The Real McCoys


The Real McCoys is an American situation comedy co-produced by Danny Thomas's Marterto Productions in association with Walter Brennan and Irving Pincus's Westgate Company. The series was broadcast for six seasons, five by the ABC-TV network from 1957–1962 and a final year, 1962–1963 by CBS. Set in the San Fernando Valley of California, the series was filmed in Hollywood at Desilu studios.

Synopsis

The Real McCoys concerns the lives of a family originally from the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, from a fictional place named Smokey Corners. The McCoys relocated to California to live and work on a farm they inherited from a relative. The family consists of Grandpa Amos McCoy ; his grandson Luke ; Luke's new wife Kate ; Luke's teenage sister Tallahassie "Hassie" ; and his 11-year-old brother "Little Luke". The double-naming of the brothers is explained during the first full episode, when the elder Luke introduces Little Luke to Pepino Garcia and says, "Well, you see, in the excitement of having him, Ma and Pa 'plum' forgot they already had me." Only Crenna appeared in all 225 episodes.
The McCoys' farm had previously been owned by an uncle, Ben McCoy, who died. The former West Virginians join the Grange farm association and hire Pepino as a farmworker after he informs them that he had worked for Ben, serving as his "foreman" on the property. In the episode broadcast on January 8, 1962, Pepino becomes an American citizen and assumes 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 mischievous, crotchety old men, would sometimes quarrel, often about their games of checkers and horseshoes. Kate is friendly with the much older Flora McMichael, George's sister, and becomes involved with life in the community.
Though still in her twenties of age, Kate serves as a mother figure for Luke's younger siblings, Hassie and Little Luke. 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 opinions of Walter Brennan, such as two 1957 segments entitled "You Can't Cheat An Honest Man" with Joseph Kearns, later of the television series 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".
Perhaps one of the more memorable episodes, "The New Well", contrasts science with 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 use it as the site of a motel; but encouraged by his kindly wife, he soon develops an unexpected appreciation for the fundamental values and personal benefits of rural living.
In "Little Luke's Education", Amos confronts bigotry among the local children against hillbilly peoples such as the McCoys. In "Grampa's Private War", Amos gets so enthusiastic with patriotic fervor that he claims to have fought as a soldier commanded by Theodore Roosevelt in the Spanish–American War, but Walter Brennan was four years old when that war was fought during 1898. Then Amos is invited to speak at a Veterans Day ceremony.
Jon Lormer was cast seven times as an actor for The Real McCoys during 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 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. During 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 later as the actor portraying a Maytag repairman for television commercials 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". 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" four years later coincidentally became the title of Brennan's next ABC sitcom, The Tycoon, with his co-actor 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 as an ABC series, Nolan quit the series due to a contract dispute and was written out of the remaining scripts: her character of Kate died, but details were never given. Hassie left home to attend college, and Little Luke joined the United States Army. For the final season she appeared only in the first episode—he never did. Amos McCoy did not appear in many episodes. Luke was a widower, and many of the stories concerned 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 series The Munsters.

Episodes

Season 1 (1957–58)

Season 2 (1958–59)

Season 3 (1959–60)

Season 4 (1960–61)

Season 5 (1961–62)

Season 6 (1962–63)

Broadcast syndication

For several seasons beginning in 1962, starting with the ABC episodes, the series was broadcast weekday mornings as reruns by CBS with the title The McCoys. It was then syndicated. Its current distributor SFM Entertainment showed the series weekday afternoons broadcast by the former Nashville Network during the late 1990s into 2000. The series is currently shown at 6:00 and 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time, Mondays through Fridays, on COZI TV. With the morning reruns, the beginning theme was played in instrumental form.
The series is remembered as The Real McCoys, except for the CBS season and 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." An alternate ending theme used these lyrics: "Sharing each other's sorrows, enjoying each other's joys/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!"

Home media

Infinity Entertainment released the first four seasons of The Real McCoys on DVD between 2007 and 2010.
On May 7, 2012, it was announced that Inception Media Group had acquired the rights to the series. 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 happened, and the rights to the series' 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 release, available exclusively from Amazon.com.
DVD name of
episodes		Release date
Complete Season 139July 24, 2007
July 24, 2012
Complete Season 239October 30, 2007
November 13, 2012
Complete Season 339June 17, 2008
August 26, 2014
Complete Season 439June 29, 2010
August 26, 2014
Complete Season 529August 26, 2014
Complete Season 639August 26, 2014
The Complete Series224August 29, 2017

Ratings