The famous Mister Ed Trivia Quiz

One of the most sing-along tunes is the Mister Ed theme song. Here it is in its entirety. "Hello, I'm Mister Ed" A horse is a horse of course of course. And no one can talk to a horse of course. That is of course unless the horse is the famous Mister Ed. Go right to the source and ask the horse. He'll give you the answer that you endorse. He's always on a steady course. Talk to Mister Ed. People yackity yack a streak and waste your time of day. But Mister Ed will never speak unless he has something to say. A horse is a horse of course of course. And this one will talk till his voice is hoarse. You never heard of a talking horse? Well listen to this! "I am Mister Ed!"

Wilbur Post is a young architect who works out of his home office/barn that he shares with Mister Ed, a horse that was left when the previoius home owners moved out. In real life, Mister Ed was foaled in 1949 in El Monte, California. Mister Ed had been owned by the president of the California Palomino Society. His trainer was Les Hilton, who had apprenticed under Will Rogers and worked with the mules in the Francis the Talking Mule movies.

The role of Mister Ed's owner, a genial but somewhat klutzy architect named Wilbur Post, was played by Alan Young. According to producer and director, Arthur Lubin, Young was chosen for the lead role because he "just seemed like the sort of guy a horse would talk to".

Wilbur's generally tolerant young wife, Carol was played by Connie Hines. After the series ended she took guest parts on such television shows as Bonanza and The Mod Squad before she retired in 1971. But it’s good to know that Alan Young and Connie Hines performed together in 1996 in Irvine in the two-person play Love Letters, which deals with the correspondence of a man and woman over fifty years.

It’s the horse, of course. Mister Ed's ability to talk was never explained, or ever contemplated much on the show. In the first episode, when Wilbur expresses an inability to understand the situation, Ed offers the show's only remark on the subject: "Don't try. It's bigger than both of us!"

The fictional Posts resided at 17230 Valley Spring Road in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. After a particularly bad disagreement with Wilbur, Mister Ed said, " I got a feeling that there's gonna be a new song sung around here. 'I left my horse in San Francisco'."

Roger (Larry Keating) and his wife Kay (Edna Skinner) Addison, appeared from the pilot episode until Keating's death from leukemia in 1963. After that, Skinner continued appearing as Kay, without mention of Roger's absence, until the neighbors were recast. According to Alan Young in his Archive of American Television interview, the writers tried to make her a widow on the show, but finally decided to bring in another married couple, so she had to leave the show.

Colonel Gordon Kirkwood, USAF (Ret.), portrayed by Leon Ames was Wilbur's former commanding officer. He and his wife Winnie portrayed by Florence MacMichael makes the shenanigans of Mister Ed even more embarrassing to Wilbur. Leon Ames is best remembered for playing father figures in such films as Meet Me in St. Louis, Little Women, On Moonlight Bay, By the Light of the Silvery Moon and The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Mister Ed always had great one-liners. But Wilbur wasn’t the only person who heard him. On occasion, Mister Ed DID talk to children. Mister Ed reasoned-"Who would believe a kid saying a horse can talk?". Yep, he’s the smartest horse, of course.

Carol's grumpy and uptight father, Mr. Higgins, portrayed by Barry Kelley, moves in with Wilbur and Carol during the final episodes. Wilbur and his father-in-law did not get along at all because Mr. Higgins loathed Wilbur, whose quirky eccentricity and klutzy, half-hearted attempts to be friendly always clashed with Mr. Higgins's emotionless and uptight personality. Carol's father never stopped trying to persuade her to divorce Wilbur, whom he often and openly referred to as a "kook" because of Wilbur's clumsiness.

The correct title is Clint Eastwood Meets Mister Ed. The title refers to actor Clint Eastwood who was starring in the TV Western Rawhide (1959) long before he performed in his Italian Westerns and his Dirty Harry role.

When Ed discovers that he is of Cherokee descent, he refuses to participate in the Pioneer Parade. Unfortunately for Wilbur, he has already promised Carol's Dad that Ed would do it as a favor for him.

As actor Alan Young recounted: "It was initially done by putting a piece of nylon thread in his mouth. But Ed actually learned to move his lips on cue when the trainer touched his hoof. In fact, he soon learned to do it when I stopped talking during a scene! Ed was very smart."

Reports circulated during and after the show's run that the talking effect was achieved by crew members applying peanut butter to the horse's gums. Alan Young said in later interviews that he invented the story. "Al Simon and Arthur Lubin, the producers, suggested we keep the method [of making the horse appear to talk] a secret because they thought kids would be disappointed if they found out the technical details of how it was done, so I made up the peanut butter story, and everyone bought it.

Mister Ed goes to college so he can become a veterinarian or more specifically a%0DP.H.D., (Palomino Horse Doctor). Mister Ed turns the barn into a clinic and begins to treat animals. Seeing Mister Ed dressed in a school cap with a lunch pail and book bag around his neck is a favorite studio poster among fans.

Wilbur bets an old college rival "5 bills" that Ed can out-jump his horse. He has second thoughts after he realizes that "5 bills" equals $500. The college rival was played by Alan Hale Jr. prior to his Gilligan’s Island fame as the Skipper.

On TV he was shown riding a surf board, flying an airplane, giving a birthday party with all his horse friends, driving a delivery truck, wearing a Beatle wig, flying a kite, delivering newspapers, and meeting baseball player Leo Durocher, to name a few activities.

The title role of Mister Ed, a talking palomino, was played by gelding Bamboo Harvester and voiced by former Western film actor Allan Lane.

According to Alan Young, Ed did everything perfect the first time. But if something happened and he had to do it again, he got confused. There was one scene where he had to come in, nudge me and pick up the phone. So he came in, nudged me and picked up the phone. Cut, had to do it again and again. Finally he got kind of confused, and the last time he nudged the phone and picked up my arm. I let out a yelp, and it scared the daylights out of him. He knew he'd done something wrong, and he couldn't work for an hour or so. He was very nervous..

Young said that Bamboo Harvester (Mister Ed) saw trainer Les Hilton as the disciplinarian father figure. When scolded by Hilton for missing a cue, the horse would move to Young for comfort, treating the actor as a mother figure. Hilton told Young this was a positive development.

The horse, Bamboo Harvester, portrayed Ed throughout the run. Ed's stablemate, a quarter horse named Pumpkin, also served as Bamboo Harvester's stunt double for the show. This horse later appeared again in the television series Green Acres called “Fred”.

An old cowboy star, Rocky Lane, didn't have any work, any money, and he was sleeping on the couch of the trainer. We went out to the barn to take pictures with Ed, and suddenly we heard this voice say, "Hey, where do you keep the coffee?" And everybody looked at each other and said, "That's the voice of Ed."

The theme song received renewed publicity 20 years after the show went off the air when Jim Brown, a preacher from South Point, Ohio, claimed in May 1986 that it contained "satanic messages" if heard in reverse. Brown and his colleague Greg Hudson claimed that the phrases "Someone sung this song for Satan" and "the source is Satan" would be audible. At their request teenagers burned over 300 records and cassettes of secular music with alleged satanic messages. The teens did not burn a copy of Television's Greatest Hits, but Brown asserted that "Satan can be an influence whether they [the songwriters] know it or not. We don't think they did it on purpose and we're not getting down on Mister Ed."

Bamboo Harvester, who played Mister Ed, was born in 1949 and appeared in the show in 1961. He was 12 years old with is generally half way through their life span (most horses live into their 20s) For a middle-aged horse, Mister Ed was very active.

The Mister Ed talking puppet captured all these catchphrases. The puppet was made by the Mattel toy company in the 1960's. It had a plush tan fur-like body and detailed vinyl head with a yarn mane. Pull the string and you heard one of 10 random phrases including the three above.

There was a Mister Ed board game made during 1962 by the Parker Brothers Company. There was also a Mr. Ed recording that was made in 1962. A song call "Pretty Little Filly" and the flip side was the "Mr. Ed Theme song" from the TV series, which was written by Jay Livingston. There were also books including one entitled Mr. Ed & Me by Alan Young and Bill Burt published by St. Martin's Press. Alan Young covers his show business beginnings in Canada and his career in America. It has photographs of the TV show and was last published in 1995.

Studebakers were featured prominently in the show due to the sponsors. The Posts are shown owning a 1962 Lark convertible, and the company used publicity shots featuring the Posts and Mister Ed with their product (various cast members also appeared in "integrated commercials" for Lark at the end of the program).

Not only did these greats guest star on the show, there were others as well, including Zsa, Zsa Gabor, Leo Durocher, Jon Provost, Sebastian Cabot and Jack LaLanne who appeared on the TV when Ed was watching an exercise show. Better still, Comedian George Burns who starred also financed the original pilot for Mister Ed which was shot at his McCadden Studio in Hollywood at a cost of $70,000.

Walter R. Brooks wrote The Talking Horse. Brooks is otherwise best known for the Freddy the Pig series of children's novels, which featured talking animals that interact with humans. Sonia Chernus, secretary to director Arthur Lubin, introduced Lubin to these children stories and is credited with developing the concept for television. As for Frances, the Mule, Lubin wanted to make a Francis TV series but had been unable to secure the rights. However, someone told him about Brooks' series of stories which he optioned for TV.

Mister Ed was originally produced by Filmways and first aired in syndication from January 5 to July 2, 1961, and then on CBS from October 1, 1961, to February 6, 1966.

The show was still very popular in its final season on the air. However, it was caught up in the "rural purge". The main reason it was canceled was due to the fact that it was felt that the show mainly appealed to rural audiences and older people in much the same way that shows like The Beverly Hillbillies (1962), Green Acres (1965) and Hee Haw (1969) did.

By 1968, Bamboo Harvester was suffering from a variety of health problems. In 1970, he was euthanized, with no publicity, and buried at Snodgrass Farm in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. A different horse who died in Oklahoma in February 1979 was widely thought to be Bamboo Harvester, but this horse was, in fact, a horse that posed for the still pictures of Mister Ed used by the production company for the show's press kits. Alan Young told a different story, saying he had frequently visited Harvester in retirement. He states that Bamboo Harvester died from an inadvertent tranquilizer administered while he was in a stable on Sparks Street in Burbank, California, where he lived with his trainer Lester Hilton. Young says Hilton was out of town visiting relatives, and a temporary caregiver might have seen Bamboo Harvester rolling on the ground, struggling to get up and inadvertently administered the tranquilizer which killed him.

Mister Ed was first aired in syndication from January 5 to July 2, 1961, and then aired on CBS for the rest of its run. Mister Ed is one of the few series to debut in syndication and be picked up by a major network for prime time.

In 2004, a remake was planned for the Fox network, with Sherman Hemsley as the voice of Mister Ed, David Alan Basche as Wilbur, and Sherilyn Fenn as Carol. The pilot was filmed but was not picked up by Fox. The show's writer and producer, Drake Sather, committed suicide shortly before the pilot's completion.

In 1963 Mister Ed won a Golden Globe for the Best TV Show-Comedy. Although they earned other awards from TV Land (from 2003-2005), the Golden Globe was a nod to the accomplishment of using a “talking animal” in a comedy show.