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Bea Benaderet look

I'm pretty sure I have seen the B & W episodes on ME. I probably wouldn't watch the color ones because they are pretty bad.
 
BD Sullivan said:
...The consensus seems to be that (Bea's) death was the beginning of the end for the show, since she was seen as the anchor, something Lockhart was unable to sustain.
June Lockhart was (is) a superior actress, but not a terribly energetic one. I believe her role on PJ as a "lady MD" served only to restrict her character's fluidity. That could explain why she couldn't effectively take the matriarchal baton from Bea.
 
jfrancispastirchak said:
BD Sullivan said:
...The consensus seems to be that (Bea's) death was the beginning of the end for the show, since she was seen as the anchor, something Lockhart was unable to sustain.

June Lockhart was (is) a superior actress, but not a terribly energetic one. I believe her role on PJ as a "lady MD" served only to restrict her character's fluidity. That could explain why she couldn't effectively take the matriarchal baton from Bea.

She was also a bit young (43 in 1968) to be cast in a "matriarchal" role, as opposed to the younger-mother roles she played in Lassie and Lost In Space.
 
One good use of colorization was to add color back into older color shows, which I've read was done with MASH in the late 80's or early 90's, and possibly other shows as well. Of course there are better digital restoration methods now.

During last Christmas season AMC was showing the colorized version of Miracle on 34th Street, which I'm surprised was still available.
 
anotherguy said:
One good use of colorization was to add color back into older color shows, which I've read was done with MASH in the late 80's or early 90's, and possibly other shows as well. Of course there are better digital restoration methods now.
...it was also used to restore the second Beatles theatrical film, Help!, in the mid-'80s. United Artists never bothered to properly maintain the negatives or prints of the picture for the 15 years (1965 to 1980) that they owned the distribution rights. Similarly, Thames Television and Turner Entertainment used the technology to restore the two-strip Technicolor sequence to the original Ben-Hur...
 
ixnay said:
BD Sullivan said:
cd637299 said:
Bea sure was a hard worker in radio, TV, and also cartoons---she did a bit of work on WB cartoons and of course was Betty Rubble on The Flintstones, until she was replaced in 1964. I think I read it was because she was committed to Petticoat Junction, but that couldn't be the reason---she already had Season 1 of PJ under her belt while still working as Betty. I am not sure why she was replaced by Gerry Johnson.

cd

She may have thought during that first season that she could handle both jobs, but then realized that it was impossible and relinquished the Flintstones gig.

According to Linda Henning, her father specifically created PJ for Benaderet.

Speaking of Gerry Johnson... is she still with us?

ixnay

Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Johnson, she left us in January 1990 at age 71, so the second Mrs. Rubble outlived the first by just over 21 years. Johnson was already 71 at death so she was already 46 when she took over Betty.

ixnay
 
joeybabe25 said:
ixnay said:
Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Johnson, she left us in January 1990 at age 71, so the second Mrs. Rubble outlived the first by just over 21 years. Johnson was already 71 at death so she was already 46 when she took over Betty.

ixnay

Who have been the other Betty Rubble's over the years? And Did Gerry Johnson do only the last couple of years of "The Flintstones" on ABC?

Joe

If I'd kept my copy of The Flintstones: A Modern Stone Age Phenomenon (all I remember about the byline was that it was a joint pseudonym), I could answer the first question. As for the second, per the Wiki link, Johnson also voiced Betty in The Man Called Flintstone (where Fred is hired as a double for a secret agent) but gave up voice acting afterwards. She'd been a TV personality in Dallas and L.A. before getting the Betty role.

ixnay
 
June Foray actually voiced Betty on "The Flagstones," the pilot film for the Flintstones (on YouTube now). The characters are drawn quite crudely, but that's expected.

If you count "Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm", "The New Fred and Barney Show," "The Flintstones Comedy Hour", and "The Flintstone Kids," there was also Gay Hartwig, Gay Autterson (same person as Hartwig?), and B.J. Ward. Source: "The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television" book by Wesley Hyatt.

cd
 
I always felt Bea's character was like Eddie Albert's Oliver on Green Acres. Both seemed to have real-world sanity while dealing with the over the top crazy charactersin Hootersville. I wished the producers had fleshed out the underlying romance between her and Sam Drucker. If you notice, Sam let her accumulate quite a large debt at the store over the years!

Just how large was Hooterville. In the early episodes there is just the long shot of Drucker's store along the tracks. But in later episodes, there is the barber shop, movie house, and even high school. Where were these in relation to Drucker's store?
 
How large was Hooterville? Always small, compared to the big city---Pixley!

Sam Drucker was also a voice-of-reason on both PJ & GA. There was one GA episode where Oliver IIRC was exposing some sort of scam, and Drucker bought into it, despite Oliver saying something like "Sam, you, of all people...."

cd
 
KyDXIn said:
I always felt Bea's character was like Eddie Albert's Oliver on Green Acres. Both seemed to have real-world sanity while dealing with the over the top crazy charactersin Hootersville.
But Oliver was always the butt of many jokes leading to his frustration, whereas Kate just kind of managed the insanity around.
 
BD Sullivan said:
KyDXIn said:
I always felt Bea's character was like Eddie Albert's Oliver on Green Acres. Both seemed to have real-world sanity while dealing with the over the top crazy charactersin Hootersville.
But Oliver was always the butt of many jokes leading to his frustration, whereas Kate just kind of managed the insanity around.

I suppose that was the basic charm & wit of GA.....Oliver leaving NYC to "get away from the rat race," when in reality, even in little Hooterville, he was unable to do so!

cd
 
For some reason this seems amazing to me, but Paul Henning (along with Santley Shapiro) was actually nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay in 1961. The film was a Rock Hudson-Doris Day movie, "Lover Come Back." The writer that won the Oscar? William Inge for "Splendor in the Grass."
 
cd637299 said:
How large was Hooterville? Always small, compared to the big city---Pixley!
cd

Where WAS Hooterville anyway? I've heard characters refer to the train bringing guests to the Shady Rest from Hooterville, so aparently the hotel was not "in town". So that also brings up the question of where was the Shady Rest?

I'm guessing out in the county, but did the producers ever release a "map" of the area, so we fans could place where our stars lived? :D

Joe
 
^ Nah, the whole thing is about not naming an actual state*. It makes you think of "Anywhere, USA". The town of Mayfield on "Leave it to Beaver" was also a fictional place. Even the sitcom "Benson," which featured the role of an actual governor, never revealed the state----it was always lines like "This state needs leadership" & similar lines.

The role of Latka Gravas (played by Andy Kaufman) on "Taxi" never revealed the name of the country he was from....his lines were always like "In my country---" and he would explain the customs.

* Now, having said that.....the Green Acres book by Stephen Cox (cannot remember the actual title) had a feature, "Where IS Hooterville?" and I do recall on one episode, and the book verifying, one line saying that Hooterville is 300 miles from Chicago.

Also see this site, for the question "Where IS Hooterville?":

http://www.maggiore.net/greenacres/gaFAQ.asp

Back to Bea!

cd
 
It might take some searching, but there have been other threads where the possible location of Hooterville was discussed, and most of the discussion leaned toward it being in central Illinois or Indiana.

This is my 3000th post!!! ;D ;D ;D
 
Well... I THOUGHT I had I had reached 3000 posts according to the counter, but I've found out it's bouncing between 299X and 300X, I guess because of the server glitches. But that's probably a topic for another thread. ::)
 
I seem to recall, that The Shady Rest is located on the tracks half way between Pixley and Hooterville. The supplies, wood, other building materials to build the Shady Rest were on the train when the freight car overturned at that location. I don't remember if it was Kate's husband or father that decided it was prophecy and decided to build the hotel there instead of Hooterville. - not near any roads only accessible by rail.
I think the barbershop, movie theatre, etc. were in Pixley. Hooterville seemed to be a hamlet of just the RR station,Sam's store and the local farms.
 
I often wondered if Kate Bradley and Pearl Bodine were related to one another or not. Reason I asked because Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies in the Petticoat Junction episode "Granny, The Baby Expert" looks at a picture of Kate and says something about Kate and Pearl looking like one another since Bea played both roles. Another thing, how did The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction begin to crossover starting with The Beverly Hillbillies episode where the Clampetts come back from their castle in London and Granny gets a call from Pearl to come to Hooterville to take care of Betty Jo and Steve's baby and the classic lines "Who's Betty Jo Elliott?" "Kate Bradley's daughter" "Who's Kate Bradley?" etc. since before that time (1968) there was no mention of Petticoat Junction or anything related to that show on The Beverly Hillbillies.
 
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