Four citizens of Petticoat Junction, two who have left and a pair of newcomers, discussed their roles it that popular CBS cornucopia of humor recently and you'd have thought they were talking about Lady Macbeth. Such was the texture of their conversation you'd have thought life at the Junction was apprenticeship at Stratford-on-Avon. Pat Woodell (ex-Bobbie Jo) and Jeannine Riley (ex-Billie Jo) left the Junction looking for greener fields. And their replacements, Lori Saunders and Gunilla Hutton, arrived assuming they'd found 'em.
Miss Woodell was the first to beg off. "I asked for my release after the first year," she says, "and it took me about a year to get it." Why did she want to leave a job that pays handsomely, with merit raises yet to come? "I felt all the time I put in studying drama was wasted," she says. Having left to make "better use" of her dramatic training, Miss Woodell promptly turned her attention to singing on TV and saloon stages. She appeared with Jack Benny, Bing Crosby and George Gobel - nice work if you can get it, but certainly no drain on "dramatic talent." Pat also appeared with Liberace, that gift to the elderly distaff side. The parting between Miss Woodell and other Junction citizens was friendly. "I have no beefs with anybody," she says. Apparently such was not the case with her "sister," Miss Riley.
It seems that Miss Riley had occasional conflicts. Edgar Buchanan, the show's "Uncle Joe," hints at trouble. "I was the only one in the show who could talk to her," he recalls. "Like all young people she was impatient. She might have caused a little trouble; but a lot of big stars cause trouble. Acting is a selfish business."
With her new freedom, Jeannine moved into the bottomless pit populated by Hollywood's free-lance actresses, most of whom would give up their whole collection of Paul Anka records to reside at the Junction. Why did Jeannine move away? Ambition, all-consuming ambition. "You have to make a decision," she ponders. "Are you going on with this show five years? There wasn't enough for me to do. I just didn't want to stay in a series without a starring role."
Since her departure, Jeannine feels she has effectively erased the mark of innocence that came to her with Billie Jo. That, she says, was gone the day she went into a post-Petticoat job. It was a voyage in Convoy and "they took the Petticoat off, dressed me in a negligee and put a glass of whisky in my hand. I was a woman."
With two of his "daughters" gone, producer Paul Henning went searching for replacements. He felt sure that the third "daughter," Linda Kaye, wouldn't "ankle the show," as they say in Hollywood. Miss Kaye is Henning's real-life daughter, and loyal.
Henning said that "we interviewed 40 or 50 girls and tested four or five" before choosing the Misses Saunders and Hutton, who arrived at the Junction in a cloud of professional obscurity. Henning saw Lori Saunders on a TV hair commercial. She had also worked in TV and movies, including one picture called "Mara of the Wilderness," about, she says, "a girl who gets lost in Alaska with two wolf puppies."
To Lori, Petticoat Junction is a stop en route to the works of such as Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, which she describes as "a part of life." She says, "They have realness to their people. I enjoy this job but eventually I want to get into something that demands my intelligence." Typical of the make-believe world in which she works, Lori, a 24-year-old mother of two, plays a teen-ager.
Gunilla Hutton, the new Billie Jo, was born May 15, 1944, in Goteborg, Sweden; came to this country with her parents when she was 7, and moved on to stage shows with the late Nat King Cole and Jack Benny. She also appeared in some dramatic TV programs. Henning saw Gunilla when she worked with Benny in Las Vegas. Twelve weeks after reporting to work, Gunilla was stricken by hepatitis, another problem for Henning, who'd thought his girl problems had been solved. The situation was further confused when Miss Hutton married movie-and-TV-writer Jerry Schafer shortly after being stricken.
Gunilla missed seven shows and was out two and a half months. Back at work, Gunilla said she brought "sensitivity" to the character of boy-crazy Billie Jo. "Just because we live in a small town on the show doesn't mean we have a low IQ," she said.
The new girls were hired with little fanfare and were received by the public with equal fervor - which is to say no fervor at all. Few viewers even bothered to write in and ask, "Who are they?" The lack of reaction was no surprise to Henning, who got his start on radio, where nobody even saw characters and seldom knew when they had left.
Nobody even bothered to explain the new arrivals. Their mother in the show, Bea Benaderet, said there was no need to. "I think you underrate an audience when you explain," she said. "They know it's play acting."
Smiley Burnette, engineer of the show's train, had his own explanation, one which gives the Junction a fairytale flavor. "This show is like a cake; you don't see the eggs," he said.
It may be a cake to Smiley, but to the Billie and Bobbie Jo's of this world, it's strictly standing in the wings at Lincoln Center.
