Did The Tin Man Die From His Makeup

Entertainment

Thespian Buddy Ebsen Dies

July 7, 2003 / 8:36 AM / CBS/AP

Buddy Ebsen, the loose-limbed dancer turned Hollywood histrion who achieved stardom and riches in the television series "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Barnaby Jones," has died, a hospital official said Mon. He was 95.

Ebsen died Sunday morn at Torrance Memorial Medical Center in Torrance, said Pam Hope, an administrative nursing supervisor. He had been admitted to the hospital, about his home in Palos Verdes Estates, last calendar month for treatment of an undisclosed disease.

"He was so versatile," said long-time entertainment reporter Tom Hatten of CBS radio station KNX Los Angeles. "His work on-screen will e'er exist enjoyed for dissimilar reasons. He could practise anything, he actually could."

Ebsen and his sister Vilma danced through Broadway shows and MGM musicals of the 1930s. When she retired, Ebsen continued on his own, dancing with Shirley Temple and turning dramatic actor.

Except for an allergy to the aluminum-dust makeup, he would have been one of the Yellowish Brick Road quartet in the classic "The Wizard of Oz." After 10 days of filming, Ebsen, playing the Tin Homo, fell sick because of the aluminum makeup on his pare and had to be hospitalized. He was replaced by Jack Haley.

"I think Buddy Ebsen was biting all his life that he didn't get to be in this slap-up motion picture classic," Washington Post television critic Tom Shales told CBS Radio News.

Television receiver brought Ebsen's amiable personality to the home screen, kickoff as Fess Parker'south sidekick in "Davy Crockett."

Every bit Jed Clampett, the easygoing caput of a newly rich Ozark family plunked down in snooty Beverly Hills, Ebsen became a national favorite. While scorned by most critics, "The Beverly Hillbillies" attracted as many as sixty meg viewers on CBS between 1962 and 1971.

"Every bit I retrieve, the only good notice was in the Sat Review," Ebsen in one case said. "The critic said the show possessed 'social annotate combined with a high Nielsen, an almost impossible achievement in these days.' I kinda liked that."

The show was all the same earning adept ratings when it was canceled by CBS because advertisers shunned a series that attracted primarily a rural audience.

Ebsen returned to serial Idiot box in 1973 equally "Barnaby Jones," a private investigator forced out of retirement to solve the murder of his son Hal, who had taken over the business.

"Barnaby Jones" also drew disquisitional blasts. But Ebsen'southward folksy manner and a warm relationship with his daughter-in-police force, played by Lee Meriwether, made the series a success.

"With such a overabundance of private-eye shows, I didn't see how another one could succeed," Ebsen once said. "I really thought the network was making a error." Just the series clicked and lasted until 1980.

"I'm the luckiest actor alive," Ebsen said in 1978. "There's not anyone I'd trade jobs with right now."

"He probably wouldn't go on anyone's list of the major talents of the 20th century, merely he had two hitting television receiver shows and neither would take been a hit without him, I don't think," said Shales.

Ebsen, who was 6 feet 3, jerked sodas until he landed a chorus job in the 1928 "Whoopee," starring Eddie Cantor. The dancer sent for his sister Vilma and they formed a dancing team that played vaudeville, supper clubs and shows such every bit "Flying Colors" and "Ziegfeld Follies."

A screen test led to an MGM contract for the dance squad, and they were a hit in "Broadway Melody of 1936."

Ebsen was earning $two,000 a week at MGM in 1938, when studio boss Louis B. Mayer summoned him and announced: "Ebsen, in order to give you the parts you lot deserve, nosotros must own you."

The dancer recalled that he replied: "I'll tell y'all what kind of a fool I am, Mr. Mayer, I can't be owned." He quit his contract, returning to touring as a dancer and playing Chicago for more than than a yr in a farce, "Good Night, Ladies." He served three years in the Coast Guard during World War II.

Ebsen toured in "Show Boat," so returned to Hollywood. Producers asked his agent: "Why hasn't he been working in pictures?" His luck began to change when director Norman Foster recommended him to Walt Disney to play Davy Crockett.

Disney had already chosen a immature Texan, Fess Parker, for the role simply he hired Ebsen as Crockett's partner. When the Crockett episodes were shown on the "Disneyland" series in 1954-55, both Parker and Ebsen became heroes.

Ebsen'southward later films included "Set on," "Breakfast at Tiffany'due south," "The Interns," "Mail Order Bride," "The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band."

In 1993, he made a cameo appearance as Barnaby Jones in the moving picture version of "The Beverly Hillbillies."

He was built-in Christian Rudolph Ebsen in Belleville, Sick., on April 2, 1908. His father owned a dancing school, where the nicknamed Buddy learned the fundamentals. The family moved to Orlando, Fla., when the male child was 10, and he began pre-medical studies at the University of Florida and Rollins College. Only family financial problems forced him to leave school and, at twenty, he decided to try his luck as a dancer in New York.

"I arrived in New York with $26.25 in my pocket and a letter of introduction to a friend of a friend's cousin," he recalled. "I got a task in a road company, but the producer said, 'That male child 1 foot taller than the residuum of 'em — out!'"

Over the years, the role player also found fourth dimension to write musical shows, a play, fiction and his autobiography.