TV Review: The Beverly Hillbillies "The Clampetts Strike Oil" (1962 Series Pilot)

With all due respect to the Bunkers and Simpsons, among others, "The Clampetts Strike Oil" may be the best sitcom pilot episode ever. Paul Henning started with a basic fish-out-of-water premise. His first thought had been to move his hillbillies to New York City. They ended up in California, apparently partly out of consideration for production costs. California, though, was really more fertile ground for their culture clash, anyway.

Studying it closely on DVD, you can see how twenty odd minutes of pilot (first aired September 26, 1962) had the fertile seeds for years of comedy in the internal study of a half dozen characters here in the hills, before we're even given much look at the city folk in further episodes. There are bunches of issues to play with for each Clampett, and then the ways they mesh with one another — and THEN you start bringing in the city folk, and the parodies and criticisms of modern life.

Consider the very first scene as an exposition. First thing, Jed walks through the door to find Granny sewing up his child's pants. Kid's been rassling with a bobcat. Henning delays a bit before disclosing that this child was specifically a girl. Actually, she's a full grown womanchild, as Granny is quick to point out, while moving on to sew back the buttons she's done popped off her blouse. She's full grown, and she ought to be doing woman's work, like helping Granny with the still.

Plus, she obviously should be finding her a husband. Look, the boys started trying to court her right on schedule back when she was 12. But what'd she do? "She whopped the tar out of them." Note closely at the proud and wistful sentiment of how Buddy Ebsen expresses that. For one thing, this looks very much like the tone he struck as Doc in his Breakfast at Tiffany's speech in the park reminiscing about his courtship of the teenaged Holly Golightly.

Then comes the first series appearance of Elly May Clampett — carrying a man over her shoulders that she's knocked out with a rock. "Can I keep him?" It's not that she's not interested in men, she just doesn't know how to deal with them. She wanted to keep this one out in the smokehouse for a pet, like her critters. They'd get a lot of good mileage out of just that one point about Elly May over the coming years of the series.

Poor little fellow turns out to be from the pee-tro-le-um company, and he'd asked Granny for permission to do some wildcatting out in their swamp. Of course, the joke was on him, as the swamp was way too full of oil for there to be any wildcats.

Article Author: Al Barger

Unreformed hawkish Hoosier hillbilly Al Barger runs the still squeezin' down the psychodelic Kentucky moonshine at More Things. What with the paranoid religious visions, the Pentecostal music, visions of God and anarchy running amok and such, somebody …

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