Ain't That a Knee-Slapper: Rural Comedy in the Twentieth Century

Chapter Seven: The Country Broadcasting System

- 172 The Country Broadcasting System T hose sophisticated types who thought the country was going to the pigs with all the rural humor that had taken place over the years could only scream and gnash their teeth after the 1960s arrived. Television was about to experience the biggest hillbilly explosion since Snuffy Smith’s still blew up, and it all started almost imperceptibly on the ABC network in October 1957. The Real McCoys documented the experiences of a family of hill folk who migrated to the more prosperous lands of the West Coast—or, as the theme song described it, “From West Virginny they came to stay in sunny Californi-ay.” Patriarch of the clan was Grandpappy Amos (Walter Brennan), a cantankerous old coot who hated everything and everyone who reminded him that he wasn’t in West Virginny anymore. Along for the ride was Grandpappy’s son, Luke (Richard Crenna), and Luke’s wife, Kate (Kathy Nolan), with Luke’s younger brother, Little Luke (Michael Winkleman, although why there would be two brothers named Luke in the same family was a mystery), and sister, Hassie (Lydia Reed). The show had one distinction in that its originator was credited in the opening narration. As Kate rang a dinner bell, an announcer intoned, “The Real McCoys, starring Walter Brennan, created by Irving Pincus.” Irving and brother Norman Pincus had been trying to pitch their concept to the networks for quite some time before Chapter Seven - 173 ABC took a chance on it, mainly because the “poor stepchild” third network had so little else to offer other than the prestige of Walt Disney’s various series. For six seasons, the McCoy family worked to make their California ranch more profitable than the hardscrabble life they had left behind in the Appalachians. As one might expect, most of the humor came from Grandpappy’s conflicts with the world around him; he once railed against the television medium itself: “Hit’s jes’ pure foolishness, squattin’ all day in front of a little black box, starin’ bleary-eyed at people who ain’t no more’n two inches high.” Always ready for a good scrap, Grandpappy carried on a bickering relationship with next-door neighbor George MacMichael, played by Andy Clyde after his Western sidekick career and appearance in the movies with Judy Canova. Since, after all, it was California, a hired hand named Pepino (Tony Martinez) spoke suitably fractured English. When Nolan demanded more money at the end of the 1961–62 television season, the producers reacted in a fashion that was everyday business for soap operas but quite unusual for sitcoms: they killed her off. At about the same time, ABC sold The Real McCoys to CBS, which added it to its growing line of rural “corncoms,” as some writers derisively labeled them. During one final season on CBS, Grandpappy helped his son pursue other women, but the show’s time had passed. Other types of rural comedies had moved into the next hollow, and they took the idea in some completely different The Real McCoys, starring Walter Brennan as cranky Grandpappy Amos, became the first of the long-running rural sitcoms when it debuted in October 1957. The Country Broadcasting System - 174 directions than the gentle and somewhat moralistic McCoys. (The closing theme song promised, “Week after week you’re gonna be showed another human episode / Of Grandpappy Amos an’ the girls an’ the boys of the family knowed as the Real McCoys.”) When it last aired in September 1963, hardly anyone missed it because its neighborhood had become so crowded. Financing for The Real McCoys had come through comedian Danny Thomas’s production company, a situation that may or may not have had any direct bearing on what happened at some point in late 1959. Thomas’s company was developing an idea for a new series, and company officials decided to test the new series out by making the pilot film an episode of Thomas’s show. It was sprung on an unsuspecting public in February 1960 as “Danny Meets Andy Griffith.” Of course, the television audience was already well familiar with Griffith through his many comedy records and the movies we discussed in the last chapter, so seeing him get guest-star billing was not so much of a novelty. What was new was the setting in which Griffith and his low-key humor could be found. Thomas...