Straight from the Horse's Mouth
Season 5, #1: Stargazing into the creation of an oddball TV pilot episode
“People yakety yak a streak
And waste your time of day,
But Mister Ed will never speak
Unless he has something to say!”
—Mister Ed theme song written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston
MY LATE FATHER, PAUL, was sure television would rot my brain.
Growing up, my brother and I were glued to the device he and Mom introduced into our house through their newfound wealth—Dad as an architect and Mom as a registered nurse—which was our black and white TV set (a technology later referred to by its owner as “the Idiot Box” or “the Boob Tube,” or whatever flavor of rancor he could rage upon it)—and yet, there it was.
In our house. Where we were watching it.
And I loved it.
It took years to seriously shake off the self-loathing heaped upon me by Dad for all my TV viewing.
While there are tons of things to throw at teenagers to make them feel shame (like sketchy friendships, masturbation, drug and alcohol abuse, acne and body odor), television viewing habits shouldn’t be one of them. It’s hilarious because I don’t own a TV anymore and that’s just fine with me. “Viewing” takes place on a old laptop converted to play DVDs or YouTube videos and that’s really all I need these days. I am the chief cause of network television’s demise.
Anyway, Dad’s complaint, back in the day, was that watching TV was a passive activity (and for some kids that was probably true) but maybe there’s a deeper element of learning going on, too. The inner workings of my young brain are lost to time, but I do know I had a early affinity toward storycraft, a niggling curiosity about how narrative could be shaped and twisted to achieve a desired effect.
Nowadays I’m willing to claim that any classic half-hour situation comedy was my secret textbook. I was actively watching a show like Gilligan’s Island, or The Brady Bunch, or early-on, Mister Ed.
Switching on the Idiot Box was like announcing, “Class is in session!”
2.
“Go right to the source and ask the horse
He'll give you the answer that you’ll endorse
He’s always on a steady course…”
Mister Ed debuted on January 5, 1961, when I was a toddler.
The show’s creator, Walter R. Brooks, authored many children’s books, particularly a series about one Freddy the Pig. Mister Ed’s concept came from a 1937 short story by Brooks titled “The Talking Horse,” published in Liberty Magazine (a bimonthly under the auspices of the North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church), which was a good 24 years before the show first aired. Apparently Brooks felt he was on a roll with stories about a talking horse and its drunken master, and continued to publish these stories throughout the 1940s.
Some ideas just need time to find their moment in the sun.
Mister Ed—the actual horse was named “Bamboo Harvester”—was a Palomino born in Los Angeles in 1949. That means if horses were like humans he’d be 74 years old now—a rock star’s age to my mind. Bamboo Harvester however died in 1971, two years after the show ended its run. The horse’s trainer was a guy named Les Hilton, who repeatedly taught him to move his lips when Hilton touched his hoof. A prevailing story was that Hilton used peanut butter on the horse’s gums to speed things along, but there was never any evidence behind that rumor. Western movie star Allan “Rocky” Lane provided Mister Ed’s distinctive voice.
There would be no Mister Ed without comedian George Burns. It seems most everyone passed on the show except Burns. He liked it so much he financed the pilot episode for $70,000 out of his own pocket. It went straight into syndication until CBS picked it up in July 1961, where it ran until the autumn of 1966 (and likely around the time I first saw it).
Wilbur Post (played by Alan Young) and his young wife Carol (the lively Connie Hines) became Mister Ed’s keepers when the couple discovered he came with the purchase of their new home. Filling out the cast were neighbors Roger and Kay Addison (played by Larry Keating and Edna Skinner respectively) in the show’s first season. Of course the whole ruse behind Mister Ed was only Wilbur Post could hear the horse talk—the comedy lies in convincing his wife and neighbors of that fact, and that he’s not just looney tunes after all.
Producer-Director Arthur Lubin helmed most of the series’ episodes, and actor Young later recalled Lubin’s oddly “comedically challenged personality”:
[Lubin] didn’t like people fooling around on the set, cracking jokes. He really didn’t have a great sense of humor for a man who did so many comedies! I’ll never forget when he said: “Stop that! Stop all this laughing! This is comedy, there’s no time for laughter!” Well, we just all broke up. He didn’t realize what he said, he didn’t care.1
The musical earworm of a theme song was written by Ray Evans (who wrote the lyrics) and Jay Livingston (the music) and was sung by Livingston, who only agreed to sing the tune as a placeholder until a future professional singer could step in and re-record it. The producers were having none of that and kept his rendition.
To my young mind the show’s real charm was the horse’s character and attitude—it totally roped me in (pun intended). Mister Ed’s snark and commentary on humanity (“People…” The horse moans, “Talk, talk, talk.”) added a philosophical tinge to what was generally great comedic fodder—making hay of the world they created and putting the fantastic set-ups and pay-offs into play.
How they made it work fascinated me.
I couldn’t get enough of it.
3.
“A horse is a horse, of course, of course
And this one’ll talk ’til his voice is hoarse
You never heard of a talking horse?
Well listen to this…”
Back in 2020 I was drafting a long-form article about “Supernatural Art in America” (a spec project I couldn’t in the end muster financial support for from a local art museum) since I was Stargazing (my term for any fascination I’m currently focused on) over the museum’s recent exhibition and became curious about the dark corners of America’s imagination.
I watched a lot of situation comedies to ease up on the “spookiness” of the subject matter—particularly an old favorite with The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Well, that led to My Favorite Martian and…the pilot episode for Mister Ed. There’s a commonality to those three sit-coms: one character knows something the others don’t, namely a ghost that appears (mostly) to Mrs. Muir, a live-in uncle who’s actually an extraterrestrial, and well, a horse that speaks only with his beloved owner.
It got me thinking: How do you introduce a story with a fantastic premise? What are the problems (and opportunities) of such a tale?
Maybe more importantly, how do you tell any story at all?
I recall watching the pilot and being impressed by how—in under 30 minutes—characters and their relationships were established, the location was realized, and the conflict made apparent. There was a three-beat burn toward the “inciting incident”—the moment when we (and Wilbur) first learn Mister Ed can talk. It’s masterfully done in the initial pilot Arthur Lubin filmed with two different leads, Scott McKay as Wilbur and Sandra White as “Carlotta” (later changed to “Carol”).
The three beats are: 1) Mister Ed recognizes what Wilbur is saying when he asks the horse to lift his hoof; 2) Wilbur is hot, so the horse goes and opens the barn door; and lastly, off camera, that inciting incident is delivered with a marvelous joke, also setting up Mister Ed’s snarky wit:
Wilbur (to himself): …when I was a little boy, I always wanted a pony. Hm. Been a long time since I was a little boy!
Mister Ed: Been a long time since I was a pony.
If you compare the scene with the two versions below, you’ll see Lubin changed up the blocking (to my mind for better comedic effect) and tightened up some of the dialogue. I’m sure back when I was revisiting these early sit-coms I didn’t contrast and compare like this, but I do recall re-absorbing the finer points of narrative—ones I must’ve first noticed at a young age.
And that’s really the heart of it here, how first hearing a song or piece of music, reading a sentence that transports you into the story’s landscape, or watching a movie or TV show and puzzling through its narrative—all of this is definitely worth revisiting and examining how it works on you, how it adds to your understanding of storycraft.
Stories. They’re so marvelous, so fantastic…
…that I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand them.
“Don’t try to,” Mister Ed wisely says. “It’s bigger than both of us.”
Video links and note
There was an (initial) pilot episode shot before Alan Young and Connie Hines came onboard the series’ first season directed by Arthur Lubin: “Mr. Ed. Pilot Episode. Very Strange without Alan Young or Connie Hines. Wilbur Pope???”
Portions of the final pilot episode can be viewed here on YouTube:
“Interview with Alan Young.” The Jade Sphinx. 23 January 2014.
The 1960s was the hey-day of offbeat sitcom concepts, so naturally Mr. Ed fit right in then.
Mike, this is absolutely delightful. I suppose it doesn't hurt that my parents couldn't drag me out of the room for the Mister Ed theme song even if it was time for bed. A horse is a horse of course... Thank you for this nostalgic piece, and for the link to the nature of storytelling in the first place. And for the little typing cowboy picture.