Why Billie Jo And Bobbie Jo Kept Changing Faces On ‘Petticoat Junction’

For seven seasons on CBS, from September 1963 to the spring of 1970, three Bradley girls splashed in the Hooterville water tower in the opening credits of Petticoat Junction, and their names all ended in Jo. Most viewers remember one of them changing faces, and many remember it as Bobbie Jo. The sister who really went through three actresses was Billie Jo, the blonde. Jeannine Riley played her first, Gunilla Hutton took over for a single season, and Meredith MacRae finished the run.

Bobbie Jo had two actresses, Pat Woodell and then Lori Saunders, which is probably why the two roles blur together in memory. Only Betty Jo never changed, and the redheaded tomboy was played by Linda Kaye Henning, whose father, Paul Henning, created the show. That makes six actresses for three sisters, and each departure had its own reason.

Which Bradley Sister Really Had Three Faces?

Billie Jo very nearly had four. Before the show premiered, a young contract player named Sharon Tate posed in publicity photos as Billie Jo alongside the other two girls. According to Remind Magazine, Filmways producer Martin Ransohoff, who had signed Tate in 1963, decided she did not yet have enough experience for such a central role, and the part went to Jeannine Riley. A rumor has followed the story for decades that Tate was dropped over racy photos, but no reliable source backs it up.

Riley played the boy-crazy oldest sister in the first two seasons, 1963 to 1965. Hutton had the role for the 1965 to 1966 season, and MacRae carried it from 1966 until the show left the air. Over those years Billie Jo grew from a dizzy blonde into a more grounded young woman, while Bobbie Jo went the other way, from the family bookworm to the comic scatterbrain. The writers, it seems, shaped each sister around whoever was wearing her petticoat. So why did both original sisters leave at the same time?

Why Did The First Billie Jo And Bobbie Jo Both Leave In 1965?

Riley and Woodell walked away from the Shady Rest Hotel together at the end of season two, and for different reasons. Wikipedia and SlashFilm agree that Riley left in 1965 to try for a movie career. She did land films, including Jerry Lewis’s The Big Mouth and Electra Glide in Blue, but the country image followed her. Years later she told The Indianapolis Star, as MeTV recounted, that her rural roles “paid the rent,” but “it’s tough to get out of that rut.”

Woodell wanted to sing. She had performed on the show with her TV sisters as the Ladybugs, a Beatles spoof that even turned up on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. She left the series after two years “because she wanted to return to singing,” her widower, Vern McDade, told the Associated Press in 2015. She toured with Jack Benny and cut a single for Colpix Records in 1965, but the hit never came. Lori Saunders, born Linda Marie Hines in Kansas City, stepped in as Bobbie Jo. With one Linda already on the call sheet, she changed her first name to Lori that fall.

What Happened To The Second Billie Jo After One Season?

Gunilla Hutton, a Swedish-born singer raised in Fort Worth, appeared in 23 of the 34 episodes of season three and was gone when season four began. Neither she nor the producers ever gave a public reason that holds up, and the various accounts online contradict each other, so it is fairest to say the show simply moved on. Meredith MacRae, the daughter of Gordon and Sheila MacRae, had asked in 1965 to be written out of My Three Sons, where she played Sally, the girl Mike Douglas married. She signed with CBS in 1966 and stayed as Billie Jo for the last four seasons.

Hutton landed on her feet in an unexpected way. Both she and Riley were part of the early cast of Hee Haw when it premiered in 1969, and when Riley moved on, it was Hutton who took over her slot. The official Hee Haw site notes that she had “stepped into Jeannine’s shoes once before” as Billie Jo. As Nurse Goodbody, opposite Archie Campbell’s doctor, she stayed for more than two decades, which is why she appears in our look at the surviving Hee Haw cast. While the blonde and brunette roles kept changing, one sister never did.

How Did Paul Henning’s Daughter Outlast Them All?

Paul Henning, who had already created The Beverly Hillbillies, built Petticoat Junction around his old friend Bea Benaderet. “He wrote the series for Bea Benaderet,” Linda Henning told the Los Angeles Times. He did not plan to cast his own daughter. According to Toluca Lake Magazine, it was Benaderet who saw Linda in a neighborhood play and pushed for her. “Paul, why in the world won’t you let your daughter try out for Betty Jo?” Linda recalled Benaderet asking.

Her father worried about cries of nepotism, so she was billed as Linda Kaye for the first five seasons. “By this clever maneuver, we fooled absolutely no one,” she told the Shreveport Journal in 1965. “At home, I was Linda Henning, his daughter and the apple of his eye,” she said in another interview. “On set, I was Linda Kaye, a professional actress who was expected to show up prepared and do a good job.” She appeared in all but a handful of the show’s 222 episodes and married her on-screen husband, Mike Minor, in real life in 1968. The heaviest loss came that same year, when Benaderet died of lung cancer on October 13, 1968, at 62. “It was terrible. The last few shows we knew she was very ill,” Henning said. June Lockhart joined as Dr. Janet Craig for the final two seasons.

Where Are The Bradley Girls Today?

Two of the six actresses have died. Meredith MacRae died of complications from brain cancer on July 14, 2000, at her home in Manhattan Beach, California, at 56. Pat Woodell died of cancer on September 29, 2015, at her home in Fallbrook, California, at 71. Our full rundown of the Petticoat Junction stars still alive covers the rest of the cast.

The other four are still with us. Jeannine Riley is 86, and in 2020 she published The Bolder Woman: It’s About Time, a book urging women to chase their dreams at any age. Lori Saunders, now 85, retired from acting in 1980. Before she did, she worked alongside Riley for the first time on Sherwood Schwartz’s 1973 Western sitcom Dusty’s Trail, a Gilligan’s Island knockoff starring Bob Denver. “It was the same show, just no coconuts,” Saunders joked. Gunilla Hutton is 82. So is Linda Kaye Henning, the one Bradley girl who never had to be introduced twice. “Even today,” she has said, “when I see a cast or crew member, it’s like home week.”