Jethro Bodine



Jethro Bodine (though he addresses Jed as his uncle) is the son of Jed's cousin, Pearl Bodine.

He drove the Clampett family to their new home in California and stayed on with them to further his education. The whole family boasts of Jethro's "sixth grade education" but nevertheless feels he is a bit of an idiot. Jethro is simply naive in the first season of the show but becomes incredibly ignorant and pompous as the series progresses. He often shows off his cyphering abilities with multiplication and "go-zin-ta's," as in "five gozinta five one times, five gozinta ten two times," etc. The tallest student in his class in the town of Oxford (so named because "that's where the oxen used to ford the creek") because of his age, he is often impressing others that he graduated "top of his class at Oxford." In Beverly Hills, he decides to go to college. He manages to enroll late in the semester at a local secretarial school due to his financial backing and earns his diploma by the end of the day because he didn't understand what was going on in class and was too disruptive. (This was an ironic in-joke—in real life Max Baer Jr, has a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration from Santa Clara University(Also Minored in Philosophy).


 * Many stories in the series involve Jethro's endless career search, which include such diverse vocations as a millwright, a brain surgeon, street car conductor, double-naught spy, Hollywood producer (a studio flunky remarks Jethro has the right qualifications for being a producer-a 6th grade education and his uncle owns the studio. The in-joke gag of Jethro as a movie producer was replayed in the 1981 movie), soda jerk, short order cook, and once as a bookkeeper for Milburn Drysdale's bank. More often than not, his overall goal in these endeavors is to obtain as many pretty girls as humanly possible. Out of all the Clampett clan, he is the one who makes the most change from 'country bumpkin' to 'city boy.' Another running gag is that Jethro is known as the "six foot stomach" for his ability to eat: in one episode he eats a jetliner's entire supply of steaks; in another episode Jethro tries to set himself up as a Hollywood agent for cousin "Bessie"-with a fee of 10,000 bananas for Bessie and 1,000 bananas for Jethro. At one time Jed mentions that Jethro was the only baby he knew born with a full set of teeth "just like a beaver." Jethro appears in 272 episodes; he is not in the third- or second-to-last episodes but Baer of course remains billed in the title credits. Baer claimed he only auditioned for the role of Jethro for fun and never expected to get the part. Supposedly, he clinched the part largely because of his grin.
 * For the 1993 Film adaptation version click Here

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Original Television Series Jethro Bodine