January 26, 1979: "The Dukes of Hazzard" Premieres

Left to right: Denver Pyle, John Schneider,

Catherine Bach, Ben Jones, Tom Wopat.

The dog, Flash, was actually Rosco's, not the Dukes',

so I don't know what he's doing in the picture.

January 26, 1979: The Dukes of Hazzard premieres on CBS. The idea must have been, "What if the Bandit from Smokey and the Bandit was part of a family on the outskirts of the law? And, what if the lawmen chasing them were, like Sheriff Justice, also on the outskirts of the law?"

The setting is fictional Hazzard County. Although the State is never spoken aloud, the license plates and the highway signs clearly show that it's in Georgia. The 1st 5 episodes were filmed in October 1978 in the Georgia towns of Covington and Conyers. CBS decided to stop production long enough to move filming to a back lot in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, California, where it was filmed for the remainder of its run.

Basically, it's the story of two old men and their retinues. And neither of them was played by a Southerner. Denver Pyle, from Colorado, was Jesse Duke. Sorrell Booke, a very cultured man from Buffalo who wore a fat suit for the character, was Jefferson Davis Hogg. The men had been friends in their youth, and both "ran moonshine": They illegally transported whiskey across County and State Lines.

Somewhere down the line, the men began a feud. Jesse stuck to his old ways, while J.D. went into politics, where he could use the law to his advantage. In other words, J.D., now County Commissioner and known as "Boss Hogg," was legal on the surface, but immoral beneath; while Jesse was a moral man who nonetheless still ran 'shine.

Everyone else who lived on the Duke farm called him "Uncle Jesse." That usually included Luke Duke (Tom Wopat), Bo Duke (John Schneider), and Daisy Duke (Catherine Bach). Daisy had a regular job as a waitress at a bar, The Boar's Head; while Bo and Luke (Wopat was always listed in the credits first, and I think Luke was the older one, but when they were mentioned together, Bo was always mentioned first) were professional auto racers, using their 1969 Dodge Charger, a bright orange thing with the doors welded shut (for in-race safety), a black number 01 on each side, and a Confederate flag on the roof. The car was named for the South's greatest hero: The General Lee.

(A lot of cars were wrecked within the show, and a lot were wrecked for it. Through the course of the show, an estimated 309 Chargers were used, while, as of January 26, 2022, 17 are still known to exist, in various states of repair.)

Let me put this into context: The late 1970s and the early 1980s were kind of a lull between the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the revival of Southern evangelicalism in the early 1990s. People objecting to racist things did not tend to include the Confederate flag among them. The rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd could take the stage with a huge flag behind them, and Birmingham native comedian Fannie Flagg could wear a T-shirt with that flag on it (as a pun on her stage name) when she was a panelist on Match Game, and there was hardly any objection. In the 1990s, when racist hate crimes went back on the rise, it became an issue again.

Hogg was aided by Rosco P. Coltrane (James Best), the Sheriff, who basically got his job because his sister was Hogg's never-seen, but said to be even fatter, wife, Lulu. Rosco wasn't really a bad guy, really did want to uphold the law, and wasn't crazy about being roped into Hogg's get-rich-quick schemes. In comparison to The Honeymooners, he was the Norton to Hogg's Ralph Kramden.

He was not, however, beyond using beyond-his-powers means to try to catch the Dukes. His deputy -- for most of the show, Enos Strait (Sonny Shroyer) didn't like that, and would sometimes aid the Dukes, partly due to his crush on Daisy. Also frequently aided the Dukes, especially when "The General" needed work, was mechanic Cooter Davenport (Ben Jones, later elected to Congress from Georgia).

In the Spring of 1982, as filming was about to begin on Season 5, Wopat and Schneider did not report. They thought they were being cheated out of not just salary, but royalties from merchandising from the show (which was more than most non-cartoon shows had at the time).

CBS called their bluff, and signed Byron Cherry to play Coy Duke, and Christopher Mayer to play Vance Duke. It was written into the show that these previously unseen cousins had left the farm in 1976, and had returned while Bo and Luke were off on the NASCAR circuit.

The ratings went into the tank. It didn't help the NBC had begun airing Knight Rider, airing it in direct competition on Friday nights, and promoting it in commercials by saying that KITT had replaced the General Lee as the coolest car on television. Which it had.

CBS caved, and 1 episode was filmed with all 4 "Duke Boys," and then Coy and Vance were never seen nor mentioned again. The show ran a 6th and 7th season, but the damage was done: It only slightly recovered in the ratings, and was canceled in 1985.

Here's where it gets complicated: As I said, everyone else who lived on the Duke farm called Jesse "Uncle Jesse." But they also called each other "cousin." And they all had the surname Duke. Which means that, out of Bo, Luke, Daisy, Coy and Vance, they were all (presumably first) cousins of each other. But none of them was a sibling to any of the others. And they all called Jesse "Uncle," not "Dad" (or "Pop," or "Pa," or any variation thereof).

What this means is, Jesse had to be 1 of at least 6 brothers: Himself, a brother whose son was Bo, a brother whose son was Luke, a brother whose daughter was Daisy, a brother whose son was Coy, and a brother whose son was Vance.

And yet, we never saw any of these other uncles, whom any of the now-grown kids could call "Dad." And we never saw any of the aunts. Come to think of it, we have no idea if Jesse himself was ever married or had kids. (Nor did any of the cousins ever marry. Date, yes; marry, no.) Nor did we see any other cousins: Was each of these 5 cousins an only child? What does the Duke family tree look like?

It's best not to put too much thought into all of this. The show was silly escapism. Sure, the Dukes got into trouble, but they weren't hardened criminals. They weren't mean. They weren't afraid to throw a few punches in self-defense, and stand up for those who couldn't stand up for themselves.

And retroactive objection to the flag on the car's roof gets us nowhere. The Dukes weren't racist. Says it right there in the opening line, sung by country legend Waylon Jennings, who was also the show's narrator, a.k.a. "The Balladeer": "Just two good old boys, never meanin' no harm." Besides, taking a show off a network is a meaningless act, unless you can get Best Buy, Barnes & Noble and Amazon to stop selling the DVDs of the show. Dropping the show from a network's lineup does no one any good.

Besides, even Boss Hogg, the show's villain, didn't go out of his way to be racist. Nor did Rosco -- and, dagnabbit, he was a Southern Sheriff! I don't think he ever even encountered a black character on the show, let alone arrested one on a bogus charge. (He saved that for the Dukes.)

And, as an online friend of mine, Paul Louis, pointed out, "Booke was one of those actors who really was 100% the opposite in real life of his signature character, and smart enough to know a villain like Boss Hogg needed limitations had a clause in his contract that Boss's schemes couldn't involve murder or drug/narcotic dealing."

Now, if you want to make a point that the show objectified women, then, you may have something. Indeed, because Catherine Bach often wore them as Daisy, women's jeans cut very short became known as "Daisy Dukes."

I'd like to clear one more thing up: For years, I thought actress Catherine Bach and Barbara Bach -- the latter played Anya Amasova in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, and married ex-Beatle Ringo Starr -- were sisters. They weren't: Catherine's birth name is Catherine Bachman, while Barbara's is Barbara Goldbach.)

*

For all the problems with DOH, it was the funniest, and certainly the least ridiculous, of the 3 new TV shows premiering on this night. NBC was then doing very badly, and it premiered the ridiculous Turnabout. John Schuck (previously a robot cop on Holmes & Yoyo, and later a Klingon Ambassador in the Star Trek films) played sportswriter Sam Alston, and Sharon Gless (later a human cop on Cagney & Lacey) played his wife Penny, a cosmetics executive.

A magic statue caused their spirits to switch bodies, but with the writers being dumb, hilarity did not ensue. The show was canceled after 7 episodes.

Also debuting that night was Hello, Larry. While this was hardly the worst show they did in the Disco Period, Johnny Carson's mockery of it on The Tonight Show made it symbolic of this. It was one of the few shows the Peacock Network debuted in this era that made it to a 2nd season.

This was the 3rd time since he left M*A*S*H in 1975 that a network made the mistake of thinking that audiences loved McLean Stevenson, when the truth was that they loved Henry Blake.

*

January 26, 1979 was a Friday. This was also the day that former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller died under dubious circumstances. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball was out of season. Football season had ended 5 days earlier, when the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XIII. There were 8 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks lost to the Phoenix Suns, 108-107 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.

* The New Jersey Nets beat the New Orleans Hornets, 110-104 at the Rutgers Athletic Center (now the Jersey Mike's Arena) in Piscataway, New Jersey.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the Boston Celtics, 119-106 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

* The San Diego Clippers beat the Chicago Bulls, 107-91 at the Chicago Stadium.

* The Kansas City Kings beat the Washington Bullets, 142-128 at the Kemper Arena (now the Hy-Vee Arena) in Kansas City. Otis Birdsong of the Kings led all scorers on the night, with 39 points.

* And the San Antonio Spurs beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 125-108 at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio.

* The Denver Nuggets beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 119-107 at the McNichols Arena in Denver.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Golden State Warriors, 105-96 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

There were 2 games in the NHL. The Atlanta Flames beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-2 at The Omni in Atlanta. And the Vancouver Canucks beat the St. Louis Blues, 4-1 at the Pacific Coliseum in Denver.

And there were 2 games in the World Hockey Association. The Birmingham Bulls beat the New England Whalers, 5-4 at the Birmingham-Jefferson County Civic Center (now the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex). And the Cincinnati Stingers beat the Edmonton Oilers, 5-2 at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton.