Do You Remember ‘Return to Green Acres,’ the 1990 Film That Reunited the Cast?
35 years ago today, on May 18, 1990, the Douglases said goodbye, city life, for the second time, when Return to Green Acres aired on CBS. The made-for-TV movie — which was part of an ’80s and ’90s trend for classic sitcom reunions, including Leave It to Beaver and The Beverly Hillbillies — brought together nearly all of the entire original series’ cast, for a tale that followed Oliver (Eddie Albert) and Lisa (Eva Gabor) Douglas, who had finally returned to New York City … only to realize that the townspeople of Hooterville needed them more than ever.
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Premiering in 1965, Green Acres followed the adventures of the Douglases, a glamorous and wealthy New York couple, who move to the country to fulfill husband Oliver’s longtime dream of living on a farm. The show lasted for six seasons of increasingly surreal fish-out-of-water antics, as the cosmopolitan Douglases and the rural residents of Hooterville worked to adjust to each other.
The show was cancelled in 1971, as part of CBS’s infamous “rural purge” — the network pivoted to more urban-based shows aimed at younger viewers, which also resulted in the cancellation of The Beverly Hillbillies, Mayberry R.F.D., and Petticoat Junction, as well as a number of game shows.
However, in the following decades, the show remained popular in a reruns; and 19 years after its cancellation, Return to Green Acres picked up the show’s story.
The film reunited all the show’s major cast, except for Hank Patterson (Fred Ziffel) and Barbara Pepper (Doris Ziffel), who had passed away — Arnold the pig is shown placing flowers on their graves in the film’s opening credits.
In the movie, Oliver and Lisa finally decide they’ve had enough of rural living, and move back to the city. But in their absence, Mr. Haney (who has taken a turn for the sinister) tricks the entire town into selling their homes on the cheap to evil real estate developers, who want to turn Hooterville into an industrial city.
The townsfolk head to New York to get ahold of Oliver, believing this lawyerly skills can get them out of this mess. It doesn’t quite work, but after a few more hijinks, the townsfolk get their homes back, and the Douglases realize Green Acres is where they belong.
In a 1990 interview with Entertainment Tonight to promote the film, Albert and Gabor both seem enthusiastic to be back (though Gabor has a hard time recalling her part of the show’s famous theme song).
The film, along with a voice acting part in 1990’s The Rescuers Down Under, would be Gabor’s final major roles; she made a handful of additional small TV appearances before passing away in 1995, at the age of 76. Albert died in 2005, at the age of 99. The film was the final performance of Frank Cady, who played Sam Drucker. Though he lived until 2012, when he died at the age of 96, he retired from acting in the late ’70s; his final credit prior to Return to Green Acres was from 1978.
If all of this has given you an itch to catch up with Arnold and the gang, you can stream the complete series for free on Pluto TV and the Roku Channel, and watch Return to Green Acres on Tubi or Amazon Prime.
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