What Ever Happened to the Cast of Green Acres?

Eddie Albert as Oliver Wendell Douglas

Eddie Albert played Oliver Wendell Douglas, the main character of the show.

Before joining Green Acres, he was a notable actor who received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role in 1953’s Roman Holiday. 

After the show ended, Albert resumed his film career and was nominated for another Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in 1972’s The Heartbreak Kid.

He also played the prison warden in The Longest Yard and starred in Disney’s Escape to Witch Mountain. 

His various television roles include Falcon Crest, Highway to Heaven, Murder She Wrote and General Hospital. In 1990, he reunited with Eva Gabor for Return to Green Acres, a made-for-TV movie.

Albert married Mexican actress and dancer Margo in 1945. The two shared a son, Edward, and a daughter, Maria. The couple was married until Margo died in 1985 at age 68 from brain cancer.

Of his father, Edward once said, “acting was really only a tenth of his life.” 

Albert was an outspoken environmentalist and lobbied in the ’70s to ban DDT, a synthetic insecticide. He also used his Green Acres fame to champion real-life farmers hit by economic hard times. 

Albert was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1995. A decade later, he died at the age of 99 from pneumonia.

Eva Gabor as Lisa Douglas

The actress and socialite Eva Gabor was perfect for the role of Lisa Douglas, whose lavish life got upended when her husband bought a farm and moved them to the small town.

In 1972, Gabor launched her eponymous fashion collection with fashion designer Luis Estévez. 

She continued to work in show business, with roles in Disney movies like The Aristocats, The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under.

She joined Match Game, an American television panel game show, in 1973 and later starred on Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour. In 1983, she reunited with Green Acres costar Eddie Albert on Broadway in You Can’t Take It with You. 

Gabor was married five times. First to Eric Valdemar Drimmer, a Swedish-born masseur, in 1937, but they divorced in 1942. Then, she married investment banker Charles Isaacs in 1943, and they divorced in 1949. She was married to Dr. John Elbert Williams from 1956 to 1957. Then, she was with Richard Brown, a textile manufacturer, later writer and director, from 1959 to 1973. Lastly, she married Frank Gard Jameson Sr., an aerospace executive, in 1973, and they were married until 1983.

Gabor died at the age of 79 in 1995 from respiratory failure and pneumonia.

Tom Lester as Eb Dawson

Tom Lester played Eb Dawson, the Douglases’ sarcastic young farmhand. For the role, Lester pulled from his own experiences growing up on a farm in Mississippi.  

He also made crossover appearances as Dawson in The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction. In 1990, Lester reprised his role as Dawson in the TV movie Return to Green Acres.

Lester also landed several film roles, including his part as Riley in the 1974 movie Benji and Cousin Jake in Gordy. He also starred in Charo and the Sergeant as Sgt. Hank Palmer. His last film role was in 2014, when he starred in Campin’ Buddies. 

Aside from his career in Hollywood, Lester remained an active member of his Mississippi farming community.

In 1997, he was the recipient of Mississippi’s Wildlife Farmer of the Year award.

In 2007, at the age of 68, he married his wife, Kaylie. They were married until he died of complications from Parkinson’s in 2020. He was 81.

Up to that point, Lester had been the last surviving member of the Green Acres cast.

Frank Cady as Sam Drucker

Frank Cady played Sam Drucker, a shopkeeper who was a regular on both Green Acres and Petticoat Junction. 

Cady was the only actor to play a recurring character on three television sitcoms simultaneously from 1968 to 1969, appearing on The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction. After Green Acres, he starred on Hawaii Five-0 and These Are the Days. His last acting role was in Return to Green Acres.

Cady married his wife Shirley Cady in 1940, and they were married for 68 years until Shirley’s death. They shared two children, Catherine Turk and Steven Cady. Frank died at the age of 96 in June 2012.

Pat Buttram as Eustace Haney

Pat Buttram starred as Eustace Haney in Green Acres, the local salesman and frequent grifter who sold Oliver the farm. After the show’s conclusion, he lent his voice to multiple animated Disney movies, including The Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound. 

One of his last acting roles was in Back to the Future Part III, and his final voice role was in A Goofy Movie. 

In 1936, Buttram married Dorothy McFadden. Together, the couple adopted a daughter. They divorced in 1946. In 1952, he married actress Sheila Ryan, and they welcomed their daughter, Kathrine, in 1954. The couple was together until Ryan died in 1975.

Buttram retired from acting in 1980 and moved home to his native Winston County, Ala. In 1988, Buttram was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and one on the Alabama Stars of Fame in Birmingham, Ala.

Buttram died from kidney failure at the age of 78 on Jan. 8, 1994. 

Alvy Moore as Henry ‘Hank’ Kimball

Alvy Moore starred on the show as the always contradictory and frustrating Henry “Hank” Kimball. 

After Green Acres, he would go on to guest star on The Andy Griffith Show, Little House on the Prairie and How the West Was Won. One of his last television appearances was on the show Frasier.  

He also starred in many cult horror movies, including 1981’s Scream, 1982’s Mortuary, 1984’s They’re Playing With Fire and 1989’s Intruder.

Moore met Carolyn Mohr in 1947, while they were both actors with the Pasadena Playhouse. They married in 1950 and shared three children: Janet, Alyson, and Barry. 

Always proud of his role on Green Acres, Moore reportedly drove a white Chrysler with the license plate “GRNACRS.”

He died of heart failure on May 4, 1997, at his home in California. His wife died in 2009 at age 79.

Hank Patterson as Fred Ziffel

Hank Patterson established himself as a reliable TV and movie actor, most frequently starring in Westerns.

In addition to his role as Fred Ziffel on Green Acres, he was known for portraying Hank Miller in 33 episodes of Gunsmoke. He also starred on Have Gun-Will Travel, Death Valley Days, Maverick and Bonanza. 

Patterson was married to Daisy Marguerite Patterson until he died of bronchial pneumonia in August 1975. He was 86. Daisy died at the same age, in February 1979. His great-niece is acclaimed actress Téa Leoni.

Barbara Pepper as Doris Ziffel

Barbara Pepper played Doris Ziffel, Fred Ziffel’s wife. She starred on Green Acres from 1965 to 1968, when she had to leave for health complications. Before joining the show, she starred in multiple movies, including The Rogues’ Tavern and Mummy’s Boys. She was also in various TV shows, such as Perry Mason and I Love Lucy.

In 1943, she married actor Craig Reynolds, and the couple shared two sons. Reynolds died in 1949 in a motorcycle accident, and Pepper was left to raise their children alone. Pepper died of a coronary thrombosis at age 54 on July 18, 1969, in Panorama City, Calif.