Most of us have at least heard of ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’, a wildly popular television show that retains a devoted fan following and averaged 19 million weekly viewers during its 1979 to 1985 run. It followed the adventures of the Duke family who, while fighting a corrupt system, often found themselves at odds with the local authorities. The family consisted of cousins, Bo, Luke and Daisy Duke who had all been orphaned as children and were ultimately raised by their firm yet loving Uncle Jesse. The show was a lot of fluff and fun but did attempt to remind us of some good values, such as don’t take anything that isn’t yours, family comes first and respect others.
(Dukes of Hazzard Creator Gy Waldron in 2013)
The idea for The Dukes came from Kentucky-born Gy Waldron. He combined several people and places from his life into a fictional tale that Hollywood producers, who were used to catering to the tastes of L.A. socialites and New Yorkers alike, didn’t think much of. The town was inspired by his own Kentucky hometown of Falmouth, several young men who used to hang around garages became inspirations for Bo and Luke, and Rosco and Boss Hogg represented a crooked sheriff and commissioner he was familiar with from a South Georgia town, which was never specifically identified.
When it came time for Waldron to choose where he would like to place his fictional Hazzard, he decided he wanted it to be in a place like a town he had visited when he and a friend of his sometimes went on rock climbing trips. That town happened to be Chatsworth. The reason? It was mountainous and had a rich moonshine past that tied in nicely with the Dukes’ family history. Thus, the town was ultimately placed in the state of Georgia thanks to Gy’s familiarity with Chatsworth.
(David Hofestede interviewed Waldron and reveals his findings for Hazzard’s location in his book ‘The Dukes of Hazzard, The Unofficial Companion’.)
The fact that Waldron envisioned Hazzard either in or near Murray County is more evident in the in the movie, ‘Moonrunners’, which was also a Waldron project and a predecessor to the Dukes of Hazzard. As the movie began, one of the brothers (instead of cousins, in this case) had just been released from the nearby Pickens County jail and later, there was talk of running a load of moonshine ‘straight up Hwy 411 to the state line’. You can catch clips of Moonrunners by typing the name of the movie in the search bar at YouTube.
(Moonrunners contained two cast members that would later go on to star in The Dukes of Hazzard. Ben Jones (Cooter) who played a Federal Agent from Chicago, and Waylon Jennings, who served as a balladeer both in this movie and later, on the show. Another interesting tidbits is the fact that the boys’ uncle in this movie was also named ‘Uncle Jesse’.)
Not only did Chatsworth have a part in putting Hazzard in Georgia, an incident in Murray County also served as inspiration for early episode of the ‘Dukes’. The episode was called ‘Mary Kaye’s Baby’ and resulted from an experience in which Waldron and a friend of his picked up a female hitchhiker while visiting the area.. In the episode, a pregnant Hazzard native by the name of Mary Kay Porter passes through on her way to Florida and Bo and Luke stop to give her a ride. In the process, they discover she’s carrying a large sum of cash belonging to her boyfriend, who was involved in organized crime. She planned to use the money to raise their child, but a top crime boss shows up on the trail of the cash. The Dukes then find themselves trying to keep Mary Kaye safe until she can have the baby and proceed to Florida.
Of course as in any telling of a ‘true’ story, a fair amount of fiction was thrown into the mix to make for an interesting episode. Yes, Gy did claim to have picked up a suitcase carrying pregnant hitchhiker from a mountain road, along with her young daughter. The woman was eight months pregnant and on the run from her abusive husband in Oklahoma and had set out on foot in the middle of the night bound for her sister’s house in Florida. Gy and his friend drove them to the Atlanta bus station and offered her the money to buy tickets for herself and her daughter to Jacksonville. The part about the lady being found with a large sum of embezzled money was, however, completely fabricated.
If you find yourself wondering how anyone traveling from Oklahoma to Florida would have ended up on foot on a Murray County mountain road, I assure you that I, too, am still scratching my head over that one.
(Description of the episode ‘Mary-Kaye’s Baby’ and Commentary revealing that it originated from a Chatsworth incident. ‘Mary-Kaye’s Baby’ is also well know among Dukes enthusiasts as being the only episode in the entire run of the series in which their orange car, The General Lee, did NOT make an appearance.)
So if you ever decide to revisit The Dukes, or visit them for the first time, and appreciate the fact that the folks or the description of the county might just remind you a little bit of home, well, now you know the reason.