A version<\/a> of this article appeared in 2010.<\/em> <\/p>\n If you mention Green Acres, people think of the 1965-71 Sitcom starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor. But fifteen years before Green Acres came to TV,\u00a0 it came to radio.<\/p>\n CBS broadcast\u00a0Granby\u2019s Green Acres<\/em>\u00a0as a Summer replacement series. Granby\u2019s Green Acres told the story of John Granby, a Banker who got fed up with city life and took his wife and family to relocate to a farm.<\/p>\n Sound familiar?<\/p>\n The radio Green Acres were written by a 33-year old writer, who would go on to write 150 of the 170 TV episodes of Green Acres.<\/p>\n There were quite a few similarities between the radio and TV versions of Green Acres. Both featured a scatter-brained Mr. Kimball (although the radio Mr. Kimball ran the county store rather than being the County Agent.) Granby also had a farm hand named Eb. The radio show had some good bits that Sommers would dust off for early TV episodes.<\/p>\n An early Green Acres TV episode where Oliver can\u2019t decide what to plant has its basis in the radio episode, \u201cMr. Granby Plants a Crop.\u201d<\/p>\n And this great little bit of dialogue was transplanted directly from the radio:<\/p>\n Oliver: I\u2019d take a seed, a tiny little seed, I\u2019d plant it in the ground, I\u2019d put some dirt on it, I\u2019d water it, and pretty soon, do you know what I would have? At the end of the radio run. John Granby (Gale Gordon) told listeners to send letters in to their local CBS station with their thoughts on Granby\u2019s Green Acres.\u00a0 The show never returned to the air.<\/p>\n There were many reasons the show didn\u2019t make it in 1950. First, I don’t think audiences were ready for it.\u00a0Americans had migrated in large numbers to\u00a0cities like New York and Los Angeles in search of economic opportunities. Granby\u2019s\u00a0desire to move to the country seemed absurd.\u00a0When\u00a0Green Acres\u00a0<\/em>appeared on TV, it was a very different world with violence, unrest, and crime on the rise. Moving to Hooterville sounded a lot less crazy and made us more sympathetic with Mr. Douglas.<\/p>\n The biggest problem\u00a0with Granby\u2019s Green\u00a0<\/em>Acres may have been that it just wasn\u2019t ready for prime time. Granby is too much of a cantankerous blowhard. The radio version gives you an appreciation of the talent with which Eddie Albert played the role of Oliver Wendell Douglas, as a complex mix of bombast, idealism, practicality, and romance that makes the character a joy to watch.<\/p>\n In the radio version, Sommers only had given real airtime to Mr. Kimball from the store, and a know-it-all all County Agent who always ate Granby\u2019s supper. Pretty thin gruel.<\/p>\n Not continuing\u00a0Granby\u2019s Green Acres\u00a0<\/em>was a smart decision. Even with great comics like Burns and Allen leaving radio for television, radio comedy was still undergoing a golden age and Sommers’s creation simply was not in the same league as shows like Our Miss Brooks,<\/em>\u00a0Life of Riley,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Life with Luigi.<\/em><\/p>\n It also had a nice aftermath. Sommers continued to develop as a writer and work in the world of television, writing on such shows as Amos and Andy, Dennis the Menace,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Petticoat Junction.<\/em>\u00a0When Green Acres<\/em> got its second beginning, it became one of television\u2019s most beloved sitcoms.<\/p>\n It features Pat Buttram turning in the role Mr. Haney, who is always trying to sell Mr. Douglas something, Eva Gabor as the sweet but often confusing Hungarian princess Lisa Douglas, and the Ziffels, who treat their pig like he\u2019s their son, and much more.<\/p>\n While the radio show didn\u2019t have these elements, it serves as a rough draft of\u00a0Green Acres,\u00a0<\/em>which makes it an interesting listen.<\/p>\n You can listen to\u00a0Granby’s Green Acres\u00a0<\/em>here<\/a>. You can currently watch Green Acres<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>for free with Pluo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 A version of this article appeared in 2010. If you mention Green Acres, people think of the 1965-71 Sitcom starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor. But fifteen years before Green Acres came to TV,\u00a0 it came to radio. CBS broadcast\u00a0Granby\u2019s Green Acres\u00a0as a Summer replacement series. Granby\u2019s Green Acres told the story of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[132,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-drama-review","category-golden-age-article"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-aUn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41935"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41955,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41935\/revisions\/41955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"Green](\"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/greenacres.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nLisa: A dirty little wet seed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n