the TV show “The Beverly Hillbillies”? It was popular in the 1960s, so you young whippersnappers would have to have caught it on Nickelodeon or some such network. But us old geezers grew up with it, and most of us thought it was a hoot. Maybe I was naïve at the time, but I never figured Hollywood was slamming southern hillbillies, I thought they were trying to make people laugh and earn a buck. I may have been right back then, but who knows?

The Show

Old Jed Clampett was a “poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed. Then one day, he was shootin’ at some food, and up from the ground come a’bubblin’ crude. Oil, that is. Black gold. Texas tea.”

“Well, the first thing you know, old Jed’s a millionaire. The kinfolks said, ‘Jed, move away from there!’ Said Californy is the place you oughta’ be, so they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly. Hills, that is. Swimming pools. Movie stars.”

Those are the words from the title song to the show. You old timers remember that, don’t you…brings back memories, I’m sure.

The show was hilarious, the exploits of some backwoods hillbillies among the hoity-toity of Beverly