100 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.

The actress who played Lisa Douglas on Green Acres made which party game a hit by playing it with Johnny Carson?

Twister became a major success after the pair played it on The Tonight Show on May 3, 1966, though the closeness the game demanded also made it controversial.

Arnold Ziffel of Green Acres gets a mention in the closing diner scene of which Quentin Tarantino film?

Pulp Fiction (1994) name-checks Arnold in its final conversation, more than two decades after Green Acres left the air.

Green Acres star Eddie Albert dropped his real surname, Heimberger, because people kept mispronouncing it as what?

Hamburger was how the name invariably came out, so he performed under his first and middle names. He was born Edward Albert Heimberger in Rock Island, Illinois.

On Green Acres, Arnold Ziffel keeps up with the issues by watching which real anchorman's evening news?

Walter Cronkite's broadcast is one of Arnold's habits, along with changing the channels himself, signing cheques and adjusting the TV antenna.

Eddie Albert traded Green Acres' kindly Oliver Douglas for a ruthless prison warden in which 1974 football film?

The Longest Yard set him against Burt Reynolds, whose former football pro is blackmailed by the warden into fielding a team of inmates.

Frank Cady, Sam Drucker on Green Acres, plays a man sleeping on a fire escape in which Hitchcock thriller?

Rear Window (1954) made Cady one half of the couple who sleep outdoors, among many small film parts he took before Hooterville, including one in Ace in the Hole.

Barbara Pepper, the first Doris Ziffel on Green Acres, was once considered for which famous I Love Lucy role?

Ethel Mertz went to another actress, but Pepper, a friend of Lucille Ball since both joined Goldwyn's musical company in 1933, still turned up in small parts on the show.

In the 1990 reunion film Return to Green Acres, Mr. Haney sells a miracle fertilizer named after which world leader?

Mikhail Gorbachev lent his nickname to Gorby Grow, a supposedly Russian product that pins the film to the last years of the Cold War.

On Green Acres, boy inventor Dinky Watson sells Lisa Douglas a rock for $14, claiming he brought it from where?

The Moon was fresh news after the first landings, and the rock even starts beeping when moonlight strikes it, so a baffled Oliver ends up sending it to NASA.

The composer of the Green Acres theme also wrote the theme for which other 1960s sitcom about a spooky household?

The Addams Family arrived in 1964, a year before Green Acres. The same composer went on to score five Don Knotts films, among them The Reluctant Astronaut.

Green Acres regular Mary Grace Canfield filled in as Abner Kravitz's relative for four episodes of which 1960s sitcom?

Bewitched had lost Alice Pearce, its original Gladys Kravitz, to cancer, so Canfield stepped in as another Kravitz until Sandra Gould was hired.

Sid Melton, carpenter Alf Monroe on Green Acres, later appeared in flashbacks as Sophia's late husband on which sitcom?

The Golden Girls cast him as Salvadore Petrillo, the long-dead father of Dorothy. In the 1950s Melton had been Captain Midnight's sidekick, Ichabod Mudd.

Hank Patterson, Fred Ziffel on Green Acres, also played stableman Hank Miller for years on which long-running drama?

Gunsmoke used him in 33 episodes from 1962 to 1973. By his Hooterville years he was reportedly almost deaf, so a dialogue coach cued him with a tap on the leg.

In the next-to-last Green Acres episode, Oliver and Lisa leave Hooterville for a trip to which tropical destination?

Hawaii is where they check into a hotel run by Bob Carter and his daughter Pam, and most of the episode follows that pair instead of the Douglases.

Before Green Acres, Eddie Albert played a Persian peddler in the film of which Rodgers and Hammerstein musical?

Oklahoma! reached cinemas in 1955. Five years later Albert took over from Robert Preston as Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man on Broadway.

Pat Buttram, the scheming Mr. Haney on Green Acres, supplied political quips for the speeches of which US president?

Ronald Reagan leaned on Buttram, a staunch Republican, to spice up his speeches. Buttram was a Methodist minister's son from Alabama who first studied for the ministry.

Pat Buttram joked that when Green Acres was axed in 1971, CBS cancelled every show that had what in it?

A tree was all it took, he said, adding that even Lassie was not spared. Green Acres had finished 34th of 96 shows that season and was winning its time slot.

Oliver Wendell Douglas of Green Acres is named after a celebrated Supreme Court justice with which surname?

Holmes sat on the Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932, and one fourth-season story borrows the justice's full name for its title.

The actor who played Eb Dawson on Green Acres later appeared in which 1974 hit film about a stray dog?

Benji's canine lead, Higgins, was coached by the same trainer as Arnold and had spent the 1960s as the dog on Petticoat Junction.

The actor who played Hank Kimball on Green Acres rode in Marlon Brando's motorcycle gang in which 1953 film?

The Wild One gave him a small part in the gang. Before that he had taken over as Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts on Broadway and toured with the play for over a year.

Arnold Ziffel becomes a boy hero on Green Acres by leading the sheriff to the culprits behind which crime?

A bank robbery nets the crooks only $67 plus the five dollars Arnold came to deposit, so he runs off with their bag of money and fetches the law.

Weeks after Green Acres debuted, its two stars appeared as mystery guests to thank John Daly on which game show?

What's My Line? was hosted by Daly, a former ABC newscaster who had appeared as himself in the opening episode, so the pair thanked him on air for helping launch the series.

On Green Acres, Hooterville is so out of touch that its citizens believe which man is still US president?

Calvin Coolidge left office in 1929, yet the locals think he is still in charge. They have also never heard of the federal income tax or of tax refunds.

On Green Acres, Oliver talks Hooterville's farmers into planting which vegetable, promoted with its own bowl game?

Rutabagas grow well in Hooterville but will not sell, so the town plans a Rutabaga Bowl, a parade and a queen, and Lisa drops them on people from a hot-air balloon.

Hooterville plans a hero's welcome on Green Acres for the son of Lisa's old friend Drobny, who is what?

A duck is all Oliver can see, but nobody will listen to him, and even the lieutenant governor arrives for the celebration.

On Green Acres, Eb Dawson enrols by mail at a college nicknamed MIT to learn which trade?

Barbering is the whole syllabus at Middle Indiana Tonsorial, which Eb joins after talking Oliver into paying the tuition.

To stop locals leaving on Green Acres, Hooterville revives an army contract from the First World War to build what?

Airplanes are built in an old barn from the plans in a model kit, and the first one falls apart the moment Lisa christens it.

Sam Drucker of Green Acres insists on putting on an official hat whenever he switches to which of his many jobs?

Postmaster Drucker also stands behind a small regulation grille beside the register, proud that everyone in the valley must come to him for their mail.

On Green Acres, Oliver learns that joining Hooterville's volunteer fire department requires being able to do what?

Play an instrument, the fire chief explains, because Hooterville has more parades than fires. The brigade's brass band is even older than the brigade itself.

On Green Acres, Arnold Ziffel beats two thousand rival entries to win a student contest in which field?

Painting is one of his gifts: his abstract canvas, titled Nude at a Filling Station, wins the county student art contest and gets him let back into school after an expulsion.

When Arnold Ziffel reaches Hollywood on Green Acres, he lands a screen role originally written for which animal?

A horse, implied to be Mister Ed, tells Arnold he needs the job to send his son to Stanford, so Arnold behaves badly on purpose until he is fired.

To claim a Chicago fortune on Green Acres, Arnold Ziffel must show he can predict what with his tail?

The weather forecast from his tail is snow in July, which costs him the royal treatment at his hotel until a freak blizzard buries the city.

Which Laugh-In regular played the scheming developer in the 1990 reunion film Return to Green Acres?

Henry Gibson's developer plots with Mr. Haney to destroy Hooterville, which draws Oliver and Lisa home from an unhappy spell in New York.

Which actor's company, Red Hour Productions, took over a planned Green Acres film in 1997?

Ben Stiller meant to star and possibly direct, taking the material in a more irreverent direction, but the project never reached the screen.

Richard L. Bare, who directed almost every Green Acres episode, also made which famous Twilight Zone episode?

To Serve Man was one of seven Twilight Zone episodes Bare directed. He lived to 101 and spent his last years planning a Green Acres revival.

Kay E. Kuter, farmer Newt Kiley on Green Acres, spent 14 years as the commercial voice of which sweet?

Hershey's Kisses adverts carried his voice for 14 years. Gamers know him as the bartender Griswold Goodsoup in The Curse of Monkey Island.

Hank Patterson, Fred Ziffel on Green Acres, was the great-uncle of which star of Deep Impact and Jurassic Park III?

Téa Leoni, whose breakthrough was the 1995 film Bad Boys, is his great-niece. Patterson had set out to be a serious pianist and ended up playing piano in vaudeville.

After illness forced Barbara Pepper out of Green Acres, which actress took over as Doris Ziffel until 1971?

Fran Ryan had made her television debut only in 1966, in an episode of Batman, after two decades of stage work in California and Chicago.

Before Green Acres, Frank Cady spent a decade as Doc Williams on which long-running 1950s sitcom?

Ozzie and Harriet was his steadiest job before Hooterville. In the late 1960s he juggled one recurring character across three sitcoms at the same time.

After Green Acres, Eddie Albert played a retired policeman turned private detective in which 1970s CBS series?

Switch teamed him with a former criminal his character had once jailed, and ran for 70 episodes before falling ratings ended it in 1978.

On Green Acres, Sam Drucker edits and prints the valley's only paper, known as the Hooterville what?

World Guardian is a lofty name for a paper put out by a shopkeeper who is also the valley's notary, constable and justice of the peace.

On Green Acres, local legend Molly Turgiss, who haunts anyone speaking her name, breaks what over Oliver's head?

His guitar is smashed with Lisa's permission, after Oliver insists on singing the ballad he has written about a woman the whole valley is afraid to mention.

In one of Lisa's tall tales on Green Acres, which instrument was she playing in a Paris restaurant trio?

Cello was her part in the Budapest Chamber Trio, where she says Oliver found her again a week after the war ended. He insists it never happened that way.

On Green Acres, which neighbouring town is home to the nearest airport and a cinema called the Bijou?

Pixley also supplies Hooterville's television, from a station with the call letters WPIXL, and sits at the far end of the valley's railway.

On Green Acres, the barrel in Sam Drucker's shop is full of pickles made from what?

Plastic pickles share the shelves with nail polish that doubles as bathtub sealant and dehydrated chickens that need only water and bones.

The final Green Acres episode centres on Carol Rush, who used to work for Oliver in Manhattan as what?

His secretary was played by Elaine Joyce. Cancellation came so suddenly that the Douglases never got a farewell story of their own.

Pat Buttram, Mr. Haney on Green Acres, made a late cameo as a saloon old-timer in the third film of which series?

Back to the Future Part III cast him as one of three elderly saloon patrons, each played by a veteran of Western films.

A year after Green Acres ended, Eddie Albert earned an Oscar nomination as a protective father in which film?

The Heartbreak Kid, directed by Elaine May from a Neil Simon script, cast him as the father of the heiress played by Cybill Shepherd.

Green Acres was reportedly among the first filmed sitcoms to rely on which aid for Hank Kimball's rambling speeches?

Teleprompters were invaluable, the man behind Kimball later said, for a character who doubts every statement he makes and ends up saying the opposite.

Eleanor Audley, Oliver's mother on Green Acres, was how much older than her screen son Eddie Albert?

Five months was the whole gap between screen mother and son: Audley was born in November 1905 and Albert in April 1906.