this has been a Filmways presentation, darling

 

♫ ♫ ♪  ♪

Green -- Acres is the place to be

Farm -- livin' is the life for me!

Land -- spreadin' out, so far and wide --

Keep Manhattan, just gimme that countryside

New -- York is where I'd rather stay!

I -- get allergic, smelling hay

I -- just adore a penthouse view

Darling I love you but give me Park Avenue

The chores!

        The stores!

Fresh air!

        Times Square!

You are my wife --

        Good-bye, city life

Green Acres, we are there!

______________________________________

That wonderful, spunky intro song for the 1960s situation-comedy, Green Acres stays in your mind once you hear it.

        (Maybe the CIA could use it as a secret weapon to control Putin...)

In third and fourth grade, I would come home from school knowing the night that show was going to be on.  Eddie Albert reminded me of my dad, kind of.

        I think my favorite part of the show was the theme song, though!  It was sung by the two stars of the show, Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor and told its own little story with conflict and comedy.

When "Oliver" is pitching hay and on the second scoop, he throws the pitchfork along with the hay and then looks befuddled -- "Where did it go?  I just had it?" -- That used to be funny every single week, and it is still funny now, on You Tube!

        And at the end of the theme song, that pose where Gabor and Albert stand together looking straight ahead and he's holding the pitchfork (which he has evidently re-captured), prongs-up -- taking their stand as committed farmers, it's an homage to American Gothic, a famous 1930 painting by Grant Wood.

The Green Acres theme song was written by Vic Mizzy (1916 - 2009).

A "fuzz-box" distortion of the guitar sound was used; this effect also featured in the Rolling Stones hit song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."

        That song, and the Green Acres series came out in the same year:  1965.

At the end of each episode, as the credits were shown, the theme song was played with instrumentals, no lyrics.  When the song was over, the "Filmways" logo would appear and the audience would hear the voice of Eva Gabor saying, with brisk, silvery drama in her Hungarian accent:  "This has been a Filmways presentation, dah-ling!"

        Somehow I knew that way of speaking, and saying "dah-ling" like that, was glamour.

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