Edgar Buchanan

William Edgar Buchanan II (March 20, 1903  – April 4, 1979) was an American actor with a long career in both film and television. He is most familiar today as Uncle Joe Carson from the Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, and The Beverly Hillbillies television sitcoms of the 1960s. Biography Early life The son of Dr. and Mrs. William Edgar Buchanan, he was born in Humansville, Missouri, on March 20, 1903. He moved with his family to Oregon when he was seven. In 1928, he earned a DDS degree from North Pacific College School of Dentistry, which later became Oregon Health & Science University School of Dentistry. His wife Mildred (1907–1987) and he, classmates in dental school, were married in 1928, the year he graduated. They had one child, a son named Buck. In 1939, they moved from Eugene, Oregon, to Altadena, California, where they relocated their dental practice. He joined the Pasadena Playhouse as an actor. He appeared in his first film in 1939, at the age of 36, after which he turned his dentistry practice over to his wife. He was a member of Theta Chi fraternity and a Freemason. Career Buchanan appeared in more than 100 films, including Texas (1941), in which he played a dentist and appeared with William Holden and Glenn Ford and later in Penny Serenade (1941) with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, Tombstone, the Town Too Tough to Die (1942), The Talk of the Town (1942) with Ronald Colman and Jean Arthur, The Man from Colorado (1948), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), Shane (1953), She Couldn't Say No (1954), Ride the High Country (1962) with Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea, McLintock! (1963) with John Wayne, Move Over, Darling (1963) with Doris Day and James Garner, and Benji (1974).