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Green Acres

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File:Greenacres.jpg
Aerial photo featured in the opening sequence of Green Acres
There is also the US town of Green Acres, Washington.

Green Acres was an American television series that was produced by Filmways, Inc. and originally broadcast on CBS from 1965 to 1971. Today Sony Pictures Television owns the rights to the series.

With help and encouragement from Paul Henning, Jay Sommers created the series, basing it on his 1950 radio series, Granby's Green Acres. This 13-episode series starred Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet as a big-city family who move to the country, where their hired hand (a man in his late 40s) is named Eb, and the general store is run by a Mr. Kimball.[1]

Green Acres featured Eddie Albert as Oliver Wendell Douglas, a rich and successful New York attorney who was acting on his lifelong dream to be a farmer, and Eva Gabor as Lisa Douglas, his glamorously bejeweled Hungarian wife, dragged unwillingly from the privileged city life she adored to a bucolic life on a severely 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 often appreciate it on a different level. Its premise is sometimes compared to that of 1982–90 Newhart, though Newhart had no slapstick and was more cerebral.

It was set in the same fictional universe as Henning's other rural television comedies Petticoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies, featuring such picturesque towns as Hooterville, Pixley, Bugtussle, Crabwell Corners and Stankwell Falls. The shows even shared characters.

Much of the humor of the series derived from easily-frustrated, obsessive and short-fused Oliver's attempts to make sense of the largely insane world around him.

Some of the more noteworthy surreal aspects included:

  • Oliver always farmed wearing an expensive suit, just as he had done when practicing law.
  • Whenever Oliver made a rousing speech about the American farmer, a fife could be heard playing Yankee Doodle in the background. (Wife Lisa called this the "shoosting speech" as Oliver always included a reference to the "crops shooting up out of the ground".) The other characters would frequently look around to try to find the source of the music. The other farmers also hated his speeches lionizing farmers.
  • There seemed to be two versions of reality. One was that of the Hootervillians, which eventually included Lisa. The other was Oliver's. But there were times when it appeared that Oliver wasn't entirely sane either, as noted with his suit fixation above.
  • Arnold Ziffel, a pig. Arnold was an avid TV watcher, and who, despite being a pig, was the "son" of a human couple, Fred and Doris Ziffel. Only Oliver appeared to be aware, or to care, that Arnold was not a human.
  • A pair of recurring characters were two 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. In general, only Oliver seems to notice or care about this bizarre contradiction.
  • 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 was the opening credits. In some episodes, the opening credits would appear and be visible to Lisa, but not Oliver. Sometimes, they would appear on Lisa's rubbery hotcakes—another ongoing joke in the series. In another instance, they were on the eggs laid by the Douglas' hens. One episode opened with the characters arguing, then realizing the credits were running, and sitting down and waiting for the credits to get done on grounds no one was paying attention to what they were saying. Another episode opened with Lisa herself first waking up, then waking up Oliver to ask if he wanted to read "the names" with her.
  • Oliver was the only person who did not realize that he was a terrible farmer, his farmland almost worthless, his tractor an antique relic, and his farmhouse a shack.
  • Oliver had always dreamed of becoming a farmer, but the reality for him was a nightmare, although he lived in complete denial of that fact. Lisa, who always longed to go back to New York and would go back in a heartbeat, actually adjusted quite well and was relatively happy in Hooterville. The local people liked Lisa, but thought Oliver was weird.
  • Lisa claimed in one episode to be from New Jersey but went to boarding school in Hungary. Explaining the accent and her lack of ability to speak Hungarian.

The other recurring characters included incredibly lazy and gullible farmhand Eb Dawson, acquired by Oliver along with the farm; dishonest and oily salesman Mr. Haney, who originally sold Oliver the farm and who still always got the best of him; scatterbrained county agent Hank Kimball, who always got lost in his explanations; the Monroe Brothers, incompetent contractors Alf and his sister Ralph; and grocer Sam Drucker, the only person who seemed mostly normal, but who also saw nothing unusual in some of the more bizarre people around him, including Arnold.

Although still popular, the show was canceled in 1971 when CBS decided to shift its schedule to more urban, contemporary-themed shows, which drew younger audiences found to be more desirable by advertisers. (Nearly the entire Green Acres cast was middle-aged or older.) The Beverly Hillbillies and other shows with rural settings (such as Hee Haw) were also canceled at the same time.

Popular western film actor Smiley Burnette (also a regular on Petticoat Junction) 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.

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.

In the US and Canada, the first, second and third seasons of the show are available on DVD. 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 0312088116).

At the 2005 Emmy Awards, the theme song to Green Acres was performed by Donald Trump of the reality show The Apprentice, and Megan Mullally of Will & Grace, who dressed up for the rendition in appropriate costumes.

Cast

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

References

  • Cox, Stephen (1993). The Hooterville Handbook : A Viewer's Guide To Green Acres. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0312088116.
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