The Elly May, Sydney, Dawn Effect

My wife and I were talking about the Beverly Hillbillies a couple of mornings ago, and we couldn’t remember the name of the actress who played Jane Hathaway, at first. Then I saw the photo here of Donna Douglas and Nancy Kulp.  Donna was easier on the eyes, and she was the first Sydney Sweeney when it came to selling jeans according to marketing reports.

It was called the “Elly May” effect. Blue jeans were seen as rugged workwear for men. After the first season, sales of “Lady Levi’s” skyrocketed as women across America sought to mimic Elly May’s look. The then-CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. stated that “Donna Douglas has done more for the sale of blue jeans in one year than cowboys have done in a hundred.” As a side note, Elly didn’t exactly wear Levi jeans on the show.

Kulp was a liberal democrat in California and decided to make a run for Congress. Buddy Ebsen (Jed Clampett), a republican, did a commercial urging people to vote for her opponent because she was “too liberal.” The lifelong feud between them started earlier on the set but culminated with the ad. While Kulp blamed Ebsen for her loss, the fact is, she was trounced in a landslide. It is said they reconciled their differences after she was diagnosed with cancer, believed to have been brought on by decades of smoking.

Jane Hathaway appeared on Petticoat Junction. The television sitcoms Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, and The Beverly Hillbillies, called the “Henning Trilogy” all existed tied together by locations and characters.  I liked all three and actually dropped a political science class my freshman year of college to watch reruns of Green Acres on my 13″ black & white television. I still watch all three, primarily on tubi TV.

I was going to add a couple photos of my wife in jeans, but she gets upset when do it here (I’ll do it on my blog later). The Dawn effect is more powerful than Elly or Sydney.