Goodbye, City Life

(Props to Monty for sharing my epitaphany)

Or
We're So Sorry, Eddie Albert

Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen Acres is where they'll bury me
A bone farm in the O.C.
Worms chewing up my worthless hide
99 years and then I up and died

Coinciding with the recent release of Green Acres on DVD and the remake of The Longest Yard, Eddie Albert has died at the age of 99. Best known as perpetually perplexed Park Avenue lawyer Oliver Wendell Douglas who moves to Hooterville to live the simple life but instead finds himself surrounded by simpletons, Albert literally was one of the first people to ever appear on television, starring in NBC’s first live performance in an experimental television system in June 1936. Another notable and ironic role was as a cowardly commander in the 1956 WWII film Attack!, but in real life he won the Bronze Star with Combat cluster for valor for rescuing 70 wounded Marines during the Battle of Tarawa in WWII. He was twice nominated for best supporting actor Oscars, for Roman Holiday in 1953 and The Heartbreak Kid in 1972. Albert starred as sadistic Warden Hazen in the original The Longest Yard, creating a spot-on caricature of Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate crisis, which will surely be watered down by James Cromwell in the remake. Albert was on his way to a movie career in 1938 when according to legend he was caught in a dalliance with Jack Warner’s wife and the studio boss let him languish under contract until he escaped into the Navy. Other films included the so-bad-its-good The Devil’s Rain and the so-dull-its-bad Goliath Awaits.