The character actor provided the understructure of a film. Take any movie, good or mediocre, from 1930 to 1970 and you will find one or more memorable “characters”. A leading role in films usually required a “name”, a celebrated star who had mass appeal and who could bring audiences into the theater. The character or featured roles depended on someone who specialized in a particular “type” of personality and who could wrap a persona around the role to give it dimension, depth and mood soon identified with that actor alone. It was these players who kept the audiences in their seats.

Buddy Ebsen 1908 - 2003

As I poured over the books and articles that I had amassed to tell me (and you) about Buddy Ebsen, one thing stood out. It spelled out the very spirit of the man. In 1939 when Buddy was about to renew his contract at MGM, he had to face the most powerful man in Hollywood…. Louis B. Mayer! “Money is no object” Mayer told him. “But, in order to give you the kind of parts you deserve, Ebsen, we have to own you”. Buddy looked at Mayer and his reply said it all. “Mr. Mayer, here’s the kind of fool I am. You can’t own me. I can’t be a piece of goods on your counter”. Then Buddy finished the work left on his contract and left MGM.

He was born Christian Rudolph Ebsen, Jr. on April 2nd, 1908 in Belleville, Illinois. His father was born in Denmark along the Danish-German border that seemed to realign itself constantly. He fled to America during one of the realignments to avoid conscription into the German army. Christian, Sr. met Frances (Buddy’s mother) in Milwaukee on one of his job hunting trips. They married and settled in Belleville where they raised a family of 5 children (Buddy was the middle child and the only boy). When he was 11 the family moved to Florida, first to West Palm Beach and then to Orlando where Buddy’s father taught dancing. Buddy attended high school there and then went to Rollins College in nearby Gainesville. One of the subjects taught at that liberal arts college was drama and Buddy proved to be very good at it. So he decided to try his luck in the city known for theater….New York!

On August 4th, 1928 Christian Rudolph Ebsen, Jr. arrived in New York City to seek his fortune on the Great White Way. He had $26.75 (all that was left of the $50 his sister Norma gave him) and a letter of introduction (from a classmate) addressed to one of the chorus crew at the Mansfield Theater. In a few months, he had parlayed that letter into a small part in one of Florenz Ziegfeld’s new shows “Whoopee” starring Eddie Cantor. It gave Buddy the courage to send for his sister Vilma to be his dancing partner.

When “Whoopee” closed, Vilma and Buddy took their act to Atlantic City where they caught the eye of columnist Walter Winchell. Winchell liked it so much that he raved about it in his column not only once but several times. That led to more Broadway offers and it also brought Ruth Cambridge, Winchell’s Girl Friday, into Buddy’s life and they later married. Vilma and Buddy joined the cast of the “Ziegfeld Follies of 1934” (put on by the Shuberts after Ziegfeld’s death) and scouts from the Hollywood studios began to pursue them. Vilma and Buddy signed with MGM.

The team was immediately put into “Broadway Melody of 1936”. It was a smash hit so the studio did what they always did…they separated the team. If two were good, why not use them one by one and get more bang for the buck. They put Buddy into “Captain January” with Shirley Temple but didn’t have anything right away for Vilma. So she just packed up and went back to New York with her husband, bandleader Bobby Dolan. The studio lost another potential star.

Buddy went on to make 8 more movies before getting the role of the Tin Man in the upcoming “The Wizard of Oz”. The studio designed a costume for him actually made out of tin. Buddy recalled that when he tried to dance in it, he almost got a sex change. They redesigned the suit! But it was the makeup that posed the worse problem. It almost killed him.

The make-up people applied white clown paint over his face and powdered it with aluminum powder….pure aluminum!. Between takes, they reapplied the powder with a puff and each time Buddy was inadvertently breathing it into his lungs. One night he woke up and couldn’t breathe and his body, lacking enough oxygen to function properly, began to cramp up all over. He was in the hospital for 2 weeks while they worked to get his lungs clear and recuperating at home for six weeks until he regained his strength. When he went back to work, Jack Haley had taken over the part of the Tin Man with new makeup techniques in place. After his meeting with Mayer, Buddy left the studio.

Buddy spent the years between 1943 and 1945 in the US Coast Guard. He also ended his marriage to Ruth and remarried. Her name was Nancy Wolcott and she would be the mother of 5 of his children, adding to his 2 daughters from his marriage to Ruth. The family was growing fast! After he came home, Buddy got a role in Oscar Hammerstein’s Broadway revival of “Showboat”. But times had changed and the pickings were slim. While he continued to do both stage and film roles, the parts were smaller and so were the paychecks.

Then along came television and Buddy was on top again! It was Walt Disney’s “Davy Crockett” series in 1954 that gave him his first television success. It premiered first on television as “Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier” and “Davy Crockett and the River Pirates”…. then they were cut together and shown in theaters as a full length feature. There were five episodes in all before the series ended.

In 1962, Buddy became J. D. Clampett, patriarch of the Clampett clan in “The Beverly Hillbillies”. It became the most popular program of the era and still runs on a cable channel somewhere at all hours of the day or night. “Barbaby Jones” followed in 1973 and ran for 7 years.But Buddy was unlucky at marriage again when his marriage of 41 years to Nancy ended. Undaunted, he remarried again in 1985 ( her name was Dorothy Knott ).

Buddy Ebsen made 34 films, television history, wrote 2 books and composed a dozen songs.

He even appeared in the 1993 film version of “The Beverly Hillbillies” as …Barnaby Jones!

He was working on another book, a mystery novel, when he died of pneumonia on July 6 th, 2003. He was 95 years old and he lived life his way!