Eddie Albert dies at age 99

Star of ‘Green Acres’ died of pneumonia in his home

AP file

Eddie Albert, the actor best known as the constantly befuddled city slicker-turned-farmer in television's "Green Acres," died of pneumonia Thursday, May 26 at his home in the Pacific Palisades area of California. He was 99.

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updated 8:48 p.m. ET May 28, 2005

LOS ANGELES - Eddie Albert was a versatile actor who moved smoothly from the Broadway stage to movies, but he found stardom as the constantly befuddled city slicker-turned-farmer in television’s “Green Acres.”

Albert died of pneumonia Thursday at his home in the Pacific Palisades area, in the presence of caregivers including his son Edward, who was holding his hand at the time.

“He died so beautifully and so gracefully that literally this morning I don’t feel grief, I don’t feel loss,” Edward Albert told The Associated Press.

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On “Green Acres,” Albert played Oliver Douglas, a New York lawyer who settles in a rural town with his glamorous wife, played by Eva Gabor, and finds himself perplexed by the antics of a host of eccentrics, including a pig named Arnold Ziffel.

He was nominated for Academy Awards as supporting actor in “Roman Holiday” (1953) and “The Heartbreak Kid” (1972).

Besides the 1965-1971 run in “Green Acres,” he costarred on TV with Robert Wagner in “Switch” from 1975 to 1978 and was a semi-regular on “Falcon Crest” in 1988.

He was a tireless conservationist, crusading for endangered species, healthful food, cleanup of Santa Monica Bay pollution and other causes.

Albert’s mother was not married when he was born, in 1906. After marrying, she changed his birth certificate to read 1908, the younger Albert said.

Rarely the star of films, Albert often portrayed the wisecracking sidekick, fast-talking salesman or sympathetic father. His stardom came in television, especially with “Green Acres,” in which, ironically, he played straight man. The show joined “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Petticoat Junction” and other high-rated CBS comedies of the 1960s and ’70s.

“Some people think that because of the bucolic background ‘Green Acres’ is corny,” Albert told an interviewer in 1970. “But we get away with some of the most incredible lines on television.”

His break in show business came during the ’30s in the Broadway hit “Brother Rat,” a comedy about life at Virginia Military Institute. Warner Bros. signed him to a contract and cast him in the 1938 film.

According to Hollywood gossip, he was caught in a dalliance with the wife of Jack L. Warner and the studio boss removed him from a film and allowed him to languish under contract.

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