Thursday, September 11, 2014

The Poetry of Quirt Manly and The Beverly Hillbillies (January 1, 1964)

In this episode, Granny thinks that Quirt Manly—a rugged and heroic TV cowboy—would be a perfect match for her granddaughter Elly May, so she invites him for a visit, only to discover that the real-life Quirt is not the manly man he plays on TV. Nope. He's super short. He's scared of horses. He can't shoot. And what he likes to do, as he explains to Elly, is "make up poems for girls like you." Of particular note, Quirt is played by Henry Gibson, who had recited poetry on The Jack Paar Tonight Show and on The Dick Van Dyke Show and who appears here to be further fashioning the character of The Poet, which he would eventually play on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.

If you want to skip right to Quirt's poems, start around 16:45.

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