The Way We Rural : ‘Hillbillies’ Creator Paul Henning, to Be Honored in Santa Ana, Looks Back

“The Manhattan Hillbillies”?

Doesn’t quite work, does it? Yet the original idea for a TV series about a backwoods family that strikes it rich and moves to the big city had the clan relocating to New York.

In one of the few cases where a Beverly Hills address was the less expensive choice, creators of “The Beverly Hillbillies” opted for the exclusive West Coast neighborhood primarily because it was closer to their studios in Hollywood.

So says Paul Henning, creator, writer and producer of the show that was one of the biggest hits of the 1960s, staying at the top of the Nielsen heap for the bulk of its nine-year run. Now 82 and retired, Henning is to be honored in Santa Ana tonight at Rancho Santiago College’s annual “Tribute to a Television Classic” fund-raiser for the school’s telecommunications department.

The choice of Beverly Hills over New York may have been one of simple economics and convenience, but Henning’s colleagues frequently praise his ability to make the right decision about virtually everything, from concept to casting to scripts in the shows he developed.

Those shows include the “Beverly Hillbillies” spinoff “Petticoat Junction” and the earlier “The Bob Cummings Show.” Henning also was executive producer of “Green Acres,” another rural-based comedy from the ‘60s.

“I always loved hillbilly humor,” he said last week on the phone from his home in Toluca Lake. “The only drawback, as I saw it, was the setting. I went to see ‘Tobacco Road,’ and I laughed at the humor, but I deplored the setting. It was so depressing.

“I thought to myself, ‘If I could take a hillbilly family and put them in a lush setting, a more upbeat setting . . . ‘ That’s really what it amounted to.”

Actually, Henning was tapping his own roots. He was born in Independence, Mo.--Harry S. Truman’s hometown--and was a Boy Scout when he first encountered inhabitants of the Ozark mountains in rural southern Missouri/northern Arkansas.

“After two weeks of scout camp in Knoll, Mo., on the Arkansas border, I fell in love with that part of the country and the characters I ran into.” Years later, he dropped out of the Kansas City School of Law to pursue an entertainment career. (There are, after all, so few instances when a lawyer can hoot “Welllllll, dogies!” in court.)

He landed a job as a singer for a local radio station and turned to writing quite by accident.

“In those days, unless you were commercially sponsored, you worked for nothing. I finally got a (sponsor). . . . The first big supermarket chain was coming into Kansas City, so the independent grocers in the area formed a group, Associated Grocers, and wanted to get a radio program. I came up with the idea that another fellow and I would run an imaginary grocery store and sing about the products by way of advertising. . . .

“I went to the manager of the station and told him my idea. He said, ‘That’s fine. Write it.’ I said, ‘I’m a singer, not a writer.’ He said, ‘If you want to sing it, you’ve got to write it.’ ”

From Kansas City, Henning moved to Chicago and into national radio, writing for “The Fibber McGee and Molly Show.” A year later, he decided to try his luck in the entertainment mecca of Southern California.

He spent some time turning out radio sketches for Rudy Vallee, and then, after World War II, he landed a spot writing for Burns and Allen. With them, he made the transition from radio to television.

“Television was altogether different,” he recalls. “I used to say after I got into TV that writing for radio was stealing money.”

Like many TV pioneers, Henning had to feel his way into a medium that was centered visually rather than aurally.

“In radio, you created an imaginative situation and as matter of fact one or two talented actors and actresses usually played six or seven parts,” he said. “In TV, you were in a movie situation. It was a difficult transition.”

But Henning adapted. He wrote for Dennis Day, Ray Bolger and “The Real McCoys” before getting the opportunity to create a show of his own--”The Bob Cummings Show,” which ran from 1955-59.

“In radio, the writers would always console one another when the producer would say, ‘Take out this scene.’ So we all were anxious to get into that chair. You decided which to take out. It was great. I enjoyed it, but it was a lot of hard work.”

He’d introduced some hillbilly characters into episodes of “Burns and Allen” and “The Bob Cummings Show,” so when Filmways president Al Simon asked him to develop a new sitcom, it wasn’t a tremendous stretch for Henning to concoct “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

He created the show with Buddy Ebsen in mind to play patriarch Jed Clampett. Bea Benaderet had asked Henning for the role of Granny, but when Irene Ryan did a screen test with Ebsen, even Benaderet conceded that she was the perfect choice.

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The show reached No. 1 within two weeks of its debut in September, 1962. And just a year later, its success spun off “Petticoat Junction,” set in the mythical Midwestern town of Hooterville. “Junction” revolved around the Bradley family--Kate (Benaderet), daughters Billie Jo (Jeannine Riley, later played by Gunilla Hutton, then by Meredith McRae), Bobbie Jo (Pat Woodell, later Lori Saunders) and Betty Jo (Linda Kaye Henning, Paul Henning’s daughter), and Uncle Joe Carson (Edgar Buchanan).

(Among those expected at tonight’s tribute, besides Henning himself, are “Hillbillies” stars Ebsen, Donna Douglas and Max Baer Jr. (Ryan died in 1973), “Petticoat” alumni McRae, Saunders and Linda Kaye Henning, and “Green Acres” director Richard Bare and cast members Eddie Albert and Alvy Moore. Eva Gabor is still a “maybe,” according to Terry Bales, organizer of the event. New York, reportedly, is where she’d rather stay.

Seeing that he’d spawned two highly rated series, CBS offered Henning carte blanche with another half an hour in prime time; he could do any show he wanted. But, as Henning recalls, his plate was overloaded as it was, and he wasn’t about to ride herd over another show the way he had with “Hillbillies” and “Petticoat.”

Writer Jay Sommers, who had worked on some “Hillbillies” episodes, approached Henning and suggested a television adaptation of a radio series he’d done briefly in the early ‘50s, “Granby’s Green Acres.”

Henning liked the idea and agreed to serve as executive producer. He felt Gabor would be perfect as Lisa, the ditzy socialite wife of lawyer-turned-farmer Oliver Wendell Douglas, a role that went to veteran screen actor Albert. Henning also proposed setting the show in Hooterville and cross-pollinating the casts (and with them, presumably, the audiences) of “Green Acres,” “Beverly Hillbillies” and “Petticoat Junction.”

But except for those early contributions, Henning is staunch about giving all credit for the surrealistically silly “Green Acres” to Sommers and his collaborator Dick Chevillat, both of whom died in the mid-’80s.

Benaderet died in the late ‘60s, and as a result, by the end of the decade “Petticoat Junction’s” ratings were falling off. So were “Hillbillies’,” and although “Green Acres” remained popular, CBS executives had decided that rural comedy was out, relevant social drama was in. So “Green Acres” was canceled, too.

“We enjoyed what we were doing, so it was sad to see them take the show off,” Henning said. “I thought there was lots of mileage left. I was sorry to see the show go after it had run for so long.”

But Henning was nearly 60 at the time, and the idea of attempting another TV show didn’t interest him.

“I retired. I really didn’t want to work that hard anymore.” He was credited as co-writer of the 1985 Steve Martin-Michael Caine film “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” but that, he said, was only because the movie essentially was a remake of “Bedtime Story,” a Marlon Brando-David Niven comedy he’d written in 1964.

As for the continuing popularity of the TV shows he created, Henning said he’s “happy about it, but I’m not particularly surprised. If they were popular once, why shouldn’t they still be? Buddy Ebsen said he feels if ‘Hillbillies’ was being shot today, it’d be just as popular.”

Henning confessed that he still hasn’t seen last year’s big-budget film version of his creation.

“I really can’t tell you why--maybe I’m just chicken,” he said with a chuckle. “But I’m glad it was successful.”

* Rancho Santiago College’s 12th annual “Tribute to a Television Classic” takes place today at the college, 1730 W. 17th St., Santa Ana. Artists’ reception and autograph signing at 5:30 p.m. in the Johnson Campus Center; tribute program at 7 p.m. in the Phillips Hall Theatre. $10, benefits the college’s telecommunications department, as will proceeds from sales at the tribute of behind-the-scenes books by Stephen Cox on “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Green Acres.” (714) 564-5600.