Whatever Happened to ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ Cast? Say Hello Again to Jed, Granny, Jethro and Elly May

Buddy Ebsen (J.D. ‘Jed’ Clampett)

He was the original choice for the Tin Man in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz and wrapped up playing private detective Barnaby Jones in 1980 after eight seasons, and went on from there. And, in between, there were many films and other television series, including, of course, The Beverly Hillbillies, in which he starred as family patriarch Jed Clampett. That’s some career!

Born Christian Ludolf Ebsen, Jr. on April 2, 1908, in Belleville, Illinois, his father was a Danish dance choreographer and his mother a painter. When he was 10, the family moved to Palm Beach County in Florida and, then, Orlando. While living there, Buddy and his sisters (four of them) learned how to dance at the dance studio operated by their father.

Graduating from high school in 1926, his mind was fairly focused on a career in medicine and to this end attended the University of Florida in 1926, followed by Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida from 1927 to 1928. But then family financial difficulties forced him to drop out when he was 20. At that point he thought he would give professional dancing a try and moved to New York City — with only a few dollars in his pocket. He and sister Vilma decided to perform a dance act in vaudeville under the name “The Baby Astaires.” They managed to get to Broadway in the musicals Ziegfeld Follies of 1934, Whoopee and Flying Colors, which led them to what was considered the top of vaudeville, New York’s Palace Theater.

“My first job was as a soda jerk, but I knew I could do better,” Buddy told the Akron Beacon Journal in 1964. “I read an ad for dancers for a Broadway show. I auditioned and got the job. I had taken dance lessons from my father when I was a kid, but quit when I was 12, because I felt dancing was sissified. Later I was mighty glad I had taken those lessons.”

MGM signed the duo to a contract in 1935 and they made the film Broadway Melody of 1936 (released in 1935), but an undisclosed contractual issue led Vilma to drop out of the business — spending most of her life running her own dance studio. Buddy continued acting in different films, some of them in the musical genre and others not. Interestingly, his dance style was considered so unique that Walt Disney himself used Buddy, captured his dancing on film as a model for movement for Mickey Mouse in early cartoons from the studio.

After making a number of films for MGM — and as noted above — he was hired to play the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. Buddy reflected to The Shreveport Journal in 1984, “In Oz I was supposed to play the Scarecrow first. Ray Bolger must have been a really good salesman, because pretty quick I was either promoted or demoted to the Tin Man. At first they wanted me to dance in this experimental tin suit. I got out of that fast.” Unfortunately, 10 days in he had to drop out due to an allergic reaction to the aluminum dust that was part of the makeup. Jack Haley replaced him.

His time with MGM came to an end in 1938 following a fall-out with that studio’s head, when Louis B. Mayer summoned him into his office and told Buddy that in order to give him the kind of parts he was looking for, MGM would have to “own” him, to which he replied, “I’ll tell you what kind of fool I am, Mr. Mayer. I can’t be owned.” He went into the Army during World War II, he said in 1964, “And when I returned, I went to New York to do a revival of Showboat. I went back to Hollywood in 1946 and tried to resume my career there, but everyone kept asking me where I had been. I tried to tell them there had been a war, but it didn’t make an impression. It was as though they resented me for having left Hollywood.”

He turned to television in 1949 and appeared on an episode of The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre, followed by more anthology and guest star appearances. His career got a major shot in the arm when he co-starred alongside Fess Parker on the Disney miniseries Davy Crockett (1954 to 1955). After that, there was the adventure series set during the French and Indian War of the 1700s, Northwest Passage (1958 to 1959). Feature films Frontier Rangers (1959) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) as well as more TV guest appearances followed. Then came The Beverly Hillbillies.

Talking to the Battle Creek Enquirer of Battle Creek, Michigan in 1963, he described his role as Jed Clampett this way: “I’m a straight man in the series. Jed is essentially not a comedy character, so my job is to set up the situations and the lines. Occasionally Jed will make a droll observation and sometimes when the show is slanted toward him, I’ll play in a comedy scene. But for the most part, I feed lines to the others.

“At base,” he added, “Jed is a dignified man and an intelligent man, although he may not be long on education. I like him and I like Beverly Hillbillies and I think that even if I have the chance to do other things, I could play Jed for as long as it is palatable to the public.”

As soon as a year later, while his attitude hadn’t really changed, one could sense something different. “There’s no doubt about it, television is an actor killer,” he stated. “We work too hard and use too much material. If I could uninvent anything, it would be television. No foolin’. But we’re stuck with television and have to make the best of it. If I had my way, I’d spend all my time working in the theater. My second choice would be to spend six months in the theater, six months, making movies, but there’s not enough work in the theater or movies to support all the performers. I could have had enough work in movies to make a good living, but television has given me the opportunity to make a better living. I have a home about three miles from Los Angeles and a big boat to go with it. Television didn’t get them for me, but it will sure help me keep them.”

It wasn’t long before Buddy was back into weekly television, achieving great popularity yet again starring as private detective Barnaby Jones from 1973 to 1980. Unlike the stars of many successful shows, the audience took to him in this new role. In 1972 he talked about the series with The Lowell Sun, explaining, “I play a retired detective whose son is killed on a case. So I return to work to avenge my son’s death and stay on the job.” As to bringing freshness to a genre that had already seemed played out by that time, he said, “It isn’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it. The stories are simple and sometimes not so simple, a matter of good against evil. That’s all any drama is really about whether it’s a half-hour or three hours. The audience sits in a theater or in front of a television set to see how it’s going to come out. As for Barnaby, he’s a brand new man — not related in any way to roles I’ve played before. He’s a contemporary man who feels at home in almost any surroundings.”

From 1984 to 1985 he joined the cast of the detective series Matt Houston, playing series star Lee Horsley’s uncle. “Since Barnaby I’ve been reading a lot of series ideas,” he told the Tampa Bay Times, “but none of them seemed viable. I talked to the producer, Duke Vincent, about it and it sounded like an interesting job and I took it. Roy Houston is cool, except when it comes to the subject of forcible retirement. He’s sharp, a snappy dresser, he’s got a great sense of humor and he enjoys his work. If there’s a little danger mixed in his work, that just makes it more interesting.” After Matt Houston, Buddy took on a few more jobs here and there, but for the most part retired.

In his personal life, he was married three times: Ruth Cambridge from 1936 to 1942, Nancy Wolcott from 1945 to 1985 and Dorothy Knott from 1985 until his death in 2003. He is the father of seven children. Buddy died of respiratory failure on July 6, 2003, at the age of 95.

The way he told it, Buddy lived life by a pretty simple philosophy. “I feel that any person who is an American citizen with eyesight and a reasonable amount of health, is a billionaire,” he said in 1970. “You have to be able to reduce your problems to one thing: something that you like to do, and become the best one at it. Something that doesn’t give you heartburn and become so skilled at it that you can work. And after work, there’s love and laughter. If you solve those three concepts, then you’ve got it made.”

Irene Ryan (Daisy May ‘Granny’ Moses)

Born Jessie Irene Nobitt on October 17, 1902, in El Paso, Texas, she got her first taste of “stardom” at the age of 11 when she took part in an amateur talent show in San Francisco. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the support of her Irish mother, who was fond of saying, “If you ever encounter the Devil, it would backstage.” At the age of 20 she married Tim Ryan, a writer-comedian, and the two of them created and performed a vaudeville act. They also were a part of 11 short comedies for Educational Pictures from 1935 to 1937.

Divorced in 1942, Irene kept pushing forward, being a part of Bob Hope’s radio show for two years, costarring in several 1943 short films with comedian Edgar Kenney and then made her debut that same year in musical film O, My Darling Clementine. Surprisingly, she and Tim Ryan appeared together in four feature films between 1943 and 1944. Two years later, it was back to the radio and being a part of The Jack Carson Show. Then, in 1955, she made her first television appearance on The Danny Thomas Show, followed by several other shows. She also created a successful night club act for herself during the 1950s.

The Beverly Hillbillies was next. “How do I feel about all this?” she asked rhetorically in 1963. “It’s like I have gone to heaven. Honestly, it’s so funny that I just sit and laugh. Six months ago no one cared whether I was alive or dead. Now everyone I meet asks, ‘How old are you, really, Granny?’ The show is just so simple; just good old-fashioned comedy. No one is neurotic, we solve no world problems and there’s no message about anything.” She was nominated for two Emmy Awards for her portrayal.

Getting the part, she related in 1972, wasn’t easy. “I had to fight for it,” she told the El Paso Times. “They told my agent I was too young. I had worked with the script writer, Paul Henning, before, on The Dennis Day Show, so I went up and read for him. It was the first time I had to close a script from laughing. I told ‘em if they had anybody older, they’d never make it up at 5 a.m. for filming.” After a bit of a delay she was notified that she had the part.

The year after the show ended — in 1972 — Irene appeared on Broadway in the role of Berthe in the Bob Fosse-directed musical, Pippin. Sadly, on March 10, 1973 she suffered a stroke in mid-performance. Flying home to California, doctors informed her that she had an inoperable brain tumor. She died on April 26, 1973 at the age of 70.

She was married twice, to Tim Ryan from 1922 to 1942 and Harold E. Knox from 1946 to 1961.

Irene always seemed to have confidence in herself as a person and performer. As far back as 1953 she began sharing her “secret”: “Being true to myself. There was a time when I envied the most beautiful girl in my class, but I outgrew that and learned to make the most of my funny face. Being happy, successful, finding a pleasant form of expression, does not depend on having regular features. Don’t let anything stop you from getting everything you want out of life. The less beautiful you are, the harder you will have to work developing yourself, but far better than depending on beauty for everything, because what will you have when that fades?”

Donna Douglas (Elly May Clampett)

Donna was born September 26, 1932 in Pride, Louisiana. She was named Miss Baton Rouge and Miss New Orleans in 1957, and hoped to parlay that into show business success in New York. That same year she found herself a part of The Perry Como Show as a “Letters Girl,” and then, two years later, as the “Billboard Girl” on The Steve Allen Show. Donna had movie roles in Career and Li’l Abner (both 1959) and Lover Come Back (1961).

A number of television appearances followed, most notably in the classic episode of The Twilight Zone, “Eye of the Beholder.” Then came The Beverly Hillbillies, and Donna finding herself viewed as something of a sex symbol. “I’m not belittling the power sex has in the making of a star,” she shared with the New York Daily News in 1963, “but I hope my career will have a wider horizon which would include the kind of quality parts played by Ingrid Bergman and Deborah Kerr as well as those played by Brigitte Bardot and the late Marilyn Monroe. Elly May reflects the simplest facet of my own personality. In the future, I hope to grow through a gamut of parts right up to ‘grand duchess’ roles.”

Following the series, Donna dabbled in real estate, but spent much of her time performing as a gospel singer that was part of church groups, youth groups and colleges around the country. She also got involved with charities for Christian children’s homes, wrote several children’s books with religious themes and her own cookbook, Southern Favorites with a Taste of Hollywood. She was married twice, to Roland John Bourgeois from 1949 to 1954 and Robert M. Leeds from 1971 to 1980. She has one child.

Donna died of pancreatic cancer on January 1, 2015. She was 82.

Max Baer, Jr. (Jethro Bodine)

While all of the stars of The Beverly Hillbillies found themselves typecast (Buddy Ebsen, surprisingly, the least of all), they pushed out to carve new niches for themselves, and that’s especially true of Max. Born Maximilian Adalbert Baer, Jr. on December 4, 1937 in Oakland, California, he’s the son of boxing champion Max Baer. In high school he twice won the junior title at the Sacramento Open golf tournament. He would earn a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Santa Clara University. His professional acting career began in 1960 through Warner Bros, making appearances on a variety of TV shows, including Cheyenne, 77 Sunset Strip, Maverick and Hawaiian Eye.

With the arrival of The Beverly Hillbillies, he saw his fortunes turned around a bit. Reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1963, “Six months ago, Max Baer, Jr. was broke and literally going hungry. He had one quart of milk to sustain him for four days. He had only one threadbare suit of clothes and was down to his last two weeks of unemployment insurance. ‘I was two months behind in my rent,’ he said, ‘and my weight had dropped from 210 to 188 pounds.’”

Asked about the show’s success, he replied, “Who knows why the show is No. 1? The critics have been against it. Nobody likes it, but the people. Maybe if The Beverly Hillbillies had come out in 1958, it would have been a bomb. I give all the credit to Paul Henning, who writes the scripts and has done the producing.”

To play the part of Jethro, Max decided to study the work of two people. “I bought albums by Andy Griffith and Jonathan Winters,” he said, “and listened to them by the hour. The accent I use isn’t authentic by any means, but then it isn’t supposed to represent any particular section of the country. It’s just country Southern.”

Finding that no one would cast him due to his image from the show, Max decided to take matters into his own hands. In the 1970s he served as writer/producer/director and co-star of a series of low budget movies that were very successful at the box office, including Macon County Line (1974), The Wild McCullochs (1975) and Ode to Billy Joe (1976). Then, in the 1980s he licensed the Jethro character and elements of The Beverly Hillbillies for what he hoped would be casinos, restaurants and that sort of thing. Despite valiant efforts, nothing tangible really came out of it. He also made a few TV guest appearances here and there between the ‘80s and early ‘90s.

He’s been married once, to Joanne Kathleen Hill from 1966 until 1971

The only surviving cast member of The Beverly Hillbillies, back in 1963 he spoke about his future, noting, “We Baers never wound up exactly the way we hoped we would. My grandfather always wanted to be a prize fighter, but he became a butcher. He did win a slaughtering championship once. Dad had hoped to become an actor and, as everyone knows, he became a boxer. I wanted to be a lawyer and here I am acting. The show has done a lot for my career. The exposure will help insure work for me in the future, too. And someday I hope to prove I can play something besides a hillbilly.”

Nancy Kulp (Miss Jane Hathaway)

Born August 28, 1921 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Nancy was a character actress whose first career was as a journalist. She worked as a feature writer for the Miami Beach Tropics newspaper in the 1940s, writing profiles of celebrities of the era. In 1944, she left the University of Miami to join the women’s branch of the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II. She moved to California in 1951 and began working in the publicity department of MGM. Taking the suggestion of director George Cukor to heart, she gave acting a shot.

Her film credits include Shane (1953), Sabrina and A Star is Born (both 1954), Forever, Darling (1956, starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz), The Three Faces of Eve (1957) and The Parent Trap (1961). On television, she made many guest star appearances and, besides The Beverly Hillbillies, had recurring roles on The Bob Cummings Show (1955 to 1959), Our Miss Brooks (1956), Betty White’s Date with the Angels (1957), The Brian Keith Show (1973 to 1974) and Sanford and Son (1975 to 1976).

When The Beverly Hillbillies ended, Nancy spoke to the Lancaster New Era providing some details about herself. “Miss Hathaway is much more pompous than I am,” she said. “Her main interest is Jethro, but my own interests run in many varied directions. For example, I would like to become a politician or a writer or buy a farm and raise greyhounds. I like baseball, especially the Los Angeles Angels, and I collect [flip] houses. I also love television and I love entertaining people.” She definitely did plenty of that.

She was married to Charles M. Dacus from 1951 to 1961. In 1989 when asked about her sexual orientation, she replied with a question and then her answer: “Do you think that opposites attract? My own reply would be that I’m the other sort — I find that birds of a feather flock together.” Nancy died of cancer on February 3, 1991 at the age of 69.

Raymond Bailey (Milburn Drysdale)

A native of San Francisco, Raymond was born May 6, 1904 and went to Hollywood as a teenager in the hopes of becoming a star. When that didn’t work, he tried theater in New York City — also without any success. Spending some time as a merchant seaman, he decided, in 1938, to give acting another shot and returned to Hollywood. Character roles in movies and TV shows started coming his way and he appeared in four Broadway plays between 1944 and 1954. It was, of course, as the ever-scheming Milburn Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies for which he’s best known.

Sadly, Raymond began showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease as the series was winding down, and outside of the ‘70s Disney films Herbie Rides Again and The Strongest Man in the World, he retired. He died on April 15, 1980 of a heart attack.

‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ Movie

In 1981, CBS aired the reunion movie Return of the Beverly Hillbillies, which only brought back Buddy Ebsen, Donna Douglas and Nancy Kulp. Imogene Coca appeared as Granny’s mother (Irene Ryan having died) and Ray Young replaced Max Baer, Jr. as Jethro. There was also a 1993 movie with Jim Varney as Jed, Diedrich Bader as Jethro, Erika Eleniak as Elly May, Cloris Leachman as Granny, Dabney Coleman as Milburn Drysdale and Lily Tomlin as Jane Hathaway.