I’ve seen the early episodes a few times, but only since Me-TV started running them recently have I noticed this.
It’s all innocent of course, compared to today’s raunch. But still:
Granny is sewing buttons on Elly Mae’s shirt, while Jed tells her that Elly Mae carries herself proud. Granny snorts that “It ain’t her pride that’s bustin’ the buttons off her shirts.”
Jethro tells Jed a long story about Elverna Bradshaw’s daughter trying to seduce him with a plate of cookies. Of course, Jethro’s only interested in the cookies, but the way he tells the story, it sounds like it’s heading for a steamy ending.
Sonny Drysdale wears a toga, and declares that Elly Mae will be his slave girl.
Tons and tons of jokes about Elly Mae being oblivious to her own sex appeal. And also plain Miss Jane trying to seduce equally oblivious Jethro.
Later in the show run, even Granny gets in on the action. During their trip to England, she gets suspicious about the word sexagenarian meaning someone in their sixties. When a customs officer opens her suitcase, revealing old fashioned bloomers, Granny cries out, “Fetch the shotgun Jed! This sexy-genarian just fondled my flimsies!”
Again, all harmless, and very funny too. It just surprised me, the level of innuendo in that show.
There is a multi-episode story arc* late in the series where Shorty Kellems has come to visit the Clampetts from back home. Drysdale gains the mistaken assumption that Shorty is extremely rich and of course bends over backwards to try to get his money in the Commerce Bank of Beverly Hills. He finds that Shorty wished to experience a Hollywood orgy and Drysdale arranges it for him using his secretaries. Of course it is a bit more tame depiction of an orgy than we would immediately imagine today, but still…
Just one more scene I found browsing through the next episode in the arc. There are more in more episodes, all of which are probably on Youtube.
The other day I caught a few minutes of an old Bonanza episode in which a white girl who was apparently raised by the Indians wound up in the Cartwright household and was behaving like a savage. Ol’ Pa Cartwright carries up to his room, bends her over his knee and spanks her! Which, of course, caused her to immediately become docile and white again. Ahh, those kinky Cartwrights!
Check out theLove That Bob, which predated Hillbillies by several yeatrs. The entire show is built around a not-a-kid-anymore photographer who lusts after his beautiful models. It even features the pre-Miss Hathaway Nancy Culp perfecting her man-hungry character.
The character who stands out, however, is Schulzy, who walks away with every scene she’s in. Ann B. Davis won an Emmy for it, a decade before the Brady Bunch came along.
Yeah, I loved that. I remember, also with great amusement, Granny’s expression when someone finally whispers in her ear what a topless restaurant is.
And then there was the scene when Elly Mae comes walking down the stairs wearing a low-cut evening gown. Jed or Granny tell her she must have it on backwards and she turns and walks up the stairs to change, revealing the fact that the gown is backless.
I remember an episode in which, for reasons I don’t remember, Jethro got psychoanalyzed. His shrink was discussing Jethro’s performance on the ink blot test…
Doc #1: So, we both know what these are all pictures of, right?
Doc #2: Naked women.
Doc #1. Right. So, he thought they were all food!
And then there are the episodes featuring the stripper Chickadee Laverne. Here is a scene where she is demonstrating to the Clampetts (okay, one is a Moses) her new routine she was working a raccoon into.
People tend to think that anything before the sexual revolution in the 60s was straitlaced and with no sex at all. And while sex itself was never portrayed and barely hinted out, there is still a long history of double entendre and situations that today we’d recognize as being sexually charged. In some case, that’s because we’ve learned to look for sex in everything, even things meant to be innocent, but some of the time it was deliberate. Hinting at sex – especially in a comic context – had a long history and as long as children didn’t understand the innuendo, the censors let it go by.
So the “topless restaurant” mentioned above passed muster because a child would not understand the joke.
One exchange from the era showed up in Rocky and Bullwinkle during the “Wossamotta U” story line (and kids certainly didn’t get that joke). R&B were on a football team and where challenged by a woman’s college.
Rocky: Why they’re all girls! What sort of games can we play with them?
Bullwinkle: (aside) Boy, you can tell this is a kiddie show. (loudly) Parcheesi!
Then there’s the time Elly bragged about her “double-barreled sling shot” – an empty bra. Donna Douglas said she felt a little embarrassed about that one.
I think I have brought this up here before, but aren’t Jethro and Ellie supposed to still be in their teens, despite the age of the actors portraying them? If there had been “correctly aged” actors, their being pursued by adults would have looked pretty creepy.
