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If you remember in Holiday Inn Bing Crosby just like Eddie Albert wanted a life of ease and comfort and away from the daily grind of show business. In a year on the farm he found just how hard life can be there and decided on something else which was the crux of that film. Fred Astaire gave him a geranium plant to satisfy his agricultural urge as he put it.
Bing wasn't half as determined as Oliver Wendell Douglas played by Eddie Albert who was a Wall Street lawyer, but who also wanted to get to a simple life on the farm. But his time on the farm lasted for seven seasons and was still going when Green Acres went off the air. Albert was the fictional reincarnation of Wendell Wilkie who Harold Ickes once characterized as the "simple barefoot prairie lawyer from Wall Street" who also had a farm background in rural Indiana.
But Douglas never saw a farm he only imagined what it was like. Well no one in our society works harder than farmers, even those who don't work for themselves, but might work for some agri-business outfit like Archer Daniels Midland. It's 24/7 for those folks with no vacations and the women work as hard as the men. Crops don't grow by themselves with a decent yield and livestock has to be tended and fed to multiply.
None of this did Albert realize when he bought a farm in fictional Hooterville, also known as the home of the Shady Rest Motel in Petticoat Junction. The same show regulars did double duty in both shows, making them the hardest working cast in television during the Sixties.
The comedy came from two sources on Green Acres both equally funny. The first was Eddie Albert, Wall Street lawyer and a curious combination of eager apprentice farmer and lawyer used to dealing with powerful folks. As often as not the rustics of Green Acres got the better of him.
Secondly though there was Eva Gabor. She'd have much preferred to stay living on Park Avenue as the theme said every week, but she dutifully followed her husband to Hooterville. They invented the word 'chic' for Eva Gabor, but she too was at a loss dealing with her environment and by the rural folks who just didn't quite get her as she didn't get them. Of course it helped to have the best hooters in Hooterville, beating even Bea Benaderet's three daughters from Petticoat Junction.
The interchangeable regulars were a trip though. My favorites were Alvy Moore as the brain dead county agent and Pat Buttram the ever scheming Mr. Haney who even got the best of Wall Street lawyer Albert from time to time.
Eddie Albert was one of the most versatile players that the big and small screen ever knew. That man could play everything from gentle hero to some of the slimiest villains the screen ever saw. But he will forever be known for this show as his career part where his comic side was given its best opportunity.
Green Acres was an integral part of CBS network's rural lineup that included Andy Griffith, Gomer Pyle, Petticoat Junction and the Beverly Hillbillies. All those shows were sacrificed in the eternal quest for younger demographics. I doubt if a show as gentle, but as absolutely hysterical as Green Acres could ever be duplicated again.
score 8/10
bkoganbing 11 November 2009
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2155662/ |
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19-10-2020 03:20:06