Hillbillies, Real and Invented
Near Branson, Missouri
For most of the twentieth century, the outside world pictured the Ozarks as hillbilly country, and Branson leaned into the image to sell itself. The stereotype reached its peak in the nineteen sixties, thanks to television. The Beverly Hillbillies premiered in nineteen sixty-two and drew millions of viewers a week, portraying mountain folk as backward but shrewd enough to outwit their city-slicker neighbors.
What many people do not realize is that the show's creator, Paul Henning, had deep local roots. A native of Missouri, he had camped in the Branson area as a Boy Scout, and the hills stuck with him. Some years after the series ended, Henning gave a remarkable memento to the Ralph Foster Museum at College of the Ozarks: the famous jalopy that carried the Clampett family to California, a cut-down nineteen twenty-one Oldsmobile roadster.
It sits in the museum to this day. Along the old roadside, hillbilly signs, cartoon figures, and country-cooking joints once greeted every carload of tourists. The real mountain people Harold Bell Wright wrote about were nothing like the cartoon, but the cartoon helped put Branson on the map all the same.
