Green Acres is an American sitcom starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor as a couple who
move from New York City to a rural country farm. Produced by Filmways as a sister show
to Petticoat Junction, the series was first broadcast on CBS, from September 15, 1965
to April 27, 1971. Receiving solid ratings during its six-year
run, Green Acres was cancelled in 1971 as part of the "rural purge" by CBS. The sitcom
has been in syndication and is available in DVD and VHS releases and is archived on YouTube.
In 1997, the two-part episode "A Star Named Arnold is Born" was ranked #59 on TV Guide's
100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.
Background Following the success of The Beverly Hillbillies
and Petticoat Junction, CBS offered producer Paul Henning another half-hour on the schedule
— with no pilot required. Henning encouraged colleague Jay Sommers to create a series for
the time slot. Sommers created the show based on his 1950 radio series, Granby's Green Acres.
The radio series, which lasted 13 episodes, had starred Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet
as a big-city family who move to the country. In pre-production, proposed titles were Country
Cousins and The Eddie Albert Show.
Premise Green Acres is about Oliver Wendell Douglas,
an erudite New York City attorney, acting on his dream to be a farmer, and Lisa Douglas,
his glamorous Hungarian wife, dragged unwillingly from an upscale New York condo and the city
life she adores to a ramshackle farm. The theme tune, as with those of the show's rural
cousins, explains the basic premise of the show. At the end of the opening sequence,
Albert and Gabor strike a pose in parody of Grant Wood's painting American Gothic. The
debut episode was a mockumentary about the decision to move to a rural area, anchored
by former ABC newscaster John Charles Daly. A few weeks after the show's debut, Albert
and Gabor returned the favor by appearing on What's My Line as that episode's Mystery
Guests, and publicly thanked Daly for helping to launch their series.
After the first episodes the series developed an absurdist world. Though there were still
many episodes that were standard 1960s sitcom fare, the show became notable for its surrealism
and satire. The show appealed to children through its slapstick, silliness, and shtick,
but adults were able to appreciate it on a different level.
Supporting characters The show is set in the same universe as Henning's
other rural television comedy, Petticoat Junction, featuring such picturesque towns as Hooterville,
Pixley, Crabwell Corners, and Stankwell Falls. As such, at times it shares some of the popular
characters from Petticoat Junction, including Joe Carson, Fred and Doris Ziffel, Newt Kiley,
and Floyd Smoot. Much of the humor derives from the Quixotic,
yet short-fused Oliver, who strives to make sense of his oddball surroundings. There seems
to be a dual perspective of reality: Oliver versus everyone else. The latter encompasses
the Hootervillians, Oliver's high-maintenance wife Lisa, and his affluent mother, who lampoons
him for his agricultural pipe-dreams. Such dual realism is at its best when everyone
but Oliver can see the TV screen credits, when he corrects Lisa's mangled mispronunciations
only to find that he is the only one in town with the correct usage, when all but Oliver
can translate Arnold the pig's grunts and snorts into English, etc. Among Oliver's ongoing
irritants are his makeshift, low-output electric power system, his outdoor telephone which
was installed atop a pole, and the Monroe brothers countless botched remodeling projects
which are rarely completed. Conversely, Oliver himself is subject to ribbing
by the townfolk when he performs farming chores dressed in a three-piece suit, and when he
launches into wide-eyed monologues about "the American farmer"- replete with a fife playing
"Yankee Doodle" in the background. The dishonest, oily salesman Mr. Haney, who
sold Oliver the Green Acres farm continues to con his easy "mark" in most episodes. Oliver's
naivete allows Haney to shamelessly exploit him financially. Haney, along with young,
glib farmhand Eb Dawson, scatterbrained county agent Hank Kimball, and general store owner
Sam Drucker make up the main supporting cast. Eb habitually addresses the Douglases as "Dad"
and "Mom", much to Oliver's objection. Recurring characters included the Douglases'
childless elderly neighbors, Fred and Doris Ziffel, who "adopted" a pig named Arnold as
their "son". Arnold understands English, lives indoors, and is pampered. He is an avid TV
watcher and a Western fan, who attends the local grade school. Only Oliver seems cognizant
that Arnold is just livestock, although he frequently slips and begins treating him as
a boy. Arnold makes regular appearances throughout the series, often visiting the Douglas home
to watch their TV. Another pair of recurring characters are two
quarrelsome carpenters called the Monroe Brothers, Alf and his "brother" Ralph. In the episode
that introduced them, Alf confessed that Ralph was actually his sister, and explained they
would not get jobs if people knew that she was a woman. The Monroes rarely finish projects,
and those they do complete are disasters. In one episode, after accidentally sawing
Sam Drucker's telephone line at the General Store, they splice it back together, although
backwards, causing Drucker to listen at the mouthpiece and talk into the receiver. Melton
left in 1970 to do Make Room For Granddaddy, so the writers developed an occasional subplot
that involved sister Ralph's attempts to win the affections of "Hanky" Kimball or some
other hapless Hooterville bachelor. Alf later returned for Ralph's failed wedding to Kimball.
{It was never revealed if "Ralph" and Kimball married again-although strictly speaking two
persons making public wedding vows would have constituted a common law marriage.}
Sam Drucker was a regular on both Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. The first bar of
the Petticoat Junction theme song is usually played during the establishing shot of his
store, which also appears on Petticoat Junction {indicating the Petticoat Junction's "Shady
Rest" Hotel is very close to Hooterville}. While Drucker is a provincial everyman in
Petticoat Junction, his character is bent a bit here and backward as well: his telephone
dates from the 1920s. Drucker also serves as a newspaper editor and printer, volunteer
fireman, constable, justice of the peace, and postmaster. As editor of the Hooterville
World Guardian, his headlines are often decades old. He is slow as postmaster, having belatedly
delivered a lost 1917 "draft" notice to Fred Ziffel after 51 years, which surpassed the
26-year delivery record of a lost 1942 WPA letter to Haney for stealing a shovel. As
justice of the peace, Drucker once lets his license lapse, unwittingly sending Ralph Monroe
and Kimball to their premature honeymoon. Drucker is often the only character inspired
by Oliver's rural patriotism, filtering Oliver's idealism to the townsfolk and the plebeian,
backwoods notions of the community back to Douglas. In one episode, the menfolk believed
they could get a tax refund without ever having paid taxes. To Oliver's surprise, they did,
but when the Internal Revenue Service threatened to send everyone to jail, the IRS settled
for becoming business partners with the farmers in one of Mr. Haney's many outlandish schemes
to recoup their money. In a slap to government bureaucrats and civil
service employees, Alvy Moore plays spacey agricultural agent Kimball, who draws folks
into inane conversations, digresses and loses his train of thought, and then exits the scene.
The series was reportedly one of the first to use cue cards extensively during filming,
and Moore later recounted that he found this invaluable when performing Kimball's rambling,
rapid-fire dialogue. Lisa's skewed world view and domestic ignorance
provides fertile ground for recurring gags. Much of her early life was lived in Hungary
where she grew up as a diva of her time which explains her lack of education and her ignorance
of normal household chores and everyday living. She and Oliver are both veterans of WWII.
Her waterless "coffee" oozes from the pot in a thick, tar-like sludge. Her "hotcakes"
are inedible, so tough that Oliver makes head gaskets for his truck and tractor using the
recipe. In one episode, hotcake batter is used as fireplace mortar; in another, hotcakes
are used to reshingle a roof. Her sandwiches include such epicurean delights as liverwurst
and jelly. Instead of washing dishes, Lisa sometimes tosses them out the kitchen window.
In one episode, Oliver finds Lisa mending holes in his socks with a stapler. As he begins
to comment on it, a visiting Fred Ziffel says, "I see you're mending socks! Darn if you don't
do it better than Doris does!" In the episode "Alf and Ralph Break Up", Lisa admits that
she has no cooking abilities and says her only talent is her Zsa Zsa Gabor imitation.
Though Oliver and Lisa are both depicted as fish out of water, the concept provides an
ironic twist. While Oliver instigated the move from Manhattan to Hooterville over Lisa's
objections, it is Lisa who more naturally fits into the illogic of their neighbors while
quickly assimilating to their quirky, offbeat surroundings. Oliver, while eager to fit in,
is often at a loss to grasp the surreal Hootervillians. Many of the Shady Rest Hotel folks from Petticoat
Junction appear, including three of the four Bradleys, and Joe Carson. Uncle Joe is sometimes
playing checkers, loafing, or mooching fruit at the General Store with Newt Kiley or Floyd
Smoot. Betty Jo Bradley appears in one episode as Eb Dawson's date. Bobbi Jo appears in the
same episode. Kate Bradley appeared in a few of the early episodes trying to help Lisa
adapt to country living, most notably giving her the recipe for her infamous "hotscakes".
Western film actor Smiley Burnette guested several times as railway engineer Charley
Pratt during the 1965 and 1966 seasons, but Burnette's ill health ended the role. Burnette
and Pat Buttram were both comic sidekicks of singing cowboy Gene Autry in his '50's
Westerns. Rufe Davis was seen as train conductor Floyd.
"Rural purge" cancellation
During its sixth season during the 1970–71 television season, Green Acres placed 34th
out of 96 shows. Despite the respectable ratings and winning its timeslot, the series was cancelled
in the spring of 1971 after six seasons and 170 episodes. At the time CBS was under pressure
from sponsors to have more urban-themed shows on their schedules. To make room for the newer
shows, nearly all of the rural themed shows were cancelled. This part of television has
become known as the "rural purge". Pat Buttram stated of the purge: "CBS cancelled everything
with a tree – including Lassie." Reunion film
In the 1990 reunion TV movie Return to Green Acres, a twenty-something Arnold survived
his "parents", and subsequently bunks with his "cousin", the Ziffels' comely niece. The
film was made and set two decades after the series. The Monroe Brothers still have not
finished the Douglases' bedroom. In the movie, Oliver and Lisa have moved back to New York,
but are miserable there. They are implored by the Hootervillians to return and save the
town from a scheme to destroy it, cooked up between Mr. Haney and a wealthy, underhanded
developer. With a nod to the times, Haney's latest product is a Russian miracle fertilizer
called "Gorby Grow". Cast
Oliver Wendell Douglas: Eddie Albert Lisa Douglas: Eva Gabor
Eb Dawson: Tom Lester Sam Drucker: Frank Cady
Mr. Eustace Haney: Pat Buttram Hank Kimball: Alvy Moore
Fred Ziffel: Hank Patterson Doris Ziffel: Barbara Pepper/Fran Ryan,
Arnold Ziffel: Alf Monroe: Sid Melton
Ralph Monroe: Mary Grace Canfield Newt Kiley: Kay E. Kuter
Mother Eunice Douglas: Eleanor Audley Roy Trendell: Robert Foulk
Ben Miller: Tom Fadden Horace Colby: Hal Smith
In addition, there were crossovers from Petticoat Junction cast members, most frequently:
Uncle Joe Carson: Edgar Buchanan Floyd Smoot: Rufe Davis
Charley Pratt: Smiley Burnette Kate Bradley: Bea Benaderet
Of the above cast, Tom Lester is the only surviving member as of April 2014.
Guest stars During its six season run, many familiar actors
guest-starred on the show, along with other lesser-known performers who later achieved
stardom, among them: John Charles Daly, Elaine Joyce, Gary Dubin, Herbert Anderson, June
Foray, Robert Cummings, Sam Edwards, Jerry Van Dyke, J. Pat O'Malley, Johnny Whitaker,
Jesse White, Al Lewis, Gordon Jump, Bernie Kopell, Len Lesser, Bob Hastings, Don Keefer,
Don Porter, Alan Hale Jr., Melody Patterson, Rusty Hamer, Regis Toomey, Heather North,
Allan Melvin, Parley Baer, Jack Bannon, Rick Lenz, Karen Valentine plus many others.
Future Happy Days stars Al Molinaro and Pat Morita guest-starred on separate episodes,
while young comedian Rich Little made a cameo appearance as himself.
Episodes
Revivals The surviving members of the cast were reunited
for a TV movie titled Return to Green Acres. It aired on CBS on May 18, 1990. Except for
Eleanor Audley, who had retired from acting twenty years earlier.
Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor recreated their Green Acres characters for the 1993 CBS special
The Legend of the Beverly Hillbillies. On November 19, 2007, original series director
Richard L. Bare announced that he is working on a revival of Green Acres.
Variety announced on July 22, 2012 that a Broadway-aimed musical was in development,
with an initial draft of the book written by Richard L. Bare. There is no composer,
lyricist or director attached. DVD releases
MGM Home Entertainment released the first three seasons of Green Acres on Region 1 DVD.
No release of the remaining three seasons is announced.
Granby's Green Acres The Granby's Green Acres radio show aired
from July 3 to August 21, 1950. The show was produced, directed and written by Jay Sommers,
who wrote and produced a third of the Green Acres episodes. In both, a businessman knowing
little about farming moves to an impoverished farm. The characters are more conventionally
odd, the wife stereotypically talkative and dim, the "Sam Drucker" character is the absent-minded
and befuddled feed store owner Mr. Kimball, while hired hand Eb is elderly and stoic about
incompetent management. Nielsen ratings
Film & Broadway adaptation Bare is working on a film version of the TV
series, and he's teaming up with Phillip Goldfine and his Hollywood Media Bridge to produced
the film and a broadway version is also in development.
See also Guestward, Ho!
Slot machine A popular slot machine, based on the Green
Acres television show, was introduced in 2006. The gambling game features two progressive
jackpots that are won if enough "haystacks" are shown among the 25 individual reels The
bonus rounds include the "Hotcake Bonus" and "Arnold's Wild Bonus".
References General references:
Cox, Stephen. The Hooterville Handbook : A Viewer's Guide To Green Acres. St. Martin's
Griffin. ISBN 0-312-08811-6. Specific citations:
External links Green Acres at the Internet Movie Database
Green Acres at TV.com Green Acres on TVLand.com
Green Acres on ION Television Green Acres episodes on Hulu