Paul Henning 
Paul Henning
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Paul Henning, the youngest of ten children, was born on a farm in Missouri. His father was an artist who didn't care for farming, so at last they moved to town, Independence, while Paul was still a baby. Everybody had to help out. Paul's mother took in boarders. All the children got jobs and brought home their pay. Paul, as a small boy, stood on a box behind the grocery counter to work out part of the family bill. He sang songs for a neighbor lady in exchange for the Sunday paper. He delivered dry cleaning. And finally, as a teenager, he worked behind the soda fountain of Brown's Drugstore on the town square. That's where he met Independence, Missouri's most famous citizen, Harry Truman. Then a county official, Truman came in almost every day with co-workers and they all matched coins to see who paid for the Cokes.Paul often had conversations with the friendly Truman and one day confided that he didn't know what to do about his future. "Go to law school, young man," Truman advised. "A lawyer makes a good living and besides that, he can go into politics and do something good for his community"
Paul took Truman's advice and enrolled in Kansas City School of Law -- night school. He had to continue working by day to pay expenses. He soon found out that law was not his career of choice. He'd always wanted to be a singer, so as soon as he got a job at radio station KMBC in Kansas City, he quit law school. There remained one problem though. In those days, before performers' unions, unless you had a commercial sponsor, you worked for nothing. Always an idea man, Paul soon went to his boss just brimming over with program ideas which invariably featured a tenor. "You have some good ideas," said his boss. "Now write a program." "Write?!" Paul cried. "I'm a singer, not a writer!" "Well, if you want to sing it, first you've got to write it," answered his boss.
That was the start of a successful career in Kansas City as writer-singer-actor. On one show, he worked with a young actress, Ruth Barth, who soon became his girlfriend. After a while, she went to Chicago to try her luck at "big time" radio soap operas. She heard that Don Quinn was looking for an assistant writer for the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show, so she told Paul who immediately wrote a whole script and sent it to Don Quinn. He got the job and moved to Chicago.
After a year, he decided to take a big chance and go west to try his luck in Hollywood. From his first trip there as movie editor of KMBC, he had fallen in love with the place, --the studios, the stars, the sunshine, the oranges. He vowed some day he would move there.
In a matter of months, Paul had an agent, no less than George Gruskin of the William Morris office, and a job -- as junior writer on the Joe E. Brown show. So he telephoned Ruth in Chicago. "I've got a job!" he cried happily. "Now we can get married! Come on out!"
So she did. That was January, 1939 - they were supremely happy. Hollywood was really Hollywood then -- a dream world, full of excitement and glamour with none of the disillusionment that came later. Soon, however, the Joe E. Brown show went off the air and they both had to scramble for a while. This was the depth of the depression, the BIG one. At the beginning of 1940, Paul sold a new idea to the Rudy Vallee radio show and became one of the writers. From that time on, he never had to look for a job again.
In 1942, a really big offer came his way. George Burns asked him to join his staff of writers. Burns and Allen was one of the top shows on the air and it was thrilling and a little scary to begin such a job. It didn't take George long to realize that he had in Paul an idea man and everything went well. Soon the draft (during WWII) began taking away a lot of the talent and George fought to get Paul a deferment. It was important to give people something to laugh about in troubled times and to do that, he had to have writers.
This was the beginning of a ten-year partnership and friendship, one of the happiest times of Paul's life. George was a good boss, kind, generous, funny, and smart. Gracie was charming, adorable, and not at all dumb like her character on the show. They all traveled around the country together and even went to London for an appearance at the Palladium. They made the transition from radio to television together, and it was hard for Paul when the time came to leave.
He felt it was time for him to venture into ownership. In 1955, after some short stints with Dennis Day and Ray Bolger, Paul created, produced and wrote the Bob Cummings Show which was a success for five years. After a much needed rest, he was in just the right mood to say "yes" when Stanley Shapiro approached him about doing a movie together. The result was "Lover Come Back" starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson. The screen play was nominated for an Academy Award. Then followed another movie "Bedtime Story" starring Marlon Brando, David Niven, and Shirley Jones. (You may recognize it as the recent remake called "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels". Even as they were finishing that one, Al Simon and Marty Ransahoff of the new Filmways TV Productions, were persuading Paul to write a television series to augment their first show, "Mr. Ed". And that's how "The Beverly Hillbillies" was born. Paul had been toying with the idea of hillbillies for a long time. He loved their humor, their simple decency and lack of pretensions, but he always hesitated because they were drab -- their homes, their clothes, their lives -- all drab. But if you contrived to move them to an affluent setting like Beverly Hills ----! Well, they did it and the rest is history. By the third week, the show hit number one in the ratings and stayed there.
While "The Beverly Hillbillies" was in its first year, Jim Aubrey of CBS kept insisting he wanted another show from Paul Henning. He wouldn't even have to make a pilot, Jim said. The time on the network was already earmarked for a second show. Paul was much too busy to give it more than a passing thought, but when the chips were down, the ideas began to roll out. He remembered Ruth talking about a small country hotel owned by her grandparents, near a railroad station, where she and her cousins and aunts spent summer vacations. One trip up Main Street to the local drugstore, and the phone at the hotel would start ringing, local boys wanting to date the city girls. Does that sound familiar? A small hotel, a spurline train, pretty girls? "Petticoat Junction', of course! Paul found time to write a few episodes and then turned it over to others and it made its debut the following fall. It was a big success, not as sensational as "The Beverly Hillbillies", but still in the top ten.
Next came "Green Acres", Jay Sommers' show, which Paul is often given credit for but he merely filled the spot of Executive Producer. All three shows were successful and for a while Paul was considered a sort of miracle man of the television sitcom.
Ten years later, very tired, his income and his blood pressure soaring, Paul retired. At last he had time for his family whom he had seen very little of in recent years. There were his two daughters, Carol, who is now a teacher at Cal State LA, Linda, known as Betty Jo of Petticoat Junction and still an actress, son Tony, vice president of Digital Collections in Alameda, California, two grandsons, Alex, student at the University at Santa Cruz, and Jesse, still in high school. Ruth has been there all along, of course.
Thanks to both Ruth and Paul Henning for giving me this bio of Paul to share!
Thanks for sending
your Birthday Wishes!
Sept. 16th marked the birthdays of both Paul Henning and his daughter, Linda. Thanks to all of you who participated in our special project. We prepared Birthday notebooks filled with your greetings printed on festive paper and sent them off to Paul & Linda. We thought you'd like to read their reply: Dear Friends,
There aren't enough words to thank you for the wonderful birthday present you all gave us.First of all, thank you Dave and Deb for creating the Petticoat Junction website and then making up the birthday books of all your letters.And thank you, all you good friends for liking Petticoat Junction and staying with it all these years.This is a gift that can't be bought, but only given with love.Thank you for your love and please accept ours in return.
Paul and Linda Henning
Sept. 16, 1999
