Head ‘Hillbilly’ Buddy Ebsen dies aged 95 in LA

BUDDY EBSEN, the Broadway dancer who achieved stardom and riches in the TV series The Beverly Hillbillies and Barnaby Jones, has died at the age of 95.

Ebsen died yesterday in a Los Angeles hospital, after being admitted last month with an undisclosed illness.

If it hadn’t been for an allergy to aluminium paint, he would have been one of the Yellow Brick Road quartet in the classic Hollywood film The Wizard of Oz.

But after 10 days of filming, Ebsen, playing the Tin Man, fell ill because of the aluminium makeup on his skin, and was replaced by Jack Haley.

Television brought Ebsen’s amiable personality to the home screen, first as Fess Parker’s sidekick in Davy Crockett.

As Jed Clampett, the easygoing head of a newly rich Ozark family plunked down in snooty Beverly Hills, Ebsen became a national favourite.

While scorned by most critics, The Beverly Hillbillies attracted as many as 60 million US viewers between 1962 and 1971.

Ebsen returned to TV in 1973 as Barnaby Jones, a private investigator forced out of retirement to solve the murder of his son Hal, who had taken over the business.

The new series also failed to woo the critics. But Ebsen’s folksy manner and a warm relationship with his daughter-in-law, played by Lee Meriwether, made it a success.

“With such a glut of private-eye shows, I didn’t see how another one could succeed,” Ebsen once said. “I really thought the network was making a mistake.”

But the series clicked, and it lasted until 1980.

“I’m the luckiest actor alive,” Ebsen said in 1978. “There's not anyone I’d trade jobs with right now.”

In 2001, Ebsen started a new, unexpected career: fiction writing. His novel Kelly’s Quest became a best-seller. He also penned an autobiography, The Other Side of Oz.

Ebsen had six daughters and a son from two marriages.