The most amazing thing about watching the DVD of the first season of “Green Acres” last year was to discover that Eddie Albert, who in 1969 began playing the big shot New York attorney who relocates to Someplace Rural, USA, was still alive and in his late ’90s; and not only that, but that he’d been working into the middle of the last decade, when he was pushing 90.
Now comes news that he has died — age 99 — in the Los Angeles area. Not sure how well “Green Acres” translates to today’s audience, but watching the first-season episodes last year, the humor still looked bent and slightly subversive to me. Sort of an odd thing to have as your major life achievement, for sure, but then the obits say the show made Albert (who was born Edward Albert Heimberger) wealthy, and that he turned around and used his money for environmental and social causes. Not a bad legacy.
I’m amazed he was 99. I loved that show, silly as it was. It was a spin off of Petticoat Junction. I was hooked on both shows as a kid.