The Silent Movie Episodes

[stanwyckfan07]

Does anybody else love the silent movie episodes of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES? Those are probably my very favorite ones, not just the two where the Hillbillies did spoofs of silent movies (THE GLORIA SWANSON STORY, THE HEDDA HOPPER STORY) but the ones featuring the old movie house back in Bug Tussle, the ones where the Hillbillies visit the Hollywood sites, etc. These episodes probably gave birth to my love of silent films. The Gloria Swanson episode is just the classic example of a movie star guest starring as themselves in a sitcom, in my opinion. WONDERFUL episode.

And yes Granny you look like Miss Swanson to me

[biffbronson]

Those were all fantastic -- The Clampetts really did know their Silents, and often mentioned people like Tom Mix (who was tremendously popular, even years after his death), Rudy Valentino, Mary Pickford, Hoot Gibson, and Francis X. Bushman.

It's really a great shame that even some of Gloria Swanson's silents are no longer known to exist, but every so often a copy of a silent believed to have been "lost" is uncovered, sometimes overseas.

Another interesting thing about silents is that originally the studios did not know about marketing based on celebrity -- they marketed the films without focusing on stars. But that changed -- in other words, when they found out that people were referring to the latest "Gloria Swanson film," they realized that the actors were sort of like the carts pulling the horses, and they then built their studio empires around them.

The Hillbillies show went into the movie aspect deeply -- there was a lot of humor based on how they perceived stars should look, for example, so they sort of superimposed their memories of Mary Pickford with her curls on Elly, and when Jed appears in a film he's wearing the old-fashioned makeup.