Monday, September 19, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Chasing a 'Hillbillies' dream

Baer hopes to capitalize on Jethro image with casino project

Max Baer Jr. talks Sept. 1 in a Carson City restaurant about plans to build a hotel-casino with a "Beverly Hillbillies" theme. SPECIAL TO THE REVIEW-JOURNAL Two of the TV hillbillies who struck oil on the show and gold in the ratings, Max Baer Jr. and Donna Douglas, go through a bit of horseplay on the set in Hollywood in May 1963. Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Max Baer Jr. envisions a hotel and casino filled with ideas and images made popular by "The Beverly Hillbillies." SPECIAL TO THE REVIEW-JOURNAL

CARSON CITY

Here at Bodine's restaurant, Max Baer Jr. cheerfully tells three men sitting at an adjacent table to wait before they leave so they can hear his joke.

It doesn't matter that they haven't uttered a word to him. They have listened to every word that the boisterous Baer has been saying for the past half-hour between bites of his lunch.

To them, Baer, 67, still is Jethro Bodine, the dimwitted young man from the hit 1960s TV show "The Beverly Hillbillies."

It has been three hair transplants since Baer played Jethro, but there can be no mistake in a restaurant called Bodine's just who this man is. Bodine's is owned by one of Baer's former Lake Tahoe neighbors.

His joke is slightly off-color, and the men laugh.

"Laughter is so important in life," Baer said. "You look on television and see what is happening in Louisiana. They don't even know how many people are dead. Laughter is the only thing that saves me. If I laugh or make other people laugh, it makes me feel good."

Baer vows to break ground by next June on an $80 million, 240-room hotel-casino somewhere in the Carson City-Douglas County area that will be called Jethro's Beverly Hillbillies' Mansion and Casino. He has been trying with no success since 1989 to build a casino based on the TV show theme.

Jethro's would include a 200-foot flaming oil derrick at the entrance to the 30,000-square-foot casino and its 800 slot machines and 16 game tables. He also wants a movie theater and restaurants based on "Beverly Hillbillies" themes.

"I'll bus tables, bartend and deal," he said. "I will drive the limousine to the airport. If they don't tip me, I'll throw their baggage in the street. It will be fun for me. I want people to go home and tell their friends that Jethro waited on them."

Baer readily acknowledges that his business is small by Las Vegas standards, but he predicts he and Carson City both will reap financial benefits if the "Beverly Hillbillies" theme can attract people that otherwise would avoid the area.

"We won't get 10 million people here. But if we get 150,000 people, it will be something that Carson City never has seen."

He acquired the licensing rights for the "Beverly Hillbillies" trademark and the TV show characters from CBS in 1991. Baer must pay CBS royalties on a share of the income he generates.

Although the show went off the air in 1971, Baer maintains that Jethro, Granny, Uncle Jed and Elly Mae remain alive in many Americans' imaginations.

Reruns of the show regularly are broadcast on cable television. More than 1,100 Beverly Hillbillies slot machines have been placed in casinos across the country.

Baer says he does at least two interviews with radio, TV or newspaper reporters every day who wax nostalgically about "The Beverly Hillbillies."

The interview pace has increased since the movie "Cinderella Man" hit theaters last spring. The highlight of the movie is the 1935 prize fight in which his father, Max Baer, lost the world heavyweight championship to James Braddock.

Director Ron Howard portrays his father as a brute of a man who relished killing a boxer in the ring. Nothing could be further from the truth, Baer Jr. says.

He said his father was so upset about the death that he lost four of his next six fights and felt terrible about it until his own death in 1959.

The elder Baer even wore a large Star of David on his boxing trunks during the Depression in honor of his Jewish father and to let Hitler know of his heritage. In one of his best fights, he knocked out German Max Schmeling in 1933.

In watching the movie, Baer Jr. said, he hardly could see the Star of David because it deliberately was made small. He contends that Howard wanted to hide the truth because it might have given viewers a more positive image of his father.

"Ronnie Howard," he said. "I have lost all respect for him."

His father died just before the younger Baer struck black gold on "The Beverly Hillbillies." In his heyday in Hollywood, Baer Jr. was something of a playboy, dating actresses such as Sharon Tate, Pam Greer and even Donna Douglas, who played Elly Mae on "The Beverly Hillbillies." He married once, but the union ended in divorce.

Like a lot of actors whose character is bigger than life, Baer could find no acting jobs after "The Beverly Hillbillies" ended its nine-year run in 1971.

"When you become so successful as a caricature, how is anybody going to cast you as a priest?" he asked. "How is somebody going to give a confession to Jethro? So I decided to hire myself."

In the 1970s, Baer became a movie producer, writer and director.

He made "Macon County Line" and "Ode to Billy Joe." Made for next to nothing, the movies were surprise hits, and Baer suddenly was rich. He retired at age 42 in 1979.

These days he spends much of his time driving his Lincoln Navigator around the Carson City area, talking with local politicians and developers about his casino plans.

He showed up in Sparks last month and endorsed Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., when Gibbons announced his candidacy for governor.

Baer, who owns homes in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe, was struck with the idea of a Beverly Hillbillies casino 16 years ago while driving along the Lake Tahoe north shore and spying the "Bonanza" theme park.

Baer figured if someone could capitalize on the fame of "Bonanza," he could make a buck from "The Beverly Hillbillies."

"I was bored," he said. "At first I thought about opening a little joint at Lake Tahoe."

It took two years to secure the licensing rights. A move to put a Beverly Hillbillies casino in Reno failed in 1999. Baer blamed owners of a Reno shopping mall of derailing his plans.

Last month he received a gaming license as a 10 percent owner of the Beverly Hillbillies Gambler Casino in North Las Vegas.

But the 2501 E. Lake Mead Blvd. business consists of only 30 slot machines and a restaurant. Baer has visited it only twice.

In 2003, he and partner John King paid $4.3 million for a closed Carson City Wal-Mart store and its parking lot. The plan was to build Jethro's Beverly Hillbillies' Mansion and Casino there.

Although the area is zoned for commercial enterprises, including gaming, the shopping center's private restrictions forbid gaming enterprises.

The Glenbrook Co. and J.C. Penney Co. have opposed attempts by Baer to remove the restrictions. And Shelley Aldean, a Carson City supervisor who represents the Glenbrook Co. as an administrator, opposes his Beverly Hillbillies plan.

Aldean, who said she would recuse herself from any vote on the matter, said there are too many casinos already in Carson City.

"We need retail stores," Aldean said. "We don't need gaming."

So Baer is scurrying around Douglas County, just south of Carson City, looking for casino property. He knows that even if everything falls into place, he will be a few months shy of 70 before people walk into the casino.

"It's kind of like deer hunting," he said. "You get a license, get a rifle. You go out where there is supposed to be deer. Great hunters go out and don't come back with a deer. I have been hunting this buck longer than I was on the television series. One of two things will happen. I will get it done, or I will die. I won't stop until they bury me."