Posted on 02/18/2014 2:10:08 AM PST by lowbridge
Mary Grace Canfield, a character actress best known as part of the daffy Ralph-and-Alf brother-sister carpenter team on the TV comedy "Green Acres," died Saturday in a Santa Barbara hospice. She was 89.
The cause was lung cancer, her daughter Phoebe Alexiades said.
On "Green Acres," Canfield was Ralph Monroe, who, with her brother Alf, was perennially working on the bedroom of a city slicker couple (Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor) at their newly acquired farm near Hooterville. She was a down-home gal in bib overalls and a white painter's cap worn backward, a funny, plain-spoken woman doing "man's work" before feminism made the term quaint.
The show ran from 1965 to 1971. Looking back at it, Canfield had mixed feelings.
"To be remembered for Ralph kind of upsets me — only in the sense that it was so easy and undemanding," she said in a 2006 interview with the Bangor Daily News in Maine, where she lived for many years. "It's being known for something easy to do instead of something you worked hard to achieve."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
They never got around to fixing much of anything . Talk about a walk in and out closet. Just saw the episode when she & Hank Kimball got married :)
Also played the part of Thelma Lou’s cousin Mary Grace in an Andy Griffith episode.
Barney: “She’s a DOG!”
I think this leaves Tom Lester (”Eb Dawson”) as the only surviving cast member from “Green Acres.”
(different episode, but great line)
Eddie Albert was 99 when he died in 2005. Heck of a good run.
You are right, he is the last one left, and I suspect Arnold Ziffel was long ago invited to someone’s dinner, not as the guest of honor, but as the main course.
>>a funny, plain-spoken woman doing “man’s work” before feminism made the term quaint.
All In the Family would later feature a next door neighbor couple, Frank and Irene Lorenzo (Betty Garrett and Vincent Gardenia); Irene was a bit of a handy-woman who’d fix things at the Bunker house while her husband was first portrayed as a house-husband but also Wiki. says he was a salesman, too.
They don't make shows like 'Green Acres' anymore. If the libs in Hollywood made a remake of 'Green Acres', you'd have Ralpie as a lesbian and Haney as a Tea Party member.
Paul Henning’s three shows: Beverly Hillbilly’s, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres, were all classics.
I think she was also the first Mrs. Crabitz on Bewitched. The busybody that lived across the street LOL.
No , she acted in only 4 episodes as Mrs. Kravitz’s sister after the original Mrs. K actress passed away .
Also loved her as the cranky maid in Pollyanna. Eventually, she comes around to loving Pollyanna as well. She was always a terrifically funny actress.
RIP, she was always very funny on that show. One of the more sane characters iirc.
ping
Great ones going.
RIP
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