Harriet MacGibbon had a long and distinguished stage career in New York before entering the movies and television. She studied a variety of crafts including voice, piano and harp. Unlike her stage roles, her roles on the big and little screens were usually that of of snooty society ladies, her best-known role probably being Mrs. Margaret Drysdale, the social-climbing wife of backwoods millionaire Jed Clampett's banker, in the long-running hit The Beverly Hillbillies (1962).