It had an ensemble cast featuring Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, Donna Douglas, and Max Baer Jr. as the Clampetts, a poor backwoods family from the Ozark Mountains of Missouri who move to posh Beverly Hills, California after striking oil on their land.

It was followed by two other Henning-inspired "country cousin" series on CBS: Petticoat Junction and its spin-off Green Acres, which reversed the rags-to-riches, country-to-city model of The Beverly Hillbillies.

[3] The series starts with Jed Clampett, a poor, widowed hillbilly who lives with his daughter and mother-in-law near an oil-rich swamp in Silver Dollar City in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri.

The family moves into a mansion in upscale Beverly Hills, California, next door to Jed's banker, Milburn Drysdale, and his wife, Margaret, who is appalled by the hillbilly Clampetts.

Good-natured patriarch Jed Clampett (portrayed by Buddy Ebsen) has little formal education and is naive about the world outside the rural area where he lived but has a great deal of wisdom and common sense.

("mountain doctor"), Granny uses her "white lightning" brew as a form of anesthesia when performing painful treatments such as leech bleeding or tooth pulling.

Like the other Clampetts, she is known to take things literally, having thought Mrs. Drysdale had turned herself into a bird using black magic (astrology) and mistook an escaped kangaroo for a giant jackrabbit (but failed to convince anyone of its existence).

Elly May (portrayed by Donna Douglas in all 274 episodes), the only child of Jed and Rose Ellen Clampett, is a mountain beauty with the body of a pin-up girl and the soul of a tomboy.

In addition to the family dog, Duke (an old Bloodhound), a number of pets live on the Clampett estate thanks to Elly May's love of animals.

In real life, Max Baer Jr. has a bachelor's degree in business administration, minoring in philosophy, from Santa Clara University.

He considers becoming a brain surgeon, a fry cook, a millwright, a street car conductor, a spy, a telephone lineman, a soda jerk, a chauffeur, a USAF general, a sculptor, a restaurant owner, a psychiatrist, a bookkeeper for Milburn Drysdale's bank, a talent agent for "cousin" Bessie and "Cousin Roy" (see below), and a Hollywood producer.

He is obsessed with money and to keep the Clampetts' $96,000,000 (in 1969; equivalent to $797,618,875 in 2023) in his Commerce Bank of Beverly Hills, Mr. Drysdale will go to great lengths to cater to their wishes.

[9] The show's theme song, "The Ballad of Jed Clampett", was written by producer and writer Paul Henning[12] and originally performed by bluegrass artists Foggy Mountain Boys, led by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.

Flatt and Scruggs subsequently cut their own version of the theme (with Flatt singing) for Columbia Records; released as a single, it reached number 44 on Billboard Hot 100 pop music chart and number one on the Billboard Hot Country chart (the lone country chart-topper for the duo).

The six main cast members participated on a 1963 Columbia soundtrack album, which featured original song numbers in character.

[14] Film professor Janet Staiger writes that "the problem for these reviewers was that the show confronted the cultural elite's notions of quality entertainment.

"[14] The show did receive a somewhat favorable review from noted critic Gilbert Seldes in the December 15, 1962 TV Guide: "The whole notion on which The Beverly Hillbillies is founded is an encouragement to ignorance...

Pat Buttram, who played Mr. Haney on Green Acres, famously remarked, "It was the year CBS cancelled everything with a tree—including Lassie.

"[21] In 1981, Return of the Beverly Hillbillies television film, written and produced by series creator Henning, was aired on the CBS network.

Max Baer decided against reprising the role that both started and stymied his career, so the character of Jethro Bodine was given to another actor, Ray Young.

The film's plot had Jed back in his old homestead in Bugtussle, having divided his massive fortune among Elly May and Jethro, both of whom stayed on the West Coast.

Subplots included Jethro playing an egocentric, starlet-starved Hollywood producer, Jane and her boss (Werner Klemperer) having a romance, and Elly May owning a large petting zoo.

Henning himself admitted sheer embarrassment when the finished product aired, blaming his inability to rewrite the script due to the 1981 Writers Guild of America strike.

[22] In 1993, Ebsen, Douglas, and Baer reunited onscreen for the only time in the CBS-TV retrospective television special, The Legend of the Beverly Hillbillies hosted by Mac Davis and written by Al Bendix, Tino Insana, and Mike Rowe while Dakin Matthews served as the field interviewer.

The scene closes with Jed dancing to the theme song with Jerry Scoggins while Earl Scruggs and Roy Clark (who is substituting for the late Lester Flatt) playing the music.

Morgen claimed CBS appropriated his submitted ideas and script for a show called Country Cousins to form The Beverly Hillbillies.

For many years, 20th Century Fox, through a joint venture with CBS called CBS/Fox Video, released select episodes of Hillbillies on videocassette.

[31] The Deadly Hillbillies, an interactive murder mystery, was written by John R. Logue using the core cast of characters as inspiration.

This Gypsy Productions Murder Mystery Parody features characters such as Jed Clumpett, Daisy May Mostes, and Jane Hatchaway.

[33] In 1993, a film version of The Beverly Hillbillies was released starring Jim Varney as Jed Clampett and featuring Buddy Ebsen in a cameo as Barnaby Jones, the lead character in his long-running post-Hillbillies television series.