Baer plans to market product tie-ins to 'Beverly Hillbillies'

LAS VEGAS -- Jethro Bodine intends to prove he's no fool.

Max Baer Jr., who once played the doltish character on "The Beverly Hillbillies," recently signed a deal with International Game Technology of Reno to produce hundreds of penny slot machines featuring the show that once drew millions of loyal viewers.

"It's so obvious it's not a gamble," Baer said in a recent interview at his Las Vegas home. "It fits in. It meshes with the characters and the show."

After nine years in prime time and 30-plus years of syndicated and cable broadcasts, most everyone knows how Jethro's uncle, Jed Clampett, went shootin' for some food and struck oil in the Ozarks. So the Clampett family -- Jed, Elly May, Granny and Jethro -- loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly ... Hills, that is ... swimming pools ... movie stars.

If Baer, 64, hits his jackpot in the casinos, he wants to strike gold in supermarkets with bakery goods, such as Elly May's buns, Granny's lye soap and perhaps Jethro's sausage.

Tapping into "The Beverly Hillbillies" has been a long time coming for Baer, who left the movie and television business in 1979 and moved to Lake Tahoe, where he now has a second home.

He spent years after the show ended trying to shed the Jethro persona that resonated with America and doomed his acting career.

Baer, a college graduate with a degree in business and philosophy, could not escape it any more than viewers can forget the show's catchy Flatt and Scruggs theme song.

The show aired from 1962 to '71, ranking as the No. 1 prime-time show in America its first two seasons. And now CBS is even planning a reality TV series patterned after the show.

Typecast as dumb Jethro, Baer found little work as an actor. Finally the 6-foot-4-inch, 225-pound Baer, the son of 1934-35 heavyweight boxing champ Max Baer, stopped fighting the hillbilly hex.

"What happened was I turned 50," he said. "I was about as much in demand as cancer. If I have to be Jethro, I'll be Jethro."