Frank Faylen (Dobie Gillis' father) and Iris Adrian (veteran of many Disney live-action movies) are down-at-heel hoofers pretending to have a dancing studio and worming their way into the Clampett mansion.
Genuinely delightful from the starting pistol, this episode climaxes by letting Buddy Ebsen, a real former dancer, do a little fancy footwork, though he's not as spry as he was thirty years earlier.
Also of note: Granny, dolled up like Scarlet O'Hara, does a hilarious tango with Faylen that nearly leads him throttled.
See Jethro trying to dance and eat simultaneously. See Drysdale and Hathaway prancing in dressed like vaudevillians (or ice-cream salesmen) and performing a dreadful soft-shoe to a hummed "Tea for Two."
"The Beverly Hillbillies" ran for nine years and in that time dropped out of the ratings top ten only thrice. After nearly fifty years, one of its episodes ("The Giant Jackrabbit") is still the highest-ranking single half-hour episode of a sit-com. Nevertheless, the show began to slide both in quality and charm when it added color. "The Andy Griffith Show" had the same problem, but with "Andy" the bursting out of color coincided with losing Don Knotts to the movies. Maybe, like most series after a good five-year run, "Hillbillies" was growing old and tired and out of breath. But when it got its wind back with a good color episode like this one, "BH" was as good as anything on the airwaves.
Genuinely delightful from the starting pistol, this episode climaxes by letting Buddy Ebsen, a real former dancer, do a little fancy footwork, though he's not as spry as he was thirty years earlier.
Also of note: Granny, dolled up like Scarlet O'Hara, does a hilarious tango with Faylen that nearly leads him throttled.
See Jethro trying to dance and eat simultaneously. See Drysdale and Hathaway prancing in dressed like vaudevillians (or ice-cream salesmen) and performing a dreadful soft-shoe to a hummed "Tea for Two."
"The Beverly Hillbillies" ran for nine years and in that time dropped out of the ratings top ten only thrice. After nearly fifty years, one of its episodes ("The Giant Jackrabbit") is still the highest-ranking single half-hour episode of a sit-com. Nevertheless, the show began to slide both in quality and charm when it added color. "The Andy Griffith Show" had the same problem, but with "Andy" the bursting out of color coincided with losing Don Knotts to the movies. Maybe, like most series after a good five-year run, "Hillbillies" was growing old and tired and out of breath. But when it got its wind back with a good color episode like this one, "BH" was as good as anything on the airwaves.
