Classic Television - Prime Time

Petticoat Junction

Original channel

CBS

Original run

September 24, 1963 – April 4, 1970

Starring

Bea Benaderet

Edgar Buchanan

Linda Kaye

Jeannine Riley

Pat Woodell

Gunilla Hutton

Lori Saunders

Meredith MacRae

Smiley Burnette

Jimmy Hawkins

Rufe Davis

Frank Cady

Mike Minor

June Lockhart

Higgins

Petticoat Junction is an American situation comedy produced by Wayfilms (a joint venture of Filmways Television and Pen-Ten Productions) that originally aired on CBS from September 1963 to April 1970. The series is one of three interrelated shows about rural characters created by Paul Henning. Petticoat Junction was created upon the success of Henning's previous rural/urban-themed sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies (1962–1971). The success of Petticoat Junction led to a spin-off Green Acres (1965–1971).

The setting for the series is The Shady Rest Hotel, just outside the farming town of Hooterville (later the location of Green Acres). The hotel is situated on the train line of the C. & F.W. Railroad, halfway between the towns of Pixley and Hooterville, each 25 miles (40 km) away. The characters "seem" to go to Hooterville for some goods and services, including high school and the hospital, but prefer Pixley for supermarket shopping, beauty parlors, and movies.

The petticoat of the title is an old-fashioned garment once worn under a woman's skirt. The opening titles of the series featured a display of petticoats hanging on the side of the railway's water tower where the three originally teenage daughters are apparently bathing in the nude or skinny-dipping. In fact, the show's opening theme contains a hint of sexual innuendo in the line, "Lotsa curves, you bet, and even more when you get to the Junction." This is an obvious double entendre to both the train tracks and the Bradley daughters. As Linda Kaye states on the official season one DVD set, there was never an intended connection to the restaurant chain "Hooters", or the anatomical attributes (breasts) to which it now refers, as that phrase was unheard of in the 1960s.