Petticoat Junction: Season 04 (1966)

Just as Jeannine Riley was replaced by Gunilla Hutton in the role of Billie Jo Bradley at the beginning of Petticoat Junction's third season, Hutton herself is replaced in the same role by Meredith Mac Rae at the outset of season four. However, the rest of the series' familiar cast remains intact: Bea Benaderet as widowed hotel owner Kate Bradley, Edgar Buchanan as Kate's lovably lazy uncle Joe Carson, and Linda Kaye Henning and Lori Saunders as Billie Jo's sisters (and Kate's daughters) Betty Jo and Bobbie Jo. In another cast change, Elvia Allman succeeds Virginia Sale in the role of Selma Plout, Kate Bradley's perennial social rival; likewise, Lynette Winter takes over for Susan Walther as Selma's daughter Henrietta. And on a sadder note, Smiley Burnette makes his final series appearance as Charley Pratt, brakeman of the Hooterville Cannonball, in the episode "That Was the Night That Was"; Burnette died just before filming for the season wrapped, on February 16, 1967. The fourth-season cast alteration that had the longest-ranging effect on Petticoat Junction occurs in the second episode of the season, in which handsome young crop duster Steve Elliott (Mike Minor) crash-lands his plane just outside Kate Bradley's Shady Rest Hotel. For the rest of season four, all three of Kate's daughters (not to mention Henrietta Plout!) would vie for Steve's affections -- though as it turns out the following season, Betty Jo has had the inside track all along. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi