Grey Gold

 

If you know your 1960s sitcoms, either because you were watching them during their original runs, or viewed them at  a much later date on some cable or digital channel, you'll immediately recognize the woman on the left, but who's the one on the right? Why, it's actress Irene Ryan, who plays the woman on the left (I don't know if you can tell, but it's supposed to be both sides of a mirror.) Obviously, it's 1960s trick photography, and all the more impressive as it's decades before the advent of Photoshop. But then it was equally impressive that the relatively metropolitan Ryan was able to transform herself, with just makeup, old-fashion attire, and supreme comic acting, into a backwoods harridan.

 Irene (maiden name Noblette) and Tim Ryan were a husband-and-wife vaudeville team, their act reportedly similar to the much more well-known George Burns and Gracie Allen, a scatterbrained wife and exasperated husband. By the 1930s vaudeville was in a steep decline, but the Ryans managed to get work in the medium that had largely replaced it: movies. Not full-length features but the shorts that preceded them, putting them on par with the likes of The Three Stooges and Our Gang (better known to later TV viewers as The Little Rascals.) They made 11 of these short movies. They were also heard on radio, on a show that substituted for the popular Jack Benny in the summertime. I don't know that any of this made them household names, but they seem to have worked steadily. The couple divorced in 1942, but Irene kept the last name anyway. She was a regular on Bob Hope's radio show for a few years, and played comical grump Edgar Kennedy's wife in a few shorts. Irene and Tim Ryan then reunited professionally, but not matrimonially, in four feature films, of the "B" variety, made for Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures. On radio she joined the cast of The Jack Carson Show. When TV came along in the 1950s, she made appearances on several sitcoms, including The Danny Thomas Show, and My Three Sons. Finally, in 1962, the 60-year old actress was cast in the role that she became best known for, as the elderly-but-energetic senior member of an oil-rich backwoods family that moves West, Daisy Moses in The Beverly Hillbillies.

 You know, I have to take that back. She wasn't best known as Daisy Moses but as "Granny", the name everybody called her by, whether they were related to her or not (and not just on Hillbillies but also Petticoat Junction, when the two shows had a number of crossover episodes.) In fact, she only had one granddaughter Elly Mae Clampett (Donna Douglas), the daughter of her deceased daughter, Rose Ellen. Jed Clampett (Buddy Ebsen) is her widowed son-in-law (though in real life Ebson was only six years younger than Irene.) And what about Jethro Bodine (Max Baer Jr.)? What's the relationship there?

Even though Jethro refers to Jed as Uncle Jed, possibly out of respect for the age difference, he's not actually his nephew. Jethro is the son of Pearl Bodine (Bea Benaderet), Jed's first cousin, and that means Jethro is Jed's, uh, let me look at the above chart,...........................first cousin once removed. Jethro and Elly Mae would then be.............................................................................................................. ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................I think they have the same great-grandfather....................................................................................................................................................................................so Jethro and Elly Mae are second cousins., and that means Daisy Moses is Jethro's..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................great-aunt through marriage?

I cheated  a bit. There's an episode where Jed tries to explain the whole connection to Jethro.

Jed: Anyway, I think you're a great-nephew.                                                                                                

Jethro: Thankee! And I think you're a great uncle!

We'll just call her Granny from here on in, as did Mr. Drysdale (Raymond Bailey) and Jane Hathaway (Nancy Culp), who were of no relation whatsoever.

Speaking of relations, there's the aforementioned Petticoat Junction. Though, like The Beverly Hillbillies, it was created and produced by Paul Henning, both shows were separate entities until the Hillbillies seventh season, Junction's sixth season, and Green Acres fourth season, when it was decided that, for some reason probably having to do with sweeps, all three shows shared the same continuity. The crux of this continuity is that Pearl Bodine and Kate Bradley are, as Uncle Joe (who's moving kind of slow) once explained,...

...distant kin. Well, if it works for The Patty Duke Show...

Back to Irene Ryan. Though despised by critics of that era, who saw it as an assault on sophistication, The Beverly Hillbillies was one of the most popular shows on TV, lasting nine seasons. When if finally did go off the air, it wasn't because of low ratings, but for having the wrong demographics (not enough upwardly-mobile people watched the show, which was ironic, since you can't get much more upwardly-mobile than the Clampetts.) Because of that popularity, there was a lot of merchandising surrounding the show, including this 45 record:

Conjures up some unsettling imagery, doesn't it?

Though clearly meant to capitalize on her Beverly Hillbillies success, Irene seems to be playing  a different Granny here. After all, a grandpa is mentioned, even though on the sitcom she was a widow (as was Pearl Bodine, and I said before Jed Clampett is a widower. Beneath all that canned laughter there must have been tears.) 

Here's Irene again on a 1966 installment of The Hollywood Palace, and this time she's the Granny:

Peggy Lee's got nothing on her.

Here's Irene at an earlier point in her career:

Irene had a lot to be happy about in 1972. The Beverly Hillbillies was off the air, but the 70-year-old didn't lack for work, for she was now...

...on Broadway! The Bob Fosse-directed show was called Pippin, a musical loosely based on Pepin, the son of  Charlemagne. Irene plays Berthe, Pippin's exiled grandmother, who tells the young prince (Ben Vereen, in a Tony-winning performance) that he should live a little, before it's too late:

 Pippin was a huge hit and ran for five years, but Irene only saw about five months of that. On March 10, 1973, she suffered a stroke on stage during a performance. She went back home to California, where her doctor discovered she had a brain tumor. She died on April, 26, 1973. Not a great way to end all this, except when you're telling the story of a person's life, there's only one way it can end. Irene Ryan's greatest professional successes came in the last eleven years of her life, and since there's no evidence she had any personal failures during that same time frame, I'd count that as a happy ending.