Here’s What Happened to ‘Green Acres’ Star Eddie Albert Before, During and After the Show

Early Life

He was born Edward Albert Heimberger on April 22, 1906 in Rock Island, Illinois, the oldest of five children born to real estate agent Frank Daniel Heimberger and his wife, Julia Jones. When he was 1, the family moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where, at the tender age of 6, he got his first job: newspaper delivery boy. When he attended college at the University of Minnesota, he majored in business. His intent was to follow that as a career, until the stock market crash of 1929 derailed those plans.

A Missed Opportunity

Eddie credits the newspaper job for earning money he could give to his parents, who were desperately in need of it, but he views that time — about 10 years in total — as a missed opportunity. Throwing a paper on a porch is all fine, but there was no opportunity for interaction with the people he was serving. “That’s where the real education comes from,” he reflected in 1996. “So I missed those best years and I find it difficult for me, in groups, to be comfortable.”

Changing His Name

He worked a variety of jobs, including as a nightclub singer, before moving to New York City in 1933 and changing his last name (it seems the “Heimberger” was frequently mispronounced as “Hamburger”). There he cohosted the radio show The Honeymooners (no connection to the later Jackie Gleason and Art Carney series), on which he costarred with Grace Bradt. Not a lot is known about the show this many years later and considering those were early days, but by all reports, the duo had such on-air chemistry that people thought they were actually married. That wasn’t the case, but the show definitely worked. Commented the Oakland Tribune in 1936, “These two courageous youngsters came to New York about two years ago with four dollars between them. For eight months they were fed on promises, but life never fooled them for a moment. They knew that it was bound to come out all right in the end.”

Popular Sketches

As to where material for The Honeymooners, which Eddie wrote, came from, he explained, “Mostly out of our heads. Grace and I talk over the material for the sketches together and then I write the dialog. Some of the characters in the sketches, however, are taken from real life. For instance, there is Mrs. O’Hoolihan, the landlady, whose character is really based on that of my grandmother Jones.”

Grace went on to compare the inventiveness of a character named Gorilla to Eddie himself. Objecting at first, he ultimately concurred, “That’s true. I used to have pulleys and ropes from the head of my bed to the window sill so I wouldn’t have to get out of bed to close the window on cold mornings. But do you call that a crazy invention? It was very convenient, you know.”

Broadway Start

The Honeymooners, which debuted in 1935, had a three-year run on radio (and even included a touring stage version). During that time, Eddie began appearing on Broadway in Brother Rat and O, Evening Star! (both 1936), Room service (1937) and The Boys from Syracuse (1938). Impressed by his talent, Warner Bros offered him a film contract. His first film? The film adaptation of Brother Rat (1938), which saw him reprising his stage role of Robert Harris “Bing” Edwards (which he would do so again in the 1940 sequel, Brother Rat and a Baby). Four Wives (1939), On Your Toes (1939), My Love Came Back, A Dispatch from Reuters and An Angel from Texas (all 1940), and Four Mothers, Thieves Fall Out, Out of the Fog, The Wagons Roll at Night and The Great Nobody (all 1941) followed.

An Interesting Turn

In the years before the U.S. entered World War II, Eddie found himself the subject of concern as reported by the Los Angeles Times on February 4, 1940, reporting, “Excited by a find of gold, Eddie Albert, stage and screen comedian, risked thirst for himself and burro by using part of his drinking water to pan it, the actor said yesterday on returning to Long Beach from Mexico after fears had been expressed for his safety … The comedian said he was not lost, but had been out of communication with civilization during his trip into the Lower California interior. He said he was held in the desert longer than he expected because of the gold find. He exhibited some gold nuggets on his return.”

Service

The other side of that story is that he had gone on a tour of Mexico as both a clown and a high-wire act as part of the Escalante Brothers Circus, but, according to Wikipedia, he was actually providing intelligence to the U.S. Army, photographing German U-boats in Mexican harbors. He enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1942 and, the following year, was discharged so that he could take an appointment as a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve. For his actions during World War II, and for the many men he saved, he was awarded the Bronze Star.

He Liked Hollywood

Between 1942 and 1949, Eddie starred in 15 movies, continuing to prove his abilities in comedy, drama, as a leading man, in supporting roles and as a character actor. This diversity worked out fine for him personally both in terms of film and the stage. “Personally,” he related to the Valley Times in 1950, “I feel an actor is at his best for the first six months of a show. After that, except in very unusual instances, boredom sets in and one’s work deteriorates. I like Hollywood, because after a film is finished, an actor is able to turn his attention to another part. If he’s lucky, he can play a widely differentiated series of parts in a single year. In that way a performer grows and rounds out his acting technique. I’d rather have a few lean periods career-wise and do an assortment of roles. An actor only lives once, so why spend that ‘once’ doing the same thing over and over again?”

During this time, he launched Eddie Albert Productions, through which he started creating many education and industrial films. He told The Californian in 1983 that his experiences in World War II actually had a massive impact on him and inspired him to do so. “I convinced myself,” he said, “in one great moment of terror, that if I got out of this alive, I could never go back to the rather casual, selfish behavior that I’d considered the norm.”

More Movies

Another 18 movies followed in the 1950s, beginning with The Fuller Brush Girl (1950, co-starring Lucille Ball) and concluding with Beloved Infidel (1959). During that decade he also returned to the stage twice in Reuben, Reuben (1955) and Say, Darling (1958), and made a major dive into television. It started with the sitcom Leave it To Larry, in which he plays shoe salesman Larry Tucker who lives with his family in the home of his boss and father-in-law, Mr. Koppel (Ed Begley, Sr.). He also served as the host of three variety shows, 1953’s Nothing but the Best and On Your Account, and 1954’s Saturday Night Revue. He starred in the TV movie Our Mr. Sun (1955) and made a number of appearances on television anthology series.

No Stranger to TV

In 1952, less than a year before his TV hosting duties began, Eddie commented to The Los Angeles Times, “I’m no stranger to TV. I’ve done many dramatic shows and guest spots. But having a show of my own paints a different picture of its influence on our lives. I don’t know, and I doubt whether anyone else does, just how powerful TV will be. Even during these first few days I’ve run up against some problems that have caused me to stop and ponder on how best to approach my new job.”

Keeping Enthusiasm

Two years later, despite the failure of his shows, he remained enthusiastic about the medium, as he related to the New York Daily News: “Did you ever stop to think what a wonderful thing it is? Here, at last, we have an instrument to help make a great democracy — I mean in the way Jefferson conceived it — by bringing education to all of the people.” He added to The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, California, “The roughness of live TV gives television a vitality that a movie doesn’t have. It’s exciting when at the last minute you have to cut this or that out of the show. That’s a unique feature for TV that the movies don’t have. That’s why I never read any reviews of my TV shows. So what does it matter if stagehands walk in front of the camera or somebody misses a step? Television is in the same period as the movie industry of the 1920s, exciting and experimental. Television as yet doesn’t have too much tradition to bind it. They don’t have bankers running it yet.”

Yet.

His Goal

In everything he was doing, Eddie had one goal in mind: “My growth as a performer, rather than success. That’s my philosophy, do jobs that make me happy instead of jobs that are a piece of cheese.” He added to The Sacramento Bee, “You may be a star or only a bit player, but you like it. You find it less onerous than selling neckties or delivering ice — the only other things you’re probably good at. A good actor has a choice of what he does. I have freelanced since 1938. I thought being freelance meant being free. But it turned out that it means you are only free to worry about finding some new picture or play you feel is worth doing. But even so, it’s better than being tied to a studio and having to do any piece of cheese that comes along.”

His View

In the 1960s, Eddie appeared in nine movies, ranging from The Young Doctors (1961) to Seven Women (1966); starred on Broadway in The Music Man; was featured on more anthology shows and guest starred on The Lieutenant (the first series from Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry), The Outer Limits, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Mr. Novak. These appearances were well-received, but Eddie viewed them philosophically. “There are so many things to do besides guesting on weekly series,” he told The Journal News in 1964. “Take educational TV. Your enthusiasm for it can overshadow anything, and you forget about acting. We can have international TV by Syncom, and the man in South Africa can tune in as easily with a simple disc on this roof as the housewife in North Dakota. With three satellites in space, we can blanket the Earth. Think of the education possibilities! Of course, the sad thing about our TV is that most of it is used for entertainment, and it will continue. You look at the set and you see what a power it could be, but gains are being made. We just want it to move a lot faster in the educational direction.”

Playing Oliver Douglas

In 1965, Eddie found himself firmly entrenched in the world of entertainment television when Paul Henning, who had created both The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction, and had been a regular writer for George Burns and Gracie Allen on radio and TV, approached him regarding the role of Oliver Douglas. Despite everything else he had accomplished and the characters he portrayed, Green Acres, also starring Eva Gabor as Oliver’s wife, Lisa, would be the one that would be most closely identified with him, “Our show is the age-old conflict of city versus country,” he mused to The Post-Standard of Syracuse, New York. “Eva is just sensational as my wife. The more disparity there is between the city and country, the better. Wearing a Jean-Louis negligee and feeding the pigs, Eva is funny before she says anything. She’s a sophisticate in the country.”

The Crossovers

Of the crossovers with Petticoat Junction, he commented, “Petticoat runs to slightly broader comedy. Green Acres is not as broad. I won’t fall into a pool. The humor is inherent in the surroundings. I [Oliver] have such a yearning for the country that I want to make my own cheese, grow my own garden vegetables and before moving to the country I had done some farming in our penthouse … had the biggest squash on Park Avenue! Eva hates it, but is very loyal and when we move to the country, she wants to help. My character is a person who wants to live a simple life … Only in the series he drives up to the country home in a Continental and attaches an electric blanket out the window to the car battery.”

Big Changes

There were some criticisms thrown towards Green Acres in that it seemed similar to Paul Henning’s other shows, but Eddie didn’t view that as a problem, pointing out to The San Francisco Examiner in 1965, “Changes on familiar themes have been done in the theater for centuries. Authors create themes by changing locations or changing centuries like in Berkeley Square. Our theme of city-country conflict was used by Will Rogers, Charles Ray, Henry Fonda. But imitation is not the point. The question is this: is it entertaining? Does it provide a pleasant half hour for 30 or 40 million people?”

The Truth

“Take Beverly Hillbillies,” he added. “We know millions are enthusiastic about it. A lot of critics don’t share that enthusiasm — nor do they buy a lot of Procter and Gamble products. The object is to move the products and Beverly Hillbillies movies them. We hope we can do that with Green Acres and that we also can attract the critics. The truth is that an absolutely tremendous body of American people are enchanted by and love these shows. And you have to be commercial or the whole thing becomes academic and you are off the air.”

The End of the Show

By April 1970, Eddie and the rest of the Green Acres cast and crew saw that the writing was on the wall for all of them, which turned out to be the case as the 1970 to 1971 season would be the show’s last. And he wasn’t happy about it, especially when he heard of the network’s shift from focusing on ratings to demographics. Previous victims included The Red Skelton Show, The Jackie Gleason Show and Petticoat Junction with many more to go. “Hogwash!” exclaimed Eddie to the Star-Gazette of Elmira, New York. “It wasn’t that at all. I’ll tell you what it was: The brass at CBS is more concerned about what their Madison Avenue friends think than what the public thinks. The boys on Madison Avenue always turned their noses at Beverly Hillbillies as though it were Dogpatch illiterates.”

Bringing More Humor

“But let me tell you something,” he elaborated. “That show, Beverly Hillbillies, is one of the best-written series on television. So is my show. There is more humor, more raciness, double entendre in Beverly Hillbillies or Green Acres than in any other show. There’s more humor in one segment of Beverly Hillbillies than there could ever be in a month of Bob Hope shows. But the brass doesn’t think it’s sophisticated enough.”

Other Work

Green Acres left the air in 1971 (though it hasn’t really been gone, still rerunning all these decades later). In 1973 Eddie returned to Broadway for No Hard Feelings, starred in a dozen films, including those that put him alongside Burt Reynolds (1974’s The Longest Yard) and John Wayne (that same year’s McQ). On television he starred in the miniseries Evening in Byzantium and The Word, four TV movies and had guest appearances on Columbo, McCloud and Kung Fu. He re-entered the episodic sweepstakes with Switch.

‘The Sting’

Created by Glen Larson (Battlestar Galactica, The Fall Guy), Switch was a TV take-off of the movie The Sting. Eddie is retired cop Frank MacBride, who had previously arrested Robert Wagner‘s Peter Ryan, a con man. Following Ryan’s release, they two of them decide to open a detective agency, their specialty using cons of their own to get the bad guys to reveal necessary evidence. Charlie Callas and Sharon Gless also starred. Actor James Garner accused series creator Glen Larson of taking scripts from The Rockford Files and rewriting them for this show.

No Secret

Eddie made no secret of the fact that he wasn’t happy with the scripts for the show, which had completed its run in 1978. He noted to Van Nuys, California’s Valley News in 1977 that he tried to improve the quality of the scripts by offering to pay the writers out of his own pocket. “I said, ‘Look, I’ll pay them under the table. I’ll give the a couple of thousand out of my own salary,’ and they said, ‘Oh, no.’ And I said, ‘All right, then maybe we’ll give them a weekend movie.’ ‘Oh, we can’t do that,’ and so on. So we stagger along with the same writers under contract at Universal going from Baretta to Rockford Files to Switch to Barnaby Jones. I’m reading the same lines Garner does, and he’s reading the same lines Bobby Blake does and he’s reading the same lines Buddy Epsen does. And they’re using the same plots over and over … I’m looking at more scripts now for next season and I see they simply are rewrites of the old ones. I don’t know what to do about it. I’m very angry about the whole thing.”

Taking Days Off

The 1980s brought with it a familiar mix of projects for Eddie: Broadway (You Can’t Take It With You, Parade of Stars Playing the Palace), another dozen movies — 1980’s Yesterday to 1989’s Brenda Starr (based on the comic strip of the same name — four TV miniseries, eight TV movies and a co-starring role on the prime time soap opera Falcon Crest, on which he played Carlton Travis — and which he found to be a much easier series to work on than Green Acres or Switch. “In three days,” he told the News-Pilot, “we did three scenes from three different episodes. Then they told me I wasn’t needed for a week. It reminds me of what Spencer Tracy said when asked what he looked for in a role. He said, ‘Days off.’” In the same interview he bemoaned the state of television, opining, “Frankly, I can’t believe some of the stuff that get on television these days. My own TV set broke down months ago and I’ve never bothered to get it fixed.”

Other Iconic Roles

The 1990s kicked off with the reunion TV movie Return to Green Acres, which was nostalgic fun but didn’t really light the world on fire. He made two feature films, Headless! (1994) and Illusion Infinity (1997); the TV movies The Girl from Mars (1991) and the remake of Disney’s The Barefoot Executive (1995); and guest starred on The Ray Bradbury Theatre, Golden Palace, The Jackie Thomas Show and Time Trax. In between all of this, and this was true throughout much of his life beginning in the 1970s, Eddie was heavily involved in social and environmental causes. He founded the Eddie Albert World Trees Foundation, was national chairman for the Boy Scouts of America’s conservation program, a trustee of the National Recreation and Park Association and on the advisory board of the U.S. Department of Energy. Additionally, he was a consultant for the World Hunger Conference, an envoy for Meals for Millions and fought for agriculture and against industrial pollution.

A True Love Story

In his private life, he fell in love with and married Mexican-American actress and dancer Margo (whose actual name was Maria Marguerita Guadalupe Teresa Esetella Bolado Castilla y O’Donnell) in 1945 and they were together for the next 40 years until her death in 1985. They had a true love story, oftentimes working together and creating a popular nightclub act featuring the two of them. They had one son, Edward Albert, Jr., who died of lung cancer on September 22, 2006. In the last few years of Eddie’s life, Edward took care of him after he developed Alzheimer’s disease and would, himself, die of pneumonia on May 26, 2005 at the age of 99. At the time, his son commented, “He died so beautifully and so gracefully, that literally this morning I don’t feel grief, I don’t feel loss.”

In the end, Eddie left behind an amazing legacy that — as proven above — consisted of far more than Green Acres. He would have wanted it that way.