Good as Texas Tea

Wellll, doggies! Has it really been 30 years since the Clampetts loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly? Hills, that is. Swimmin’ pools. Movie stars. Ratings!

Just two weeks after their Sept. 26, 1962, premiere Jed, Granny, Elly May and Jethro struck black gold with “The Beverly Hillbillies”--a show that shot to No. 1 faster than any sitcom ever.

Critics detested the country-fried show. Said one: “If television is America’s vast wasteland, the ‘Hillbillies’ must be Death Valley.” But viewers gobbled it like a mess o’ pickled hog jowls.

Shucks, even today the show remains a part of Americana. Recently, Dan Aykroyd smiled big at a recent film tribute to “Hillbillies” star Buddy Ebsen. Professes Roseanne Arnold: “Oh, it’s my favorite show of all time. I love it.” Like Arnold, the Emmys passed up the Hillbillies, and like her show, the Hillbillies’ ratings were remarkable. The highest-rated half-hour episode of shows of all time, bar none, belongs to the Ozark clan from Bug Tussle, USA. (It’s the one where Granny mistakes a kangaroo for a giant jack rabbit.)

Even more impressive, “The Beverly Hillbillies” has more entries in the Nielsen list of all-time highest rated programs than any other sitcom. Before 1971 (when CBS axed every show with a tree in it), “The Beverly Hillbillies” spawned 274 episodes during nine wealthy seasons.

Unrewarded by the Television Academy, Paul Henning, the gentle little giant who dreamed up the classic, is crying all the way to Milburn Drysdale’s Commerce Bank. Henning produced and wrote nearly every episode of the “Hillbillies” and gave television “Petticoat Junction” and “Green Acres” before he retired.

What surprises him these days are some scholarly theories tacked onto the show. “I wasn’t writing it with any hidden meanings attached other than those basic virtues of honesty and caring,” Henning says. “I was just trying to make the show funny.”

Today, Henning and his wife Ruth spend time between their homes in Toluca Lake and Palm Springs with an annual trek to Independence, Mo., where, as a kid, Paul jerked sodas for Harry Truman.

The cornerstone of the Clampett clan was Buddy Ebsen, who accepted the role with a vow from Henning that Jed Clampett would remain in charge of the newfound $25 million.

“When I looked at the script, everyone’s roles seemed to be funny except mine,” says Ebsen, now 84 and residing in Palos Verdes. “So I had to be the responsible one in a pivotal role.” Ebsen, who was almost the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz,” went on to play Det. Barnaby Jones in the CBS series (1973-80).

Donna Douglas, the tomboy blonde in rope-tied jeans, still dons the get-up at public appearances around the country. “It’s nice,” says Douglas, single and now in her late-50s, “because everyone has a warm feeling for the show.”

Max Baer, son of the heavyweight prizefighter of the same name, is working on several film and television-related projects in Las Vegas and Reno. After years of divorcing himself from the wound-up Jethro Bodine personae, Baer seems a bit more nostalgic, relishing the records the show set. Baer did well producing his own films (among them “Macon County Line” and “Ode to Billy Joe”).

Most fans’ favorite, Irene (Granny) Ryan, exited the show ailing, and died in 1973 at 71 after establishing a million-dollar scholarship fund for theater students.

Stage actress Harriett MacGibbon, who retired after playing Margaret Drysdale, died in 1987. Raymond Bailey, a.k.a. the conniving banker Drysdale, died in 1980. His man-hunting secretary, plain Jane Hathaway, was played by Nancy Kulp, who died in 1991.

There are no more television splashes in the cee-ment pond planned for the remaining cast, although word has it that an option has been taken by a major studio to produce a new cast of Hillbillies in a motion picture, a la “The Addams Family.” The idea: to parody the series. But how do you parody a parody?

Dan Aykroyd as Jed Clampett? Maybe. Roseanne and Tom Arnold as Elly May and Jethro?

Y’all tune in now, hear?

“The Beverly Hillbillies” airs weekdays at 10:30 a.m. on KTTV, 11:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. on KDOC and 4 p.m. on WTBS.