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BUDDY BOY Buddy Ebsen
Buddy Ebsen, who as the alter ego of Jed Clampett on "The Beverly Hillbillies" still remains TV's most popular millionaire, turns 90 next April 2. The secret to his longevity? "I like to do things my way," he recently told PEOPLE Online. Not that life consistently dealt him an easy hand. A lanky Illinois native who learned about hoofing at his father's dance school, Ebsen started his career in vaudeville. His partner was his sister, Vilma, whose husband, musician Robert Emmett Dolan, eventually arranged for the Ebsens to have an MGM screen test. The studio separated sister and brother, and Buddy landed a plum role in a 1939 movie destined to become a classic: He would play the Tin Man in "The Wizard of Oz." Only near-disaster struck. Ebsen had a severe physical reaction to the pure-aluminum silver powder in the Tin Man's makeup, "which coated my lungs like paint," he says. He woke up one night so badly cramped he was unable to breathe. It took two weeks of hospitalization and six weeks of recuperation before he was able to report back to MGM -- where he had already been replaced in "Oz" by Jack Haley. (Silver paste was used on Haley after the lesson of the powder on Ebsen.) The studio then confined Ebsen to B-movie roles. "Obviously, things would have been different if I had done that film," he says of "Oz." Although he was told by the studio that all his footage was scrapped for the final film, Ebsen assumes he is in the long shots going down the Yellow Brick Road and insists that it's his voice in the "We're Off To See The Wizard" number. Still, says Ebsen, who to this day tends toward bronchitis and requires an air-filtration system in his Palos Verdes, CA, home: "I didn't let the unfortunate happening stop me. If you hit an obstacle, you flow around it. I was forced to diversify." He played a multitude of character roles throughout the decades. Two of the best remembered are as Davy Crockett's sidekick, Georgie, in the 1955 Disney feature, and as Audrey Hepburn's older, abandoned husband, Doc Golightly, in 1961's "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Acting with Audrey, he says, "was like trying on an exquisitely tailored sports coat for the very first time. There was a free-flowing instinct about her that filled the cracks of my own deficiencies." A year after "Tiffany's," Ebsen was cast as Jed on "Hillbillies." The series, about a family of impoverished rural hayseeds who find oil on their land and move to posh Beverly Hills, proved a bonanza -- despite a critical lambasting. It ran from 1962-71, was among the very first of the high-concept TV shows and its ratings success has never quite been equaled. In 1964, in the wake of the Nov. 1963 assassination of President Kennedy (when Americans were starved for levity), "Hillbillies" received a 65% market share, which to this day remains the highest rated half-hour sitcom since 1960. And, unlike any other show before or since, "Hillbillies" hit the top 100 list of the all-time highest rated programs 19 times. (It also paved the way for series producer Paul Henning to spin-off "Petticoat Junction" and "Green Acres.") "I'm in touch with Max Baer constantly and Donna Douglas sometimes," Ebsen says of his surviving co-stars. "She travels a lot so she's not local anymore. Max is in Vegas, not too far away. He's promoting. He wants to do a gambling joint there with a hillbilly motif."
Of the blond bombshell (now 58) who played Jed's daughter Elly May, Ebsen says, "Donna is a gospel singer. She does religious work and makes appearances for worthy groups." The rest of the cast -- Granny, Miss Hathaway, Mr. Drysdale (see below) -- Ebsen laments, "went over the rainbow." When a "Beverly Hillbillies" movie was made in 1993 (Jim Varney played Jed), Ebsen had a cameo role, showing up as his other TV persona, the soft-spoken private-eye lead on "Barnaby Jones." That series ran from 1973-80. "We've often talked about a 'Barnaby Jones' reunion," Ebsen says. Asked about performing opportunities, he responds, "It's tough at my age to get anybody to take a chance that I'm going to live through a picture. The insurance premiums they have to take out are so high." So Ebsen writes. His autobiography, "The Other Side of Oz," was published in 1993, and he continues to put words to paper. "I just finished one novel and now I'm writing one with a Barnaby story," he says. "Maybe somebody will be smart enough to do that. My first novel is about a girl searching for Mr. Right in today's world." Finally, when not writing and spending time with his family -- six children from a previous marriage ("I don't know the exact ages of any of them"), grandchildren ("half a dozen or so") and his wife of 11 years, Dorothy -- the still-agile hoofer works out on the treadmill, swims and exercises with small barbells. He credits his robust health to Dorothy. "She's the reason I'm alive today," he says. "She is my most precious associate." -- MARIA CIACCIA
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