The Real McCoys

Not to be confused with The Real McCoy (TV series).

For other uses, see The Real McCoy (disambiguation).

The Real McCoys
Title card
Created by	Irving Pincus
Directed by	Hy Averback Richard Crenna Sidney Miller David Alexander
Starring	Walter Brennan Richard Crenna Kathleen Nolan Michael Winkelman Lydia Reed Tony Martinez Madge Blake Andy Clyde
No. of seasons	6
No. of episodes	224
Production
Executive producer	Danny Thomas
Producers	Irving Pincus Norman Pincus
Camera setup	Single-camera
Running time	22–24 minutes
Production companies	Brennan-Westgate Marterto Productions
Original release
Network	ABC (1957–62) CBS (1962–63)
Release	October 3, 1957 (1957-10-03) – June 23, 1963 (1963-06-23)

The Real McCoys is an American sitcom co-produced by Danny Thomas's Marterto Productions in association with Walter Brennan and Irving Pincus's Westgate Company. The series aired for six seasons altogether, the first five on the ABC-TV network from 1957 through 1962 and in its final year, 1962 to 1963, on CBS.

Set in the San Fernando Valley of California, the series was filmed in Hollywood at Desilu studios.

Synopsis

Walter Brennan as Amos McCoy.

Kathy Nolan and Richard Crenna as Kate and Luke McCoy.

The Real McCoys revolves around the lives of a family from the Appalachian Mountains who originally hailed from fictional Smokey Corners, West Virginia. The McCoys moved to California and became dirt farmers. The family consisted of Grandpa Amos McCoy (Walter Brennan); his grandson Luke (Richard Crenna), Luke's new bride Kate (Kathy Nolan), Luke's teenage sister Tallahassie "Hassie" (Lydia Reed), and his 11-year-old brother Little Luke (Michael Winkelman). The double-naming of the brothers was explained in the first episode by the elder Luke: Because their parents were so excited over the birth of the younger boy, "they forgot all about me!" Only Crenna was in every episode.

The McCoys' farm had previously been owned by an uncle, Ben McCoy, who died. The former West Virginians joined the Grange farm association and acquired a Mexican farm hand named Pepino Garcia, played by the Puerto Rican–born Tony Martinez. In the episode which aired on January 8, 1962, Pepino becomes an American citizen and takes the surname "McCoy". The McMichaels, a brother and sister combination played by Andy Clyde and Madge Blake in twenty-nine and twenty-one episodes, respectively, lived on the hill not far from the McCoys. Amos McCoy and George McMichael, both rather devious individuals, would sometimes quarrel, particularly over their games of checkers and horseshoes. Kate was friendly with the much older Flora McMichael, George's sister, and became involved with life in the community.

Though still in her twenties, Kate served as a mother figure for Luke's younger siblings, Hassie and Little Luke, and one episode shows her bewilderment in trying to entice the children to take responsibility for their school studies. Many episodes have a moral theme consistent with the conservative views of Walter Brennan, such as two 1957 segments entitled "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man" with Joseph Kearns, later of Dennis the Menace, and "Gambling Is a Sin", in which Amos allows a casino to advertise on McCoy property before the ethics of the matter is brought to his attention. Other such episodes are "Go Fight City Hall", "The Taxman Cometh", "You Can't Always Be a Hero", "You Never Get Too Old", "Where There's a Will", "Beware a Smart Woman", "Money in the Bank", "How to Win Friends", "You're As Young As You Feel", "Honesty Is the Best Policy", and "Never a Lender Be".

One of the most remembered episodes, "The New Well" (October 30, 1958), pits science against folklore when Grandpa's divining rod proves superior to the paid recommendation of a geologist, played by Joe Flynn, in locating a new water source on the farm. In the 1958 episode "It Pays to Be Poor", John Dehner plays Roger Brewster, a hard-edged New York City businessman determined to buy the McCoy farm to turn it into a motel, but spurred by his kindly wife (Dorothy Green), he soon develops an unexpected taste for the basic values of rural living.

In "Little Luke's Education" (February 6, 1958), Amos confronts bigotry among the local children against hillbilly peoples such as the McCoys. In "Grampa's Private War" (February 12, 1959), Amos gets so carried away with patriotic fervor that he claims to have fought under Theodore Roosevelt in the Spanish–American War, but Walter Brennan was four years old when that war was fought in 1898. Then Amos is invited to speak at a Veterans Day ceremony.

Jon Lormer was cast seven times on The Real McCoys in 1959 and 1960, six as the character Sam Watkins. Joan Blondell appeared three times near the end of the series as Aunt Win. Marjorie Bennett was cast three times as Amanda Comstock. Pat Buttram and Howard McNear also appeared three times; they were subsequently cast as Eustace Haney on CBS's Green Acres and as Floyd the Barber on CBS's The Andy Griffith Show. Olin Howland and Willard Waterman appeared five times each as Charley Perkins and Mac Maginnis, respectively.

Early in the run of the series, Charles Lane, who often appeared in a character role on I Love Lucy, was cast twice as Harry Poulson, a fast-talking egg salesman; Hassie McCoy has an interest in Harry's son. In 1963, Jack Oakie appeared three times in the role of Uncle Rightly. Dick Elliott was cast twice as Doc Thornton, and Lurene Tuttle appeared twice as Gladys Purvis, the widowed mother of series character Kate McCoy, with Jay Novello in one of those appearances as Gladys' intended second husband, a retired photographer from Fresno.

Malcolm Cassell appeared several times as Hassie McCoy's boyfriend, Tommy. Edward Everett Horton played J. Luther Medwick, the grandfather of Hassie's other boyfriend, Jerry; Medwick and Amos soon clash. Verna Felton, a member of the December Bride cast, appeared once as Cousin Naomi Vesper. Jesse White, known as the Maytag repairman in the television commercial and subsequently a cast member of CBS's The Ann Sothern Show, portrayed a used car salesman named "San Fernando Harry" who clashes with Amos McCoy in "The New Car" (October 2, 1958). On June 1, 1961, Amos, Luke, and Kate return to West Virginia for the 100th birthday gathering of "Grandmother McCoy", played by Jane Darwell. In one episode, Lee Van Cleef played a sentry; in another Tom Skerritt appeared as a letter carrier.

The episode "The Tycoon" (August 30, 1960) four years later coincidentally became the title of Brennan's next ABC sitcom, The Tycoon, with his co-star Van Williams. Barbara Stanwyck made a cameo appearance in the 1959 episode, "The McCoys Go to Hollywood", which also features Dorothy Provine, and a glimpse of the Desilu Studios, where the series was filmed. In 1961, Fay Wray is featured in the episode "Theatre in the Barn", as herself. She volunteers to direct a local amateur production to raise money for the Grange.

Just before The Real McCoys ended its run on ABC, Nolan left the series in a contract dispute and was written out of the remaining scripts: her character of Kate apparently died. Hassie left home to attend college, and Little Luke joined the United States Army. She appeared only in the first episode of the final season—he never did. Amos McCoy did not appear in many episodes. Luke hence supposedly was a widower, and many of the stories revolved around Grandpa trying to find him a new wife. This nearly succeeded when Luke met Louise Howard, portrayed by Janet De Gore, a widow with a young son, Greg, played by Butch Patrick, later of CBS's The Munsters.

Nielsen ratings

Season	Time slot (ET)	Rank	Rating
1957–1958	Thursday at 8:30–9:00 p.m.	#30	26.6 (Tied with The Loretta Young Show and Zorro)
1958–1959		#8	30.1
1959–1960		#11	28.2
1960–1961		#5	27.7
1961–1962		#14	24.2
1962–1963	Sunday at 9:00–9:30 p.m.	—

Cancellation

For its first three seasons, The Real McCoys, which followed The Donna Reed Show, was the lead-in program on the ABC Thursday lineup for The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, which aired from 1957 to 1960. The Pat Boone series was succeeded in 1960 by Fred MacMurray and William Frawley in My Three Sons.

Although the series had ranked in the Top 10 for two seasons when aired on ABC, The Real McCoys fell into disfavor after being sold to CBS. It was cancelled in the summer of 1963. Factors in the cancellation were the changes in the series (especially the departure of the character Kate McCoy, played by Kathy Nolan), its new Sunday evening time slot opposite NBC's Bonanza, and CBS's concentration on another rural show, The Beverly Hillbillies, which had become the No. 1 entry on television, not a surprise to star Buddy Ebsen.

Syndication

For several seasons beginning in 1962, starting with the ABC episodes, the series aired weekday mornings in reruns on CBS under the title The McCoys. It was then syndicated. Its current distributor SFM Entertainment showed the series on weekday afternoons on the former The Nashville Network in the late 1990s into 2000. The show is currently shown at 6:00 and 6:30 pm Eastern time, Mondays through Fridays, on COZI TV. With the morning reruns, the opening theme was played in instrumental form (these reruns were aired opposite, NBC's Concentration game show).

The show is remembered as The Real McCoys, except for the season on CBS and in the morning reruns between 1962 and 1966. These latter episodes were used in the DVD releases and omitted the full-length pilot. The ending theme music on the DVDs is from the morning rerun version. The original end theme used the following lyrics: "Livin' as good folks should live, as happy as kids with toys/Week after week you're gonna be showed another human episode of Grandpappy Amos and the girls and the boys of the family known as The Real McCoys."

DVD releases

Infinity Entertainment released the first four seasons of The Real McCoys on DVD in Region 1 for the first time between 2007 and 2010. As of 2012, these releases have been discontinued and are out of print.

On May 7, 2012, it was announced that Inception Media Group (IMG) had acquired the rights to the show. IMG subsequently re-released the first two seasons on DVD.

On June 4, 2012, IMG announced that it would be releasing a complete series set, featuring all 224 remastered episodes. Release of this set never came to fruition, and the rights to the show's home videos later moved to SFM Entertainment, which released The Real McCoys: The Complete Series on August 29, 2017 in Region 1. This is a manufacture-on-demand (MOD) release, available exclusively from Amazon.com.

DVD name	No. of episodes	Release date
Complete Season 1	39	July 24, 2007 July 24, 2012(re-release)
Complete Season 2	39	October 30, 2007 November 13, 2012(re-release)
Complete Season 3	39	June 17, 2008 August 26, 2014(re-release)
Complete Season 4	39	June 29, 2010 August 26, 2014 (re-release)
Complete Season 5	29	August 26, 2014
Complete Season 6	39	August 26, 2014
The Complete Series	224	August 29, 2017

External links

• The Real McCoys at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com show
• The Real McCoys at epguides.com
• Production history and DVD review of Season 1