Ryan Was Nearly A Decade Younger Than Granny
The strange thing about Irene Ryan playing Granny is that in 1962, the first year of the show, Ryan was only 59. However, Granny, who has strong feelings about the Civil War and other 19th-century events, is supposed to be in her 80s. She’s Jed’s mother-in-law after all, who is no spring chicken himself, as Granny would say. Even by the time the show ended in 1971, Ryan was not yet 70, still nowhere near Granny’s age, who would have been in her 90s. To make Ryan appear decades older, production applied a significant amount of makeup (via WGTC).
Wrinkles, shadows, and, of course, a wig, were all added to Ryanto make her appear much older than she actually was. The Beverly Hillbillies’ makeup department uses the same techniques that would later be used in The Golden Girls. This makeup and costume worked wonders. On the 1960s and 1970s American television sets, it was almost impossible to tell that anything had been done to the actor. Now, with updated graphics and HD, some of the cracks are a little easier to see in Ryan’s makeup, but it’s not distracting in the least.
Ryan Found Success On Broadway After The Beverly Hillbillies
Irene’s Turn In Pippin Earned Her A Tony Nomination
Once The Beverly Hillbillies ended, Irene Ryan essentially retired from acting in films and television. Instead, she chose to focus on theater, harkening back to her stage roots, as Ryan said in the El Paso Times,
“Nothing will ever take the place of the live stage for an actor, but television’s here to stay, and it’s about the greatest entertainment medium we’ve ever known.”
She ended up appearing in the Bob Fosse Broadway musical Pippin, where she played the grandmother, Berthe. Ryan earned a Tony Award nomination in 1973 for Best Featured Actress In a Musical to add to her two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Series in 1963 and 1964 for The Beverly Hillbillies. Irene’s performance of the song “No Time at All” was celebrated and became a huge hit. The New York Times said about her performance,
“In ‘Pippin,’ as those who have seen the show know, she was on stage for only about ten minutes and stopped the show cold. John Rubinstein was left on stage after she exited unable to speak his next line until her applause diminished. “
This was at 70 years old, and Ryan was quite diminutive as well, standing at 5’2″. Yet, she hung around with the stagehands after her part in Pippin, standing long after she needed to and dealing with the chaos of what goes on behind the curtain at Broadway shows. She had the energy of people half her age. Thanks to her investments and savings throughout her life, Ryan had a net worth of $1 million at the time of her passing on April 26, 1973, at the age of 70. She had acted right up until the time of her death.
Ryan suffered a stroke on stage while performing and had flown back to LA, where she passed. The causes of death were listed as glioblastoma and arteriosclerotic heart disease (via Beaver County Times). Irene Ryan loved acting, maybe more than anything, and the fact she did it right up to her death is a tenacity that Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies would have respected.
