Making a Name for Himself
A tribute to the inimitable Richard L. Bare
Strange and surreal. And very funny.
That describes the classic 1960s sitcom, Green Acres. It also describes one of the most prolific directors of that show: Richard Bare. A giant physically and metaphysically. A giant in entertainment and for posterity.
Richard Bare passed away at a respectable three digit age: 101 on March 28, 2015. With 166 episodes of Green Acres behind him, along with scores of others, including The Beverly Hillbillies, and Petticoat Junction, Richard Bare was one of the most dedicated and tuned-in talents of Hollywood.
I first met Richard at a film festival event when he was a nonagenarian and stayed in touch with him into centenarian status. I’ve read much about Richard — from those who knew him and worked with him — and from the man himself, who was a prolific creator, writer, director, and producer. A Renaissance man for our times.
On a lark, along with my writing partners, Fred Fox, Jr. and John Besmehn (J.B.), we took Richard up on an invitation to sit and talk shop with him on his patio at his Newport Beach house. During a brief call and follow-up note, we had expressed interest in resurrecting Green Acres as a series of YouTube shorts. Richard told us the tale of how in 2007 he acquired the rights to the show. Seizing on what he felt was the perfect storm — the WGA writers strike — Richard snatched up the intellectual property rights from the wife of the show’s creator, the legendary Jay Sommers, who based the TV series concept off his short-lived 1950 radio program, Granby’s Green Acres.
Richard was 93 at the time — and studio executives feared if they went along with his ready-made show, he wouldn’t be around to see it through. Ready-made for Richard meant that he had smartly packaged the show by attaching a director, (the seasoned faith-based director, Tom Logan, who has gone on to pre-production status as director for Tom “Eb Dawson” Lester’s film version of Petticoat Junction), crafting a pilot (with co-writer William Justice Forbes), and searching for a lookalike cast (by casting director Pixie Monroe, who sounds like a resident of Hooterville).
As it turned out, Richard would’ve gotten an 8 year run had his packaged pitch gotten the green light. Richard was always very active and engaged — especially so since he tried to resuscitate the project. The first discussion we had with Richard about working on a Green Acres project was in early May, 2014. Richard showed us his boat docked at the slip just a short walk from his patio. It was a lovely Spring day. Before too long, Richard excitedly mapped out his renewed master plan that he had designed with producer Phillip Goldfine, who produced the Steven Seagal series, Lawman, and most recently, the fast flesh-eating film, Navy Seals vs. Zombies.
Instead of a series, with the writers strike long ago settled, Richard had his focus set for a feature Green Acres film, followed by a stage play for Broadway, perhaps even a musical. Richard had recognized that in order to attract financing, he would need to cast big and look hard for a current bankable writer. He shared one of his concepts for an episode of Green Acres that he hoped would be made some day: Oliver becomes a hardened criminal after running through a crossing gate signal. With a storyline like that, our hope was that Richard would eagerly embrace our idea of doing Green Acres short subjects, because that’s the form where he cut his teeth as a young man. But Richard was the eternal cockeyed optimist and was shooting for the stars. He envisioned a big Green Acres movie to relaunch the property. Short subjects would just have to wait.
Green Acres has captured the spirits of silly for decades, coming back as a reunion movie, tagged with efforts to reboot the show in the 1990s. Even before Richard’s efforts to resurrect Green Acres, the reality production juggernaut, Bunim-Murray Productions, which makes MTV’s The Real World, got Fox fascinated over doing a reality version of the show, though neither owned the rights to the intellectual property. This move was largely seen as a counter-measure to CBS’s announcement in 2002 that they were fast-tracking a reality show based on that other Paul Henning classic series, The Beverly Hillbillies. Everything old is old again.
Having been brought up to date on all the hullabaloo related to Richard and the world of Green Acres, we chatted about everything else. After sipping iced tea that his charming stepdaughter, Cynthia Beutel, had made for us, Richard took us upstairs to his studio office — his Den of (re)Creation — to examine the recently cataloged film canisters that an intern had organized for him. This beat having lunch with him at the Rusty Pelican, his fave eatery.
There, purposely arranged on shelves were stacks of canisters, reels of films from Richard’s oeuvre, including the 63 groundbreaking Joe McDoakes So You Want…one-reels he wrote, produced, and directed in the 1940s and 50s. The memorabilia was dust-free and lovingly displayed.
Then the surreal happened: Richard handed me his Paul Muni Award. Wow! I realized I had entered a bizarre episode of Richard’s own Green Acres show. I coddled it, then handed it over to Fred Fox, Jr. to examine. Then J.B. held it reverently. The three of us were in awe.
Richard went over and sat down at his desk to read us a letter he received in the mail from an ardent fan who lived in the Midwest — this fella was eager to pen Richard’s feature film of Green Acres. “There is no one more dedicated and connected to Green Acres than me,” read one of the lines from the letter. “I will do anything to be part of this project.”
Richard was proud and amused. He folded the letter and tucked it into the envelope with gentle care, like putting a baby to sleep.
“I get letters like this all the time.” But then he confessed: “Well, I used to. Not so much anymore. Since Goldfine’s press release about him getting traction on that Broadway musical, and now the film, the letters are starting up again.”
Indeed, the press release created a slight stir and was spit out by various blogs, tabloids, and insider sites, with encouraging words, such as “The filmmakers are looking to hire a writer/director for a feature adaptation.” It was bait, and the barracudas were starting to swarm.
Of course, the most impressive part of all this, to me, was that Richard was spryly ascending and descending his stairs at 100 years old. He was confident. He was trim and sharp as the proverbial tack that riveted his leather chair. He held on to nothing and no one — only to his rightly deserved glory. He was thoroughly independent, which struck me as, perhaps, symbolic of this man’s life — and the journey that he continued till his demise. He pitched all the way to the end.
Indeed, Richard did it all: from writing shorts to features and everything in between to producing and pulling together a team of creatives to get a project done on time and under budget; from editing in a pinch to directing episode after episode of comedies, westerns, sci-fi, and suspense shows; Richard was a truly independent spirit in Hollywood. And he went beyond Hollywood as a published author: He penned one of the best books on the directing craft, his 1971 tome, “The Film Director,” which he updated in 2000 and includes insight into the methodologies of not just Richard Bare, but Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Spike Lee, James Cameron, and Mimi Leder. As if that were not enough, he went on to bare his soul in the 2001 memoir release of “Confessions of a Hollywood Director.” This was fertile and firm turf for Richard, given he was a professor of cinematography and directing at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Maybe what made Richard Bare an independent titan was his sharp mind: He was hugely intelligent, despite being known as the best pig director in Hollywood. Richard loved telling Green Acres’ fans that Arnold the Pig used to receive more fan mail than Eva Gabor, who played city slicker turned farm wife, Lisa Douglas. He spoke about the connections between comedy and sudden incongruity, noting that Schopenhauer was right about his theory of laughter. Somewhere between our sense perceptions of things and our abstract rational knowledge of those same things is the cavity of hysteria. Mind you, this discussion was during a patio chat, while sharing iced tea with a comedic legend. Very Green Acres.
One of Richard’s favorite bits that he relished retelling was when his character Joe McDoakes goes to a lunch counter and sees the sign, “Our Food Untouched by Human Hands.” The character then spots a gorilla making hamburger patties. “That’s pure Monro,” he said, referring to the philosopher David Monro, whose ten tenets of what creates laughter could be considered a structural checklist for Green Acres: 1) Breach the order of events; 2) Breach decorum; 3) Be indecent; 4) Import a situation where it doesn’t belong; 5) Masquerade characters; 6) Tell puns; 7) Show nonsense; 8) Exploit minor misfortunes; 9) Display incompetence; 10) Veil all insults.
Satirical, surreal, and chock full of grin-groaning schtick, it’s easy to pick those ten elements out of any episode of Green Acres: the personified pig, Arnold Ziffel; the sliding bedroom closet doors that revealed exposure to the outside world; the dilapidated Haney farmhouse that was in constant repair and disrepair, shepherded by the incompetent brother-sister carpenters, Alf and Ralph Monroe (Ralph being the sister, of course); the doorknob that came off when turned; the attorney turned farmer, Oliver, who pitched hay in his three-piece suit; the Hungarian English-butchering blonde wife who made inedible farm food like “hotscakes” and coffee so thick it poured from the pot like syrupy sludge; the patriotic fifing that punctuated the rural reveries of Oliver; the home phone that was mounted on the top of the telephone pole, forcing Oliver to climb up to answer and make calls; the county agent, Hank Kimball, who spoke like a bureaucrat, contradicting everything he said — well, maybe not everything. The show was a cascade of gags and bizarre incongruities that provided a scrumptious offering of silliness and lunacy. Eddie Albert, who portrayed Oliver Wendell Douglas, was our root into a wormy world of hoedowns and hysterics.
While at the top of his TV form, Richard wrote and directed a curious little movie entitled, I Sailed to Tahiti with an All-Girl Crew, which starred actor, artist, and author, Gardner McKay; character actor, Fred Clark; everybody’s favorite huckster alum from Green Acres, Pat Buttram; sci-fi B-movie superstar, Richard Denning; and the notorious bombshell and former wife of auteur coquin, Russ Meyer, the bountiful Edy Williams. That cast alone makes the movie a worthwhile watch. But it also features the hypnotic 1968 song, Take Me With You, composed and performed by Kellie Sulivan. It’s more Burt Bacharach and Hal David than the two combined. The real star of the flick is Richard’s simple story — a fluff piece that is dialed-in-for-the-times: To prove the boastmanship of our hero, Terry O’Brien, portrayed by McKay, a bet is made (loser tenders $30k or the sail boat) against Terry’s nemesis, Generous Josh, played by Fred Clark, a Mr. Howell-type eccentric. Terry must prove his boastful seamanship is legitimate by sailing to Taihiti the fastest — even with— you guessed it— an all-girl crew.
The all-girl crew is eyecandy-picked by Gardner McKay, based on one criteria: looks. Stereotypes abound with each selection: the beautiful but intellectual girl, a native Tahitian girl looking for a free ride home, the buxom woman running away from something (or someone), a topless waitress who has been laid off for fraternizing with the customers, the stunning Asian girl who agrees to be the ship’s cook, to which Terry responds, “In all my years around boats, I never saw a cookie like this one.”
The dialogue is rich for the times: one girl introduces herself as “37–23–36” (not her measurements, she says, “It’s my zip code!”) McKay’s character, Terry, agrees to make her part of the crew because, “In an emergency I could use up her life jacket.” For a change of pace from all the white girls, he also selects a “little lotus blossom” — the cheongsam-wearing Pacific Islander girl. He declares he feels really bad about disappointing all the other girls who showed up in response to his newspaper want ad. Cut to a motley crew of aging housewives and frumpy girls. It played in the Sixties.
Once one realizes that Richard lived in Newport Beach, one can’t dismiss the great production value that was no doubt tendered for a deal, given Richard’s associations with the Newport Beach boating scene. The movie is brimming with schticky montages that showcase the ineptitude of Terry’s crew, including him slipping on hair rollers on the deck, and a training session where the girls are scantily clad and told to do jumping jacks. Yeah. Remember: 1968.
Terry’s nemesis, Josh, watches the hijinks through binoculars from his boat and laughs maniacally. He imagines how easily he will win the race to Tahiti — and the boat will be his. But mainly, the bloviating Terry will be humiliated! Bwahahahaha! For that extra punch to accent how mean-spirited this skipper is, the name of Josh’s ship is The Sea Witch, and the sails and the t-shirts of his crew display the iconic black Prussian iron cross.
After the rules are broken (Terry has a stowaway, so his crew is too big; and Josh bribes a crewgirl to sabotage Terry’s boat), there is no clear winner since they are both disqualified. Terry challenges Josh to a rematch. Josh inquires what the handicap will be this time; Terry knowingly and defiantly declares that Josh is such a poor skipper that he could easily win the race with a crew of baboons. Josh swiftly accepts the terms — and the race is on. The punchline is that The Baboons are actually a Polynesian singing group Terry met while on the island — and they are all expert sailors. You know, because they live on an island!
What comes across in the end is that Richard Bare was having fun. He got to combine two of his favorite activities — making movies and sailing. The film is clearly a vanity pet project that got minor studio backing because of who Richard was. It’s also a time capsule of conceits from a period of comedic movies that were unabashedly male and focused on that massive niche audience. The structure is similar to his Joe McDoakes shorts, including breaking the third wall narration by Gardner McKay. At once tedious and cheeky, I Sailed to Tahiti with an All-Girl Crew captures Bare’s flirting and flitting desire to do a PG-version of a Russ Meyer movie. It was no doubt a figurative and literal vacation from the more demanding efforts of writing, directing, and producing multiple deadline-driven television series.
Richard enjoyed relating the story of the Great Rural Purge, which occurred in 1971, when CBS cancelled any show with a tree, including Lassie, as Pat “Mr. Haney” Buttram remarked. Even after the plug was pulled on the six-year-running Green Acres, Richard went on to work on many other projects, including directing Alias Smith and Jones, Wicked, Wicked, Nanny and the Professor, and Lassie. His retirement to Newport Beach consisted of boating, book writing, and relaxing.
Actor James Garner wrote the Foreword to Richard’s book, “The Film Director.” He noted that “The day I met Richard Bare changed my life. Before that, nobody knew my name outside of Norman, Oklahoma.” Richard was fascinated by origin stories about people. Of course, Garner was a recurrent go-to topic of discussion for Richard. He loved telling the story of how he discovered the then oddly named, James Bumgarner. He was just some Okie with a modeling career, don’t you know. Yes, an underwear model. The Bumgarner name made more sense with a modeling career. But Garner, thanks to Richard, was soon cast in the TV series Cheyenne and then Maverick, both shows under his directing helm. Richard was highly respected on the Warners Brothers lot. Indeed, Richard was the first director of a television series produced by the studio! Garner knew his connection with Richard Bare made him. And he was forever grateful.
It was truly a gift to get to know Richard Bare — albeit for a short period of his abundant life. I will forever cherish the time he spent reminiscing, sharing his memorabilia, holding his entertainment treasures, and being party to our anything-goes discussions that ramped-up from Turner Classic Movies to what it was like working with Charlie Chaplin, and being married to Phyllis Coates, the original Lois Lane on The Adventures of Superman. He spoke about the time Phyllis was knocked-out when filming an episode of Superman, appropriately titled, “Night of Terror.” Evidently, they filmed those episodes in breakneck speed —and sometimes, the actors got hurt a wee bit.
Richard’s stories were nonstop because the man had so many lives. That Richard continued to be a buddy despite the fact Green Acres was proverbially “tied up” by his business partner, made us all the more fond of this friendly and unassuming master of mockery. Certainly the greatest gift he leaves all of us is the legacy of his wit and humor, on vivid display in film and television.
When Richard directed Edd Byrnes, who played Kookie in 77 Sunset Strip, he told him in one scene to comb his hair. That became the Byrnes trademark that transcended the six year run of the series and spawned the Connie Stevens hit song, “Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb!” It’s strange and it’s surreal. It’s pure Richard Bare — a bit that became a brand. A twist that became a turn. Is is any wonder that he is the director of the classic Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man?” That’s who Richard Bare was — a guy who could find a pebble and make it a gem, who could take a small incident and dramatize it into an iconic moment. That’s no doubt what James Garner was getting at when he wrote that “Richard Bare has made a name for himself in the movie and television business. The only place some folks make a name for themselves is on a tombstone.”
Now Richard Bare has done both. Clearly, he has proven in life and death, that Green Acres is the place to be!
Originally published May 12, 2015 on examiner.com