"There's A Little Hotel Called The Shady Rest At The Junction"

bkoganbing

During the Sixties CBS was known as the rural station because heading its ratings were such shows as Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and the show from where Green Acres spun from, Petticoat Junction. You loved the endearing characters created on Petticoat Junction and the interchangeable regulars on each of them.

Petticoat Junction was somewhere in the Ozarks a really rural part of the state. Part of the gimmick here was the Hooterville Cannonball, the railroad that ran from Pixley to Hooterville and back. It was run by Smiley Burnette and Rufe Davis, later Davis alone when Burnette passed away. It was vital to the lifeblood of the economy of Hooterville.

After all who was going to stay at Bea Benaderet's Shady Rest Motel which as Kate Bradley she ran with the help of those curvaceous daughters of her's. Bobbi Jo, Betty Jo, and Billie Jo were enough of a sight to make any weary traveler stop. Helping out as little as possible at the motel was Edgar Buchanan as Uncle Joe who did as little physical work as possible, but who schemed big.

Scheming was a necessity because the Hooterville Cannonball became an obsession with railroad executive Homer Bedloe, played endearingly by the raspy voiced Charles Lane. Lane brought years of experience playing exactly these types in hundreds of movie roles, but Homer Bedloe became his career part. Half the episodes were devoted to the citizenry of Hooterville rallying behind Benadaret keeping the Cannonball running. You've got to wonder when the US rail system consolidated into AMTRAK just where was the Hooterville Cannonball in the scheme of things?

The development of the Bradley girls became known as 'hooters' thereby entering our culture. And the name Hooterville became synonymous with calling any place that happened to be located far from any decent sized city. I remember on a trip to Portugal referring to the village of Fatima as the Hooterville of Portugal. Don't think so, take a trip there and see how far out in the Portugese boondocks it is.

From Frank Cady as Sam Drucker the general store owner and a host of other semi-regulars who got in more than one episode of this and Green Acres. They were the real richness of the show. In fact they contributed so much that when Bea Benederet died in 1968 the show just kept on going. It could have kept going, but for a deliberate decision by CBS to cancel those rural comedies because they wanted to appeal to a different demographic.

Still Petticoat Junction had its fans. Still does even among city slickers.

score 8/10

bkoganbing 17 July 2008

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1912311/