Green Acres
This article is about the fictional US television series. There is also the real US town of Green Acres, Washington.
| Green Acres | |
|---|---|
Aerial photo featured in the opening sequence | |
| Created by | Jay Sommers |
| Starring | Eddie Albert Eva Gabor |
| Country of origin | USA |
| No. of episodes | 170 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer | Paul Henning |
| Running time | 30 minutes per episode |
| Original release | |
| Network | CBS |
| Release | September 15, 1965 – April 27, 1971 |
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 (unlike its progenitor, Petticoat Junction, which is syndicated by Paramount).
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 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 ramshackle farm.
Ostensibly a reverse The 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 are able to appreciate it on a different level. Its premise is sometimes compared to that of 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, Crabwell Corners and Stankwell Falls. The shows even shared characters on occasion.
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.
The series was notable for its often surreal and Goon-ish humour, and it was one of the first American TV series which trangressed the traditional diegetic 'borders' of TV presentation for deliberately humourous 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:
- Oliver and Lisa's neighbours, Fred and Doris Ziffel, an elderly, childless couple, have apparently 'adopted' a pig named Arnold Ziffel who lives in the house with them, whom they treat as human and refer to as their "son" and who appears to be able to understand human speech. LIke all children, Arnold is an avid TV watcher who is especially fond of Westerns. Only Oliver appeared to be aware, or to care, that Arnold is not a human child, although he frequently slips and begins treating him as one. Arnold makes regular appearances throughout the series, often visiting the Douglas farm to watch their TV. In one episode Arnold even 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.
- Oliver and Lisa's live-in farmhand Eb Dawson habitually addresses them as "Dad" and "Mom", much to Oliver's irritation.
- Lisa's complete inablilty to cook and keep house provides rich material for recurring gags -- her 'coffee' is brewed without water and oozes from the pot in a thick, treacly sludge; her infamous hotcakes (which she calls "hotscakes") are so tough and inedible that in one episode Olvier is able to repair a failed head-gasket in his truck by making a replacement gasket using Lisa's hotcake recipe. In another episode she unsuccesfully tries to make peach jam by putting the whole peach (pit and all) into the pot, and even drops Oliver's electric razor into the mixture in the process after attempting to use it to shave the fuzz off the peaches.
- Despite the Douglas' apparent wealth, the dilapidated farm house is never repaired, but the run-down condition of the home is in stark contrast to the opulent furnishings they have brought with them from New York. Oliver also is unable to get the phone company to properly install their telephone; as a result it remains perched atop a high wooden telegraph pole just outside the house, which they are obliged to climb every time they need to use or answer the phone. Even when the Monroe Brothers installed a telephone in the kitchen, the Douglas' still have to go outside to answer the phone!!
- The episode titled "A Square is Not a 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. Lisa is also evidently able to coax the chickens into laying on demand, simply by talking to them.
- Oliver always farms wearing an expensive three-piece suit, just as he had done when practicing law.
- Whenever Oliver makes a rousing speech about the American farmer, a fife can be heard playing Yankee Doodle in the background. (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.
- 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, played by Mary Grace Canfield, she was also incredibly bossy and frequently threatened to beat Alf. Alf was played by Sid Melton. 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-Ralph 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!
- 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 an automatic-transmission car as a "Pernerndle" (a joke derived from the P-R-N-D-L lettering on the gear-lever).
- The series hilariously parodies the age-old truism that country folk all know each other's business -- the local telephone operator 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.
- In some episodes, the opening credits appear to be visible to Lisa, but not Oliver. Sometimes, they appear on Lisa's rubbery hotcakes. In another instance, they are written on the eggs laid by the Douglas' hens. Another episode opens with the characters arguing, then realizing the credits are running, and sitting down and waiting for the credits to finish on grounds no one was paying attention to what they were saying. Another episode opens with Lisa herself first waking up, then waking up Oliver to ask if he wanted to read "the names" with her; on another occasion she calls she calls them "the written-by's". This practice of inserting opening credits in unusual ways was also used in The Beverly Hillbillies.
- 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. The Pilot epsiode shows Oliver to be such a fanatic farmer wanttobe, that during World War II, while strafing a battlefield in a P-38, he keeps talking on about the vegtables on the ground!! One episode shows Oliver as a Reserve Air Force 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. The local people like Lisa, but 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. 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.
- Injokes about how Hooterville is so remote:
- On 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 Forces Officer can get to Hooterville is by parachute. {A connunity error-since Hooterville has an airport-once Lisa and Douglas went by Hooterville airplane to Washington D.C-and end up in Paris; a railroad crossing at Sam Drucker's store and Petticoat Junction; and county roads for the Douglas car and Mr Haney's truck}.
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; 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 reasonably popular, the show was canceled in 1971 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.
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. Often the pig actors looked rather dissimilar to one another—for example, one Arnold had tufts of grey hair behind his ears, giving him an aged look. Another was female and had rather prominent teats—quite a sight to see on a pig who was intended to be male. Yet another Arnold has spots that others lack. This may have been an intentional goof by producers for comedic effect.
Arnold, it is revealed in the 1990 reunion TV movie Return to Green Acres, survived his "parents", and was then raised by his "sister", the Ziffel's comely daughter. The film was made and set at least twenty years after the series (as Haney's latest product is a Russian miracle fertilizer called "Gorby Grow")...but in reality a pig life span is on average 12-15 years, similar to a dog, so Arnold almost certainly would have predeceased the Ziffels. In the reunion movie, the Douglases move 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).
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
- Oliver Wendell Douglas: Eddie Albert
- Lisa Douglas: Eva Gabor
- Mr. [Eustace] Haney: Pat Buttram
- Eb Dawson: Tom Lester
- Fred Ziffel: Hank Patterson
- Doris Ziffel: Barbara Pepper (1965–69, left the series due to ill health)
- Doris Ziffel: Fran Ryan (1969–71)
- Hank Kimball: Alvy Moore
- Sam Drucker: Frank Cady (also a cast member on Petticoat Junction)
- Mother Eunice Douglas: Eleanor Audley (1965–69)
- Alf Monroe: Sid Melton (1965–69)
- Ralph Monroe: Mary Grace Canfield
- Newt Kiley: Kay E. Kuter (1965–70)
- Ben Miller: Tom Fadden (1965)
- Roy Trendell: Robert Foulk (1966–68)
In addition, there were crossovers from Petticoat Junction cast members, most frequently:
- Kate Bradley: Bea Benaderet (1965–66)
- Uncle Joe Carson: Edgar Buchanan (1965–69)
- Charley Pratt: Smiley Burnette (1965–67)
- Floyd Smoot: Rufe Davis (1965–67)
References
- Cox, Stephen (1993). The Hooterville Handbook : A Viewer's Guide To Green Acres. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0312088116.
External links
