Max Baer, Jr. was the son of former heavyweight champion boxer Max Baer and, like his dad, was a strapping fellow by the time he began acting in a variety of TV shows that included westerns "Cheyenne" and "Maverick" and detective shows such as "Hawaiian Eye" and "77 Sunset Strip."
His big break came as Jethro Bodine on that silliest of sitcoms "The Beverly Hillbillies." Silly but hilarious, this show ran from 1962 to 1971. His role must surely have been modeled after the comic strip figure Li'l Abner. The character was a dim-witted yet friendly yokel of considerable size and strength. The storyline in general was about the misadventures of a backwoods Appalachian family that struck oil and decided to "move to Bev-er-ly--Hills, that is" and how the neuvo riche family interacted with the California sophisticates there.
Baer was so thoroughly typecast in that role that when the show closed, he had severe difficulty getting other parts. Instead, he turned to producing and, in addition, got into the casino/gaming business.
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