TV
'The Beverly Hillbillies' has an unlikely premise, but the 1960s sitcom remains a fan favorite. While we last saw the Clampetts on the series in the 1970s, we can't help but wonder what they would be worth today.
Published on July 18, 2023
2 min readThe premise of The Beverly Hillbillies was pretty simple. Jed Clampett and his family left their monetary struggles behind in Missouri and moved to California after Jed shot a hole in the ground and discovered oil. The fish-out-of-water tale delighted fans for years before the series was canceled. It was a well-known fact that the Clampetts were extremely wealthy, but just how rich were they back in the 1960s when the series ran, and what would they be worth today?
How much money did the Clampetts get for Jed’s discovery?
When season 1 of The Beverly Hillbillies opened, Jed Clampett’s fortune was worth $25 million. The series premiered in 1962. When the show ended in 1971, the Clampetts’ wealth had grown exponentially. The family was reportedly worth $100 million when the screen went black.
$25 million in 1962 is equal to over $200 million in today’s money. The $100 million the family closed the series with would be equal to about $750 million in today’s money. That doesn’t take into account the interest paid on investments, real estate holdings, or any additional business profits. So how wealthy would Jed be today?
The Clampetts would be billionaires today
The accidentally wealthy family didn’t just have an oil field in their portfolio. They also owned other property. The Clampett’s house was costly. The home has a long and storied history in Hollywood. Known as the Chartwell Mansion, the home was built in the 1930s. An engineer commissioned the estate, but according to Galerie, his wife found the house too ostentatious and refused to live there.
It was sold to a famous hotel mogul before falling into the hands of a television executive. According to Realtor, it was sold in 1986 for more than $13 million. The mansion changed hands again in 2019 when Lachlan Murdoch purchased Chartwell Mansion for $150 million, demolishing previous sale records.
Even the house would be pocket money to the Clampetts today, insists Fortune. After running the numbers and considering the price of crude oil in 2010, the publication theorizes that the Clampetts would have become billionaires several times over, as long as you don’t factor in a direct-to-VHS movie that alleged Jed had lost the family fortune to a crooked banker. Fortune alleges Jed would have been worth $7.5 billion in 2010 and even more today. That means if Jed Clampett were real, he would be just one of 724 billionaires in the United States. If you account for the TV movie, which most fans do not, Jed headed home to the Ozark Mountains in Missouri with nothing.
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