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Green Acres

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Green Acres
File:Greenacres.jpg
Aerial photo featured in the opening sequence
Created byJay Sommers
StarringEddie Albert
Eva Gabor
Pat Buttram
Tom Lester
Frank Cady
Alvy Moore
Country of origin United States
No. of episodes170
Production
Executive producerPaul Henning
Running time30 minutes per episode
Original release
NetworkCBS
ReleaseSeptember 15, 1965 –
April 27, 1971
This article is about the television series. For other uses, see Green Acres (disambiguation).

Green Acres is an American television series that was produced by Filmways, Inc. and originally broadcast on CBS from September 15, 1965 to April 27, 1971.

Background

After the tremendous success of The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction, CBS offered producer Paul Henning another half-hour on the schedule with no pilot required. Lacking the time to commit to another project himself, he encouraged colleague Jay Sommers to create the series. Sommers used his 1950 radio series, Granby's Green Acres, as the basis for the new television series. The 13-episode radio series had starred Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet (who also appeared in the TV version) as a big-city family who move to the country.

The television series Green Acres was about Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert), an accomplished and erudite New York attorney who was acting on his lifelong dream to be a farmer, and Lisa Douglas (Eva Gabor), his glamorously bejeweled Hungarian wife, dragged unwillingly from the privileged city life she adored to a bucolic life on a ramshackle farm.

Ostensibly a reverse Beverly Hillbillies, after the first few episodes the series shifted from a run-of-the-mill rural comedy and developed an absurdist world of its own. Though there were still many episodes that were standard 1960s sitcom fare, the show became notable for its surreal aspects that frequently included satire. They also had an appeal to children due to the slapstick, silliness and schtick, though adults were able to appreciate it on a different level.

It was set in the same fictional universe as Henning's other rural television comedy Petticoat Junction, featuring such picturesque towns as Hooterville, Pixley, Crabwell Corners and Stankwell Falls. The shows even shared characters on occasion. On at least one episode, The Beverly Hillbillies is actually mentioned as a show enjoyed in Hooterville.

Much of the humor of the series derived from the pragmatic yet short-fused Oliver attempting to make sense of the largely insane world around him. There seemed to be a dual perspective of reality. One was that of the Hootervillians, which inexplicably included Lisa and Oliver's own family, the other was Oliver's. Oliver's affluent mother (Eleanor Audley) lampoons him and mollifies Lisa. But there were times when it appeared that Oliver wasn't entirely sane either, such as renting a rooster and climbing up and down a telephone pole to make or receive phone calls.

The dishonest and oily salesman Mr. Haney (Pat Buttram), who sold Oliver the Green Acres farm, continues to con his easy "mark" in most episodes. Haney, along with the glib, twenty-something farmhand Eb Dawson (Tom Lester), scatterbrained county agent Hank Kimball, and grocer Sam Drucker (Frank Cady) (who played the same role on Petticoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies), make up the main supporting cast. Eb habitually addressed the Douglas' as "Dad" and "Mom", much to Oliver's irritation,

Sometimes "Petticoat Junction" characters, such as Joe Carson, Newt Kiley and Floyd Smoot, are seen in "cross-over" episodes and vice versa. "Petticoat Junction" regular Betty-Jo Bradley appears in one episode in a short-lived romance with Eb Dawson. Bobbi-Jo appears in the same episode. Popular western film actor Smiley Burnette guested several times in the role of railway engineer Charley Pratt during the 1965 and 1966 seasons but Burnette's ill health ended the role.([1]

While general store owner Sam Drucker is a reliable Dutch uncle in Petticoat Junction his character is bent a bit here (keeping plastic pickles in a barrel to appease city-folk). Drucker also serves as a Newspaper printer/editor; volunteer fireman; constable; Justice of the Peace and a Postmaster. As editor of the "Hooterville World Guardian", his headlines were often decades-old. He was a bit slow as Postmaster- once delivering a lost 1917 "draft" notice to Fred Ziffel after 51 years-breaking his "old" record of delivering a "lost" 1942 WPA letter to Mr Haney for stealing a shovel-after 26 years! As Justice of the Peace, he once let his license lapse, unwittingly sending two supporting characters to a premature honeymoon (Ralph Monroe and Hank Kimball).

In a slap to government bureaucrats and civil service employees, Alvy Moore plays spacey agricultural agent Hank Kimball, who never really seems to know which end is up. Kimball would draw people into inane conversations, then lose his train-of-thought.

The Douglas' childless elderly neighbors, Fred and Doris Ziffel, "adopted" a pig named Arnold Ziffel as their "son". Arnold understands English, lives indoors, and is pampered by everyone. Like all 1960s children, Arnold is an avid TV watcher and a big Western fan. 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 farm to watch their TV.

A pair of recurring characters were two quarrelsome carpenters known as the Monroe Brothers, Alf and Ralph. Despite her name and her status as one of the brothers, Ralph was in fact a woman, played by Mary Grace Canfield. Alf was played by Sid Melton of Make Room for Daddy. In general, only Oliver seems to notice or care about this bizarre contradiction. Nothing the Monroe brothers ever did was either finished (such as the Douglas's bedroom) or ever turned out right.

Lisa's utter domestic ignorance provides fertile ground for recurring gags -- her 'coffee' oozes from the pot in a thick, tar-like sludge; her infamous "hotscakes" are so tough and inedible that Oliver once repaired his truck's head-gasket using her recipe, then in another episode, used the batter for mortar while building a fireplace; her sandwich combos include such epicurean delights as liverwurst and jelly; instead of washing dishes, Lisa tosses them away (out the kitchen window) as though they were disposable paper plates. 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.

Common gags used throughout the series include:

  • One or more characters seeing the opening credits.
  • Patriotic music playing while Oliver makes some long-winded speech, and everybody trying to figure out where it is coming from.
  • Oliver always in a 3-piece suit, even while working, and Lisa in expensive dresses.
  • The expensive furniture and fancy Lincoln Continental 4-door convertible they continued to use, despite the house never being fixed up.
  • Lisa's mangling of English words due to her Hungarian accent.
  • Never having a working phone in the house, but having to climb a pole outside to use one.

Although still reasonably popular, the show was canceled in 1971 as part of the "rural purge" when CBS decided to shift its schedule to more urban, contemporary-themed shows, which drew the younger audiences desired by advertisers. (Nearly the entire Green Acres cast was middle-aged or older.) The Beverly Hillbillies and other shows with rural settings, including Hee Haw and Mayberry R.F.D., were also dropped at the same time.

An urban legend says that the pig who played Arnold was cooked and eaten by the cast after the show ended. In reality, several different pigs were used during the show's run, none of which was ever eaten by the cast. Trainer Frank Inn used a smaller, female pig in later seasons, giving Arnold some obvious mammary ducts. The pig actors were dissimilar in more ways than one (as with the two actresses who played Doris)—for example, one Arnold had tufts of grey hair behind his ears, giving him an aged look. Yet another Arnold has spots that others lack. This may have been an intentional goof by producers for comedic effect. (Other sources point out that Arnold was actually played by a PIGLET, and because piglets grow quickly on the way to becoming adult pigs, many different piglets had to be used in the role of Arnold during the show's production run.)

Arnold, it is revealed in the 1990 reunion TV movie Return to Green Acres, survived his "parents", and subsequently bunks with his "cousin", the Ziffel's comely niece. The film was made and set two decades after the series (as Haney's latest product is a Russian miracle fertilizer called "Gorby Grow")...but in reality a pig life span averages 12–15 years, similar to a dog. In the reunion movie, Oliver and Lisa had moved back to New York but are miserable there and are implored by the Hootervillians to return and save the town from a scheme to destroy it which has been cooked up between Haney and a wealthy, dishonest developer (Henry Gibson).

A book containing detailed information on the creation and history of the show has been written, titled The Hooterville Handbook: A Viewer's Guide To Green Acres (ISBN 0-312-08811-6). Seasons 1–3 of the show have now been released for Region 0 (suitable for all DVD players) via MGM Home Entertainment (whose sister company, MGM Television, now owns the rights to the show via its acquisition of Orion Television, successor-in-interest to Filmways).

Cast

In addition, there were crossovers from Petticoat Junction cast members, most frequently:


Surreal Humor

The series was notable for its often surreal humor, and it was one of the first American TV series which transgressed the traditional diegetic or fourth wall 'borders' of TV presentation for deliberately humorous effect -- characters addressed the audience directly and were somehow able to perceive and react to post-production elements such as the music soundtrack and the superimposed program credits.

Some of the more noteworthy surreal aspects of the show's humour included:

  • In one episode Arnold Ziffel wins a competition and goes to Hollywood in an (unsuccessful) attempt to break into movies, although how he has been able to enter the competition is never explained. In another episode Arnold is "drafted" into the Army. Oliver actually manages to convince the army not to draft Arnold pig-yet at the end the running joke of "mistaken identity" begins all over again when "Ralph" Monroe (who was actually female, despite the male name) is "Drafted"!
  • Ralph Monroe once sawed through Sam Drucker's phone line and then spliced it together backwards so that Drucker had to talk into the ear receiver and listen at the mouthpiece. In another episode "Ralph" marries Hank Kimball-only to find that at the end of the episode-that the marriage is invalid and will have to be performed again!
  • The episode titled "A Square is Not Round" featured both a chicken that lays square eggs, which Oliver is desperate to locate, and a toaster that only works when you say "five" to it. In the end it is revealed that it has all been a dream of Oliver's, which he rushes back to bed to see how it finishes. At the very end, Lisa is muttering to herself, "Hmph, square eggs, talking to toasters..." and approaches the refrigerator and says clearly, "Mabel!" and the fridge opens by itself. In other episodes, Lisa is also evidently able to coax the chickens into laying on demand, simply by talking to them.
  • One running joke was that Oliver had a pronounced tendency to mangle words, especially when his wife, Lisa, mangled them first, as she frequently did, since English was not her native language. Oddly, the other residents of Hooterville would often inexplicably share Lisa's mangled vocabulary. Another aspect of this gag was that Lisa would often seem to mangle words or phrases, but Oliver would then discover that Lisa's supposedly 'wrong' version is correct - e.g. the title of a fictional TV series Lisa watches in one episode, entitled "Run For Your Wife". She also refers to the gearshift on an automatic-transmission car as a "Pernerndle" (a joke derived from the P-R-N-D-L lettering on the gear-lever) and a popular board game as "Monotony" (which turns out to the actual name of the game as sold in Hooterville). Games such as "Scribble" and "Cabbage" are also available. In one episode, Oliver complains, "Why did I have to marry someone who hears everything with an accent?"
  • The series parodies the age-old truism that country folk all know each other's business-the local telephone operator, Sarah, routinely monitors every conversation and in several episodes, the content of conversations and arguments between Oliver and Lisa in their home mysteriously and instantly become common knowledge all over the valley.
  • Oliver is the only person who does not realize that he is a terrible farmer, his farmland is worthless, his Hoyt-Clagwell tractor is an antique relic, and his farmhouse a dilapidated shack -- although he appears to get wise to these facts as the series goes on; in the episode "Haney's New Image," he refers to the farm as a "dump;" and on at least one occasion he takes Haney to court to get a refund on the junky tractor.
  • The Pilot episode shows Oliver as such a fanatic farmer wannabe that during World War II, while strafing a battlefield in a P-38, he keeps talking on about the vegetables on the ground (When he finally drops his payload on a tomato field, he sadly announces "Ketchup all over everything."). When he is shot down over Hungary, he first meets Lisa who helps him escape. A later episode shows Oliver as a Air Force Reserve Officer when the Hooterville townspeople try to get him to fly a World War I-era plane to Chicago.
  • Oliver has always dreamed of becoming a farmer, but he lives in complete denial of the fact that he is virtually incapable of growing anything. Lisa, who always longs to go back to New York, actually adjusts quite well and seems quite at home in Hooterville. Despite Lisa's blatantly urban, sophisticated socialite manner, the local people like her, yet find Oliver weird and make constant references to his supposed "drinking problem".
  • Lisa claimed in one episode to be from New Jersey but went to boarding school in Hungary, thereby explaining both her accent and her lack of ability to speak Hungarian. In another episode, she claims her mother sent her to "Hungarian accent school". However, in some episodes, she is seen to converse with other Hungarians in fluent Hungarian. She also has a wide variety of stories involving how her father became the King of Hungary.
  • Another running joke is Oliver's use of sarcasm and Lisa taking his comments literally. This is usually followed by Oliver shaking his head or a puzzled look on his face. He occasionally tried to explain what he meant to his wife but usually gave up.
  • It is not uncommon for Oliver to be awoken for inconsequential reasons either by someone knocking on the front door, calling on the telephone which he has to climb a pole to answer, or coming through the bedroom closet door which always slides from the frame and slaps down on the concrete slab bedroom floor. To magnify his aggravation this almost always occurs between 5:00am - 5:30am, much to the surprise of the uninvited guest that he is still in bed at that hour.
  • In-jokes about how Hooterville is so remote:
    • In one episode Hooterville can only be found on a map if a fly isn't standing on it.
    • That the only way a high ranking Air Force Officer can get to Hooterville is by parachute. (Technically, this is a continuity error, since Hooterville has an airport (as well as Pixley International Airport). Once, Lisa and Douglas tried to go by Hooterville airplane to Washington D.C, but they ended up in Paris. There is also a railroad crossing at Sam Drucker's store and Petticoat Junction, and there are county roads for the Douglas car and Mr. Haney's truck.)
  • In the first season, it is mentioned that Hank Kimball's mother, Sarah, owns the phone company, but in the third season, Sarah is the mother of Roy Trendell, and Trendell owns the company, and winds up giving it to Oliver.
  • The comic-book style sound effects are faintly visible to the characters. For example, in the episode "Double Drick" (season 1), when the generator sparks and sputters, the word "Drick!" appears on the screen, like in the fight scenes in Batman. Lisa then asks Oliver what the word "Drick" means.
  • While a running joke is that in nearly every episode Oliver Douglas somehow loses a battle of wits to the eccentric Hooterville townsfolk, this is not necessarily so. In one episode when Haney, Hank, Mr. Ziffel, and Lisa think they have discovered an artificial milk making machine, Oliver has to tell them tongue-in-cheek that not only would the chemicals be so expensive that the milk has to be sold at sky-high prices, but that anyone who drinks it over a period of time goes bald! In another episode, everyone in the valley suspects Oliver of being a C.I.A. agent. He goes along with what they think they know, telling them all that they should forget what they know for national security reasons.
  • In many ways, Green Acres follows the form of many Old-time radio programs, with a basic premise, a fairly "normal" protagonist, and visits by several guests with a similar schtick each episode. Lisa, Mr. Haney, Eb, and Hank Kimball often seem to be doing variations on the same jokes each week. This may be because Paul Henning, Jay Sommers, and Dick Chevillat, among others, were all active creators in the days of American Comedy Radio. Paul Henning, for one, was the producer for George Burns and Gracie Allen on radio. The parallels between Lisa Douglas and Gracie are not hard to fathom.

Episode List

Main article: List of Green Acres episodes

DVD Releases

MGM Home Video released the first three seasons of Green Acres on Region 1 DVD. Due to poor sales, it is currently unknown whether the remaining three seasons will ever be released.

DVD Name Ep # Release Date Additional Information
Season 1 32 January 13 2004 ISBN 0792859308 or ISBN 9780792859307
Season 2 30 March 8 2005 ISBN 0792865502 or ISBN 9780792865506
Season 3 30 December 6 2005 ISBN 1580674437 or ISBN 9781580674430

Reruns

Reruns of Green Acres have aired in the past in syndication and on Nick at Nite. Since April 2004, TV Land has aired episodes. Also from 2006 to 2007, ION Television had been airing episodes on weekday evenings.

Cable networks

TV Land, currently Mon-Fri at 1:00pm and 1:30pm ET, and weekends at 8:00am ET.

Local stations

WWME in Chicago, currently Mon-Fri at 7:30 am CT.

Canada

Green Acres will air in Canada beginning September 10, 2007 at 11:30am on DejaView

References

  • Cox, Stephen (1993). The Hooterville Handbook : A Viewer's Guide To Green Acres. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0-312-08811-6.
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