The Beverly Hillbillies: The Official Third Season [5 Discs] [DVD]

Having emerged as America's highest-rated sitcom of all time during its second season on CBS, The Beverly Hillbillies was a "shoe-in" for a third-season renewal, remaining in its familiar Wednesday night slot for another year beginning in the fall of 1964. Season four gets off to a rousing start with a multi-episode story arc in which nouveau riche mountaineer Jed Clampett (Buddy Ebsen) buys a controlling interest in Mammoth Studios, a Hollywood film factory run by executive Lawrence Chapman (Milton Frome). After briefly living on the studio grounds, Jed and his family decide to revitalize the fading studio -- and prevent it from being bulldozed into oblivion by banker Milburn Drysdale (Raymond Bailey), executor of Jed's vast fortune, by producing their own silent-movie epic, with the tacit blessing of gossip queen Hedda Hopper. In a related story arc, Jed's innocently sexy daughter Elly May (Donna Douglas) is ardently courted by Mammoth's leading male star Dash Riprock (Larry Pennell) -- who, in an outrageous case of mistaken identity, briefly assumes that Mr. Drysdale's spinsterish secretary Jane Hathaway (Nancy Kulp) is Elly May! Elsewhere, Arthur Treacher guest-stars as a "veddy proper" butler who attempts to educate the Hillbillies in the ways of culture and refinement; Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, who are heard performing the series' theme song at the beginning and end of each episode, pay one of their sporadic visits to their former neighbors, the Clampetts; Jed's impressionable nephew Jethro (Max Baer Jr.) dons tattered shirt and false beard to become a beatnik, and loads up on expensive and useless gadgetry in his efforts to become a "Double Naught Spy" like James Bond; Drysdale's rival banker Mr. Cushing (Roy Roberts) goes to great and unscrupulous lengths to persuade Jed to transfer his millions to Cushing's bank; and Granny (Irene Ryan) tries to arrange a match between Elly and the son of an old family friend (played by famed dialect coach Robert Easton). Although The Beverly Hillbillies fell from its Number One rating perch during its third season, the series still managed to post an admirable 25.2 Nielsen share, ending up in 12th place. ~ Hal Erickson