In the spring of 1961, while crawling through Los Angeles traffic, writer Paul Henning caught sight of a battered truck overloaded with furniture and family members rolling down Sunset Boulevard. It wasn’t a movie set—it was real, and it made him laugh. What if a rural family, completely out of their element, landed in one of the wealthiest zip codes in America? That spark became the idea behind The Beverly Hillbillies, which premiered on CBS on September 26, 1962. More than 30 million people tuned in, and just like that, a TV phenomenon was born.
At the center of the show was Jed Clampett, a good-hearted mountain man who strikes…
