Where To Watch
Edgar Buchanan was able to explain the difference between Petticoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies
"If you haven't known them, someone in your family probably has."
If you were an avid television watcher in the 1960s and 1970s, chances are you loved a Southern series. Shows like Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies dominated our screens for what felt like ages.
Even after the great Rural Purge, where many country shows were given the axe, television never completely lost its Southern charm.
Series like The Andy Griffith Show, which takes place in the decidedly fictional but undoubtedly Southern town of Mayberry, have made their mark on television history.
However, not all country television series are made alike, even if many were cut from the same Hooterville cloth. For example, a show like The Beverly Hillbillies seems to have more in common than not with a show like Petticoat Junction.
Both hold Southern roots and even have an actor in common, Bea Benaderet. On Petticoat Junction, Benaderet played matriarch Kate Bradley, while on The Beverly Hillbillies, she played the much more underhanded and conniving Cousin Pearl.
Edgar Buchanan, who played Uncle Joe alongside Benaderet on Petticoat Junction, spoke highly of his costar in an interview with the Star-Gazette.
"Bea Benaderet is one of the finest actresses I've ever worked with, and I've worked with a lot of them," Buchanan said. "She has a wonderful sense of humor, and she's a real professional worker."
But casting similarities aside, Buchanan was adamant in a Kansas City Star interview that Petticoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies couldn't be more different from each other for one distinct reason: Petticoat Junction was realistic.
"The Hillbillies are characterizations," Buchanan said. "These people on Petticoat Junction are real people, like people you have known in your own hometown, provided you aren't a city-bred feller. If you haven't known them, someone in your family probably has. Sometimes you may have to put your tongue in your cheek when we do a situation, but it's not exaggerated too much."
Related
4 Comments
Glenn Ford co-stars with Edgar as lawmen in the SW USA.
They not only fight crime, but also introduce a wider audience to The Geezer Amble.
She also was the original voice actress for "Granny" and "Witch Hazel" in the Looney Tunes cartoons before being succeeded by June Foray... and (of course) Bea was Betty Rubble on the Flintstones.
MeTV fans also know her from her many years on the Burns and Allen Radio and TV shows as next door neighbor Blanche Morton. She was quite talented and certainly no "one trick pony"...