I went downtown and picked up a couple of DVDs of TV shows from the late 1950s and early 1960s: The Real McCoys, a show I haven't seen since it was syndicated back in the early 1960s; and Petticoat Junction, created and produced by the late Paul Henning, somebody who couldn't write comedy to save his life.
I remember The Real McCoys well: My dad used to drive me crazy with his Walter Brennan imitation, complete with limp.
Most of the actors playing the major parts have since died. Richard Crenna (Luke) passed away in 2003. Michael Winkelman (Little Luke) died in 1999. Tony Martinez (Pepino) passed on in 2002. Walter Brennan kicked off in 1974. Madge Blake cashed in her chips in 1969. I thought Kathy Nolan was dead, but I confused her with Jeanette Nolan, a performer who had been married to actor John McIntire, who passed on in 1998. Kathy Nolan is very much alive. She was once president of the Screen Actors Guild. Lydia Reed is also still around.
Reading from the IMDB, Walter Brennan was not only a conservative Republican, he was a reactionary. He voted for George Wallace in 1968 and for that paragon of family values, John Schmitz (daddy of Mary Kay Letourneau), in 1972.
I don't know how true this is, but I'll post it here because I feel like it:
During the 1960s, he was convinced that the anti-war and civil rights movements were being run by overseas communists - and said as much in interviews. He told reporters that he believed the civil rights movement, in particular, and the riots in places like Watts and Newark, and demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, were the result of perfectly content "Negroes" being stirred up by a handful of trouble-makers with an anti-American agenda. Those on the set of his last series, "The Guns of Will Sonnett" (1967) - in which he played the surprisingly complex role of an ex-army scout trying to undo the damage caused by his being a mostly absentee father - said that he cackled with delight upon learning of Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968.
