By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: actor, writer and director Max Baer Jr., who helmed Ode To Billy Joe, Hometown USA and The Wild McCullochs.
Many Unsung Auteurs have been featured in this column because their most celebrated works have been generated in other creative fields. Few of them, however, are literally famous as another character, but that’s exactly where Max Baer Jr. stands. If you were thinking that the photo at the top of this web page looks familiar, you’d be right. Though a writer and director with a small selection of films to his credit, Max Baer Jr. will always be best known for playing the lumbering, lunk-headed, but ultimately big-hearted Jethro Bodine on the hugely popular TV sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. Running from 1962 to 1971, this pop cultural icon followed a backwoods family from The Ozark Mountains who strike oil on their property and then move to a mansion in Beverly Hills. Baer Jr. was so indelible in the role of Jethro that it followed him around for the rest of his career. “It’s like somebody calling you a son of a bitch,” Baer Jr. once replied when asked how he felt about being referred to as Jethro. “If he’s your friend, it’s okay. If he’s your enemy, it’s not.”
Despite his small screen fame as a rural man, and the “down south” bent of the films he eventually wrote and directed, Max Baer Jr. was born in Oakland, California in 1937. He was the son of Mary Ellen Sullivan and part-Jewish boxing champion Max Baer, who famously beat down Hitler’s favourite fighter Max Schmelling in 1933 before copping a hiding himself at the fists of underdog James J. Braddock, which formed the basis for Ron Howard’s 2005 film Cinderella Man. A skilled golfer (he twice won the junior title at The Sacramento Open Golf Tournament, and later won the pro-am tournament at The 1968 Andy Williams San Diego Open), Max Baer Jr. served as a medical technician in the US Air Force, and later earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Santa Clara University, with a minor in philosophy. Something of a renaissance man, Baer Jr. began acting in 1960 and appeared on shows like Maverick and Cheyenne before hitting it big with The Beverly Hillbillies.
The huge success of the TV sitcom saw Max Baer Jr. typecast (the bane of most sitcom stars), and after its cancellation, he found it difficult to get decent roles. “I couldn’t go into a producer’s office and say I wanted to play the part of a neurosurgeon or pilot,’’ Baer Jr. told Fore Magazine. “As soon as I came on screen, people would say, ‘There’s Jethro.’” Baer Jr. ingeniously responded by writing a role for himself. The screenplay he penned (allegedly handwritten on the back of a Beverly Hillbillies script) was for an eventual 1974 drive-in exploitation movie called Macon County Line, which turned out to be one of the biggest per capita independent movie hits of all time. Made for less than US$200,000, it earned upwards of US$30 million at the US box office, a record that lasted until The Blair Witch Project rolled past it in 1999.
Co-produced by Baer Jr. and directed by Richard Compton (Ravagers, Deadman’s Curve) – who also did work on the script – Macon County Line is one of the best in the much-maligned canon of 1970s drive-in movies. Charged with violence, sex and car chases, and programmed into the drive-in cinemas of the south, these low budget actioners usually lacked depth and decent characterisation, but Baer Jr. injected Macon County Line with considerably more intelligence than its bottom-feeding brethren. The film follows two Chicago brothers (real life brothers Alan and Jesse Vint) and a hitchhiker (Cheryl Waters) travelling through America’s south. When car trouble strands them in Macon County, Georgia, the trio is mistakenly believed by violent small-town Sheriff Reed Morgan (Baer Jr.) to be responsible for the brutal rape and murder of his wife. Consumed by rage, Morgan comes after the innocent trio with guns blazing. More of a 1970s bummer than a good-time exploitation flick, Macon County Line (which was mischievously billed as a “true story” even though it’s completely fictitious) bubbles and bristles with backwoods authenticity, while its characters – particularly Baer Jr.’s maniacal lawman – are impressively layered and compelling. Though it delivered in the violence department, the strikingly gritty and uncompromising Macon County Line offered much more, and suggested an impressive career for Baer Jr. as a writer.
While Richard Compton returned for the 1975 sequel Return To Macon County (which starred Don Johnson and Nick Nolte and was wholly unrelated to the first film), Max Baer Jr. did not. He had his eyes on something bigger, and made his directorial debut the following year with 1975’s The Wild McCullochs, which he also wrote. A big, sprawling comedic family melodrama, the film is built around a Texan trucking tycoon played by comic legend Forrest Tucker (who starred in the seminal TV series F Troop) and his battles with his intended son-in-law, played by Baer Jr. It’s broad and blustery and ends with a massive brawl, and remains largely forgotten today.
Max Baer Jr. next returned to the more sensitive elements of Macon County Line with 1976’s Ode To Billy Joe, a moving backwoods saga of young love and tragedy starring 1970s teen idol Robby Benson and the charming Glynnis O’Connor. Believed to be something of a first, Baer Jr. purchased the rights to Bobbie Gentry’s mournful, doom-laden story song “Ode To Billy Joe” with an eye to turning it into a film. Unheard of at the time (and a precursor to the songs-to-movies likes of Harper Valley PTA and The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia), it proved a fruitful decision, with the commissioned screenplay by Herman Raucher (who penned the 1971 classic Summer Of ’42) resounding with emotion and sensitivity. Baer Jr. handled the material beautifully, showing a restrained and plaintive sense of emotional ache not evident in his previous work. Dealing with the issues of suicide and identity in a manner wholly relevant today, Ode To Billy Joe is the real jewel on Baer Jr.’s resume.
Rather than sticking with the elegiac qualities of Ode To Billy Joe, Baer Jr. next delivered a film of a more rollicking nature with the 1979 comedy Hometown USA, which certainly owes a considerable debt to George Lucas’ 1973 smash American Graffiti. A similarly themed and styled “hang out” movie, Hometown USA stars Gary Springer, David Wilson and Brian Kerwin as three 1950s pals who spend most of their time driving around, listening to music and hitting on women. That’s pretty much it, but Baer Jr. provides the material (the screenplay was written by Macon County Line star Jesse Vint) with lashings of humour, a freewheeling vibe, and a great understanding of his young male characters.
Disappointingly, Max Baer Jr. retired from filmmaking after Hometown USA, and refocused his energies on other pursuits, including Beverly Hillbillies branded poker machines. Though he frequently returned to the sitcom that made him famous throughout his career, the now 87-year-old Baer Jr. has remained ambivalent about its role in his life. “I was born Max Baer Jr., the son of a great boxer, and I’ll die Jethro Bodine,” Baer Jr. told Fore Magazine. “Period. I never really got the chance to be me.” You can, however, certainly see some of Max Baer Jr. in his small but fascinating collection of big screen work…
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
