Bombarded with praise, Lily Tomlin finally gave in.
“At first, I denied it – I didn’t want to be Miss Hathaway,” the multi-Emmy and Tony Award-winning comedian said of the geeky Beverly Hillbillies role everyone kept telling her she was born to play. “I was sort of appalled that everybody said I was the perfect Miss Hathaway.
“I love to do characters. But if I invent a character to do, it’s very different from somebody coming to me and saying, ‘You are Miss Hathaway.’ Because I don’t think I’m Ernestine. I don’t think I’m Edith Ann. I don’t think I’m a lot of people that I love doing.”
Tomlin refers to the officious telephone operator and the curious little girl that have been part of her comic repertoire since her stint on television’s Laugh-In in the early 1970s. At that time, when Tomlin’s sharply satirical, insightful humor was first reaching a wide audience, Nancy Kulp was concluding a decade of playing efficient, awkward secretary Jane Hathaway on CBS’ corny The Beverly Hillbillies sitcom.
Now Penelope Spheeris – whose career has ranged from shooting videos for Tomlin’s mid-’70s TV specials to directing last year’s megahit Wayne’s World feature – has revived Hillbillies for the big screen.
The film’s inspired casting includes Jim “Ernest” Varney as Ozark backwoodsman turned oil baron Jed Clampett, Cloris Leachman as his manic Granny, Erika Eleniak (Under Siege, Baywatch) as the beauteous tomboy Elly May and goofily grinning Diedrich Bader as Jed’s bonehead nephew Jethro.
That sultan of sleaze Dabney Coleman (Buffalo Bill, The Slap Maxwell Story) couldn’t be more appropriate for the sniveling, greedy banker Milburn Drysdale. Even TV’s original Jed, Buddy Ebsen, puts in an appearance – as his other well-known series character, elderly detective Barnaby Jones.
But it’s still Tomlin as Drysdale’s assistant that seems the film’s most perfect casting coup. Finally worn down by the unanimous urgings of friends and family members, she agreed to take the role for her old friend Spheeris. But confirmed feminist Tomlin had a few new wrinkles she insisted be added to the character.
“You want to approximate, but we were all conscious of what a treacherous line it was to walk to reincarnate these characters that are so fondly remembered by a huge audience,” Tomlin said. “And as wonderful as Nancy was on the show – she made [Jane) independent, a career person and everything else – there was that little, stereotypical part of her that was depicted as a spinster, sort of ga-ga over Jethro. She was very awkward, and that was the comedic part of her.
“I daresay that I’m not sure I succeeded at doing this in the movie, but I wanted her to be contemporized to the extent that, when she goes after Jethro, you have no discomfort with it. You feel that if Jethro doesn’t respond, Miss Hathaway already has her eye on two or three other people.”
Although she never saw the show during its long, original run – “I was much too hip to watch television in the ’60s,” she self-mockingly announced, Tomlin watched a few old episodes in preparation for the movie.
“You realize in retrospect that Miss Hathaway sticks around because she has a real affection for the Clampetts and wants to protect them,” Tomlin said. “Secondly, in the series there’s an episode where she says to Mr. Drysdale, ‘Someday, you’re going to get your comeuppance and I want to be here to see it.’ So that’s her justification for sticking around, despite all that treatment.”
Tomlin remains uncertain about how well she portrayed Hathaway in the extremely broad comedy.
“It’s fun to play in this kind of vehicle at the time,” she said tentatively, “because you’re given permission to go a little bit outsized. But truthfully, when I first saw the movie, I was in such shock. I enjoyed it, but I had no idea it was that big when I was doing it.”
