“I thought you didn’t like Westerns.” Wilbur to Mister Ed, who is watching TV.
“I’m waiting for Leonard Bernstein.” — Mister Ed
You can take your Trigger, your Champion, your Silver and all the other television horses. For my money, the only TV horse worth his oats was the golden palomino Mister Ed.
Sure, those other horses regularly showed off their valor and loyalty to Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and the Lone Ranger, respectively. But unlike Mister Ed, they couldn’t talk. Nor could they use the telephone, play a phonograph record or watch TV.
And as far as I can tell, neither Trigger, Champion nor Silver was smarter than their masters. In the case of Mister Ed and his owner, architect Wilbur Post (Alan Young), there was never any doubt as to who had the higher IQ.
Call it a guilty pleasure, but what has me whinnying this week is the long-awaited release of Mister Ed: The Complete First Season (four discs). The box set includes the series’ first 26 episodes from January to July 1961, when Mister Ed debuted in syndication; in what was then a rare move in the TV business, CBS picked up the show for its second season, beginning in October 1961. The series remained on the air until 1966.
I don’t think I’m alone in my guilt — those of a certain age will have little trouble singing the series’ catchy theme song (“A horse is a horse, of course, of course …”) or remembering the inimitable way Ed called his owner — “Willlburrrr.”
The horse that achieved TV stardom and won his first PATSY (Picture Animals Top Star of the Year) Award in 1962 was originally named Bamboo Harvester. An elegant steed, he had appeared in Madison Square Garden horse shows and in the Rose Bowl Parade before embarking upon his career in show biz, according to Ken Beck and Jim Clark’s The Encyclopedia of TV Pets.
Mister Ed’s theatrical ancestors were not the stallions of TV and movie Westerns. Instead, he has a direct lineage to Francis the Talking Mule, the equine who starred in seven movie comedies in the 1950s, mostly alongside Donald O’Connor. The low-budget Francis movies were directed by Arthur Lubin, a veteran of Abbott and Costello comedies who later created, produced and directed most of the episodes of Mister Ed.
According to Beck and Clark, in 1957 Lubin became acquainted with a series of short stories written in the 1930s by Walter Brooks about a talking horse named Mister Ed. Lubin then purchased the rights to the stories and to the Mister Ed character from Brooks’ estate.
Like Francis, TV’s Mister Ed would only reveal his particular talents to one person — in this case, his new owner Wilbur. And Wilbur realized in the series’ debut episode, “The First Meeting”, that it wasn’t worth it to tell anyone, including his wife, Carol (Connie Hines), or his next-door neighbor Roger (Larry Keating), that Ed could talk. That’s because Ed clammed up in front of everyone except Roger. “If they find I can talk,” Ed explained, “I’ll wind up in a circus.”
Much of the high jinx of Mister Ed arose from Ed creating problems for Wilbur, such as Ed’s use of the telephone. In “The Contest” episode, for example, Ed, using Wilbur’s name, correctly answered a question on a radio quiz show (“What is the capital of Iceland?”). But when a photographer came out to Wilbur’s home to shoot him answering the final round question, Ed shut up. (Ed also felt empathy for an elderly couple who were competing against Wilbur.)
In other episodes, get-rich-quick schemes by Wilbur or Carol or Roger foundered because of Ed’s opposition. In “Ed the Tout”, Ed’s ability to pick winners at a local racetrack (Wilbur: “How do you know so much about horses?” Ed: “Isn’t that a stupid question.”) promised the potential for big winnings by the humans, but Ed refused to make money on bets. Another recurring theme was Carol’s jealousy over the amount of time Wilbur spent with Ed.
The best parts of Mister Ed showed the interaction between Wilbur and Ed, with Ed getting off most of the best one-liners. In addition, Ed always had a knack for wearing appropriate attire.
In one episode in which Ed was planning a trip to Europe, he showed up in different scenes wearing a French beret, a Tyrolean cap and a Spanish matador’s hat. But the series sagged whenever Ed was off-camera and Wilbur became involved in formulaic sitcom shenanigans.
As innocent as Mister Ed was in the early ’60s, from today’s vantage point it’s hard to overlook how the series reflected the unspoken sexism and racism of the era. In the “Busy Wife” episode, Ed revealed himself to be something of a misogynist, teasing Wilbur about helping out with the housework and shopping when Carol gets very busy with club work, and disdainfully calling Wilbur “Wilma”.
Casual racial stereotypes about Asians are also on display; on the other hand, in the same “Busy Wife” episode a Japanese-American actor (Yuki Shimoda) plays the part of a grocer without becoming the butt of jokes.
The first season DVD seeks to rectify one historical wrong — the voice actor behind Mister Ed never received onscreen credit. The DVD includes “A Horse Tale”, a recent interview by Young and Hines about the series, a commentary on the debut episode by the costars and a 12-page booklet — all of which give due credit to Allan “Rocky” Lane. A star of many low-budget Westerns from the ’30s through the ’50s, Lane provided Ed with an appropriately craggy voice with a Western twang.
“A Horse Tale” also explains the origins of the series. Several years before Mister Ed was launched, Lubin had worked with comedian/producer George Burns on a pilot for another series, entitled “The Wonderful World of Wilbur Pope”, with a different horse and a different cast. But they couldn’t find any buyers. A few years later, the idea clicked, with the handsome Bamboo Harvester getting the role of Ed, and Young, a two-time Emmy Award winner for his early ’50s variety series, The Alan Young Show being cast as Wilbur (with the new last name of Post).
As Young explains it, he won the part because Burns felt he “looks like the kind of a guy a horse would talk to.”
Or course.