50 Fun Facts About Green Acres

Oliver Douglas gives up what career in Manhattan to become a farmer?

Attorney. Oliver walks away from a thriving Manhattan law practice to chase a lifelong dream of farming, despite knowing nothing whatever about how it is done.

Which Hungarian-born actress played Lisa Douglas?

Eva Gabor. Her Lisa is dragged to the farm against her will, yet she makes sense of Hooterville's upside-down logic far more easily than her husband ever does.

CBS put Green Acres on its 1965 schedule without first asking producer Paul Henning for what?

A pilot episode. Henning already had two rural hits on the network, so one of its executives promised him that a third series would go straight on the air.

Fifteen years before it reached television, Green Acres began life in which form?

A radio comedy. Granby's Green Acres ran for one summer in 1950 and then vanished, its hero a man from a city bank who makes a complete hash of farm life.

Before Hooterville, Oliver and Lisa Douglas live in a penthouse on which Manhattan avenue?

Park Avenue. Oliver swaps the penthouse for a tumbledown farm he bought without ever setting eyes on it, and Lisa is uprooted very much against her will.

What was the Douglases' farm known as before Oliver bought it?

The Old Haney Place. Its seller stripped out the sink, stove, cow and tractor on his way out, then sold or rented each of them back to Oliver at a fat profit.

The first episode of Green Acres is presented in which form?

A mock documentary. Real newsman John Daly narrates the Douglases' move to Hooterville as though he were reporting a news story.

What is unusual about the Green Acres theme song?

The two stars sing it themselves. The husband takes the lines in praise of the farm and the wife the ones pining for New York, so the whole premise is argued out before the story starts.

Which instrument plays 'Yankee Doodle' whenever Oliver launches into a speech about the American farmer?

A fife. The joke is that the background music is real to everyone but the speaker: the other characters can hear it and look around to see where it is coming from.

What does Oliver Douglas wear to do his farm chores on Green Acres?

A suit and tie. In one episode the farmers decide he is ruining the town's image and demand overalls, and the pair Lisa orders from her dressmaker comes trimmed with fur.

Which luxury convertible does Oliver Douglas drive along Hooterville's dirt roads in the early seasons of Green Acres?

Lincoln Continental. The gleaming car was a standing sight gag beside the valley's relics, such as the truck Mr. Haney says he bought in 1922.

By her own account in 'Wings Over Hooterville', what was Lisa doing in wartime Hungary when she met Oliver?

Fighting with the underground. She finds Oliver, a downed flier, hanging in a tree, though in a later episode they meet in Paris and her father is Hungary's deposed king.

Which dish is Lisa Douglas's notorious speciality on Green Acres, dreaded by everyone at her table?

Hotcakes. Nobody can eat them, but they have other uses: in different episodes they replace a blown head gasket on a truck and shingle a neighbour's roof.

Pat Buttram, Green Acres' Mr. Haney, voiced the Sheriff of Nottingham in Disney's Robin Hood as which animal?

A wolf. Buttram's distinctive voice made him a Disney favourite in the 1970s, and here it belongs to a sheriff who squeezes Nottingham's poor for their taxes.

Pat Buttram said Mr. Haney was inspired by which real-life showbiz figure?

Colonel Tom Parker. Elvis Presley's manager had started out running booths in travelling carnivals, and Buttram said he based the conniving Haney loosely on him.

What does farmhand Eb Dawson habitually call Oliver and Lisa, to Oliver's annoyance?

Dad and Mom. Life followed the joke: the young actor behind Eb grew close to Eddie Albert off screen, and took to calling his co-star his surrogate father.

The actor cast as Eb on Green Acres said he beat hundreds of rivals because only he could do what?

Milk a cow. He had grown up working on his grandfather's farm in Mississippi, so the one chore that beat every other hopeful was second nature to him.

Green Acres explained Eb's absence for half of the 1967-68 season by sending him away on what?

His honeymoon. The actor was really laid up with mononucleosis, and when he recovered Eb simply reappeared on the farm with no bride and no explanation.

What kind of animal is Arnold Ziffel?

A pig. All of Hooterville understands Arnold's grunts as plain English, and it is Oliver, the only one who cannot follow them, whom the neighbours regard as odd.

A long-debunked legend says the Green Acres cast did what to Arnold after the final episode?

Ate him at a party. The tale is false: several animals shared the role as each one outgrew it, and their trainer said every one of them retired to a farm.

Which rickety piece of farmhouse equipment forces Lisa to add up numbers on Green Acres?

The generator. Oliver gives every appliance a number from one to seven so Lisa will not overload it and, as one episode title warns, you can't plug in a 2 with a 6.

Which official letter arrives for Arnold Ziffel in a second-season episode of Green Acres?

A draft notice. Arnold is ordered to report for an Army physical, and when Oliver takes him to the draft board the sergeant refuses to believe that this is Arnold Ziffel.

Where is the Douglases' only telephone on Green Acres, forcing Oliver to climb whenever it rings?

At the top of a pole. Every call means a climb, for house guests as well as for Oliver, and only the Hooterville phone company is allowed to move it.

Who trained Green Acres' Arnold and nearly all the other animals on the rural sitcoms of the 1960s?

Frank Inn. He had to train a fresh Arnold every year, because each one outgrew the part.

Carpenters Alf and Ralph Monroe are introduced on Green Acres as brothers, but what is Ralph really?

Alf's sister. He explains that nobody would hire them if customers knew one of the carpenters was a woman, which hardly matters, since the pair rarely finish a job.

On Green Acres, one of Lisa's hens baffles Oliver by laying eggs of what shape?

Square. Oliver puts each hen in a cage of its own to catch the culprit, one more sign that the farm runs on Lisa's logic and not on his.

What is Hank Kimball's job?

County agricultural agent. Kimball starts a statement, doubts it, reverses it and wanders off, a send-up of government bureaucrats that the writers never tired of.

Eleanor Audley, who played Oliver's mother on Green Acres, was the voice of which classic Disney villain?

Maleficent. Audley was only five months older than Eddie Albert, her screen son, and her Eunice sides with Lisa, forever begging her to come back to America.

Which Petticoat Junction hotel owner turns up in early Green Acres episodes to help Lisa adjust to country life?

Kate Bradley. The two series shared one valley and several of its townsfolk by design, because, as Paul Henning put it, cross-pollinating his shows was economical.

In a 1967 Green Acres episode, Hooterville's amateur players stage their own version of which hit TV series?

The Beverly Hillbillies. Oliver plays Jethro and Lisa plays Granny, and a year later the real Clampetts began turning up in Hooterville in episodes of their own show.

What kind of business does Sam Drucker run at the centre of Hooterville life on Green Acres?

General store. It is also the post office: when a customer wants stamps, Sam puts on his official cap and steps behind a little grille beside the cash register.

Eddie Albert, Green Acres' Oliver, won a Bronze Star for rescuing stranded Marines at which Pacific battle?

Tarawa. At the helm of a Navy landing craft, Albert went in under machine-gun fire and pulled dozens of stranded Marines to safety, two decades before he played television's most hapless farmer.

Green Acres was cancelled in 1971 despite good ratings as part of what CBS clear-out?

The rural purge. Advertisers wanted younger city viewers, so hit country shows were dropped together, and Pat Buttram joked that the network had cancelled everything with a tree in it.

The writers of Green Acres deliberately kept which detail about Hooterville a mystery, scattering contradictory clues?

The state it is in. The scripts planted hints that point in different directions on purpose; in one episode the governor hands Oliver a toy kangaroo as a state souvenir.

With no proper finale, the last two episodes of Green Acres were made to serve as what?

Pilots for spin-offs. One follows a Hawaiian hotel owner and his daughter, the other Oliver's former secretary; neither sold, so the Douglases are bystanders in their own farewell.

Which two-part Green Acres episode was ranked number 59 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time in 1997?

A Star Named Arnold Is Born. A Hollywood producer wants Arnold to replace a horse who is holding out for more money, and Oliver, sure they will be sent straight home, does not even pack.

Arnold Ziffel falls hopelessly in love with Cynthia, Mr. Haney's prize pet, who is what kind of animal?

A basset hound. Arnold decides it can never work and breaks it off, and when the heartbroken Cynthia flops at the field trials, her owner wants to sue.

Which singing cowboy did Pat Buttram serve as comic sidekick in more than 40 films?

Gene Autry. The two met on the radio show National Barn Dance, and Buttram followed him from the Melody Ranch broadcasts into the films and then onto television.

For which 1953 film did Eddie Albert receive his first Oscar nomination?

Roman Holiday. Albert plays the photographer friend of Gregory Peck's reporter, secretly snapping the runaway princess with a camera hidden inside a cigarette lighter.

The actress behind Lisa Douglas voiced Duchess in which Disney film?

The Aristocats. Her European accent became a Disney fixture, and the studio brought her back twice more as the mouse heroine Miss Bianca in The Rescuers and its sequel.

Which actor played Hank Kimball, the Green Acres regular who can never finish a thought?

Alvy Moore. A Marine who had fought on Iwo Jima, he ended up best remembered as a man who cannot reach the end of a sentence without contradicting its beginning.

Which production company made Green Acres as a sister show to Petticoat Junction?

Filmways. The sitcom factory was struggling by 1982, when it was bought and rebuilt as Orion Pictures, the studio behind Amadeus and The Silence of the Lambs.

Paul Henning oversaw Green Acres, but which writer actually created it?

Jay Sommers. Henning already had two series to run, so he handed his guaranteed time slot to Sommers, a farm-raised writer who had scripted for him before.

Who composed the Green Acres theme?

Vic Mizzy. A year earlier he had written the finger-snapping theme for The Addams Family, and sang that one himself when the producers would not pay for singers.

Which antique steam train serves Hooterville, its crew also wandering into episodes of Green Acres?

The Cannonball. Its two-man crew, engineer Charley Pratt and conductor Floyd Smoot, turn up in Green Acres too, usually loafing around town between runs.

In a late Green Acres episode, Hooterville answers a huge tax rise by seceding and declaring itself what?

A kingdom. The townsfolk resolve to blow up the bridge over the swamp and anoint their neighbour King Oliver I, until the President rings the governor and tells him to sort it out.

What is the title of the very first episode of Green Acres, shown in September 1965?

Oliver Buys a Farm. Before he does, Lisa makes him try growing vegetables in pots on the penthouse terrace, to find out whether he really enjoys farming.

Which job does Arnold Ziffel take on, pulling a little red wagon around Hooterville?

Delivering newspapers. Arnold's aim is the trouble: he flings the papers so hard and so wildly that now and then one goes straight through a customer's window.

Which Green Acres actor, who died in 2020, was the last surviving member of the main cast?

Tom Lester. He had a chemistry degree and had taught school in Oklahoma before he left for Hollywood and landed the part of the farmhand.

Which singer was first attached to play Lisa Douglas in a 1997 film adaptation that never got made?

Bette Midler. Her own company was to produce the Fox film, but within the year she had walked away and Ben Stiller's outfit had taken over a project that was never shot.