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Paul Henning used his childhood as fuel to write three hit rural comedies
Growing up, Paul Henning loved hillbilly humor. As an adult, hillbilly humor made Henning's career as the producer of three hit TV shows.
When producer and writer Paul Henning was a young boy in western Missouri, he would attend a camp deep in the Ozark Mountains and hike by himself in the woods nearby the campsite.
Henning would meet people along the way, and sometimes those random hillbilly hikers would inspire future characters in Henning's three big hits: Green Acres, Petticoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies.
"Ever since then I've been a sucker for hillbilly humor," Henning said in a 1966 interview with the Star-Gazette.
Henning credited those childhood moments for giving him a base to start writing. From Missouri to Hollywood, Henning had a real Beverly Hillbillies moment. He wasn't just writing from the heart; he was writing from experience.
"The thing that always stopped me was that to do hillbillies as they really are would be pretty downbeat," Henning said. "I tried for a long time to think of some ways of taking a group of hillbilly characters and putting them in upbeat surroundings."
This sparked the idea: take a group of hillbillies and put them in Beverly Hills.
According to the interview, Henning had no idea how popular The Beverly Hillbillies would become. He worked 70 hours a week and wrote or co-wrote every single episode of the series.
"I figured the show would do well in the Midwest, but I was really surprised at the breadth of its support," Henning said. "A standing joke in the industry is that the people in small towns watch the Hillbillies with the shades up, and in the cities they watch it with the shades pulled."
At the time of the interview, all three Henning-produced series were in the top 12 performing TV shows, a performance record that only Henning had achieved at the time.
Despite what Henning originally thought, the series became so popular that commercial time on the program sold for $50,000 to $80,000 per minute... and that was 1966 prices.
Petticoat Junction was another series that was written based on Henning's country upbringing. According to the interview, Henning was a big fan of Bea Benaderet's acting.
"I've admired Bea Benaderet's talents for a long, long time," Henning said. "There was really no place for her in the original concept of The Beverly Hillbillies, so I wrote her in as cousin Pearl. But I told her that I was going to write something especially for her as soon as I could."
Green Acres followed the same Henning formula, taking the hillbillies and transplanting them somewhere new and interesting. No matter which show Henning was working on, he took from his past.
"These characters aren't just funny," Henning started in a 1969 interview with The Dayton Daily News. "Underneath, Jed Clampett has a certain dignity. You might even say all the virtues. I'd be proud to have him in my house.
Henning wasn't the only one who loved having the Clampetts in their home, audiences all over the country would tune in to get a piece of the hillbilly humor that Henning knew and loved so well.
10 Comments
I had a great life amongst hillbillies, with very little downbeat about it. Henning must have been a weekend hillbilly or something.
IMO the real secret to those particular rural comedies was the casting! They were very talented actors, who made the character appear legitimate. And the "My Fair Lady" theme of class juxtaposition, never fails. I'm appreciative of Paul Henning maintaining the humanity element of the story he was telling!
And no, Oliver and Lisa were anything but stereotypical "hillbillies." And most articles of this kind, given the resources available pointing back to that era, are interpreted based on a writer's assumptions. Unless we're reading direct quotes.