Eleventh Generation11642. His obituary was published on 11 June 2012 in the New York Times in New York City, New York, New York. Frank Cady, a character actor best known for playing the down-home shopkeeper, Sam Drucker, on the popular 1960s sitcoms “Petticoat Junction” and “Green Acres,” died on Friday at his home in Wilsonville, Ore. He was 96. Catherine Turk, his daughter, confirmed his death. Mr. Cady played Sam Drucker for nearly a decade on the two shows, both set in the fictional town of Hooterville. Mr. Drucker was a bit of a straight man to the colorfully zany folk who populated the series, both on CBS. His general store was the closest thing Hooterville had to a social club, and unlike the shops in neighboring Pixley, Drucker’s extended credit. Mr. Cady’s Sam Drucker also appeared occasionally on a third homespun comedy, “The Beverly Hillbillies.” All three shows were produced by Paul Henning. Critics found the shows simple-minded, but in 1990 Mr. Cady defended “Green Acres,” about a city couple who move to the country. “The only thing I resent is people calling it a corny show,” he told CBS News. “It’s highly sophisticated, and it’s timeless, as I think all the reruns are establishing.” Mr. Cady had an extensive career outside of Drucker’s store. He played the part of Doc Williams on “The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet” from 1953 to 1964, appeared on television shows like “Wagon Train” and “Perry Mason,” and acted in films, including “Rear Window” and “Ace in the Hole.” Mr. Cady largely retired in 1977, but he did reprise the role of Sam Drucker in 1990, in the TV movie “Return to Green Acres.” Frank Randolph Cady was born on Sept. 8, 1915, in Susanville, Calif., and graduated from Stanford University’s drama department in 1938. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II and started acting onstage after returning from the war. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a son, Steven; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. His wife, Shirley, whom he married in 1940, died in 2008. Balding, long-necked character actor Frank Cady was a stage actor of long standing when he moved into films in 1947. He was usually cast as a quiet, unassuming small town professional man, most memorably as the long-suffering husband of the grief-stricken alcoholic Mrs. Daigle (Eileen Heckart) in "The Bad Seed" (1957). A busy television actor, he spent much of the 1950s on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet as Ozzie Nelson's neighbor Doc Willard. The "TV Generation" of the 1960s knows Cady best as philosophical storekeeper Sam Drucker on the bucolic sitcoms Petticoat Junction (1963-1970) and Green Acres (1965-1971). Whenever he wanted to briefly escape series television and recharge his theatrical batteries, Frank Cady appeared with the repertory company at the prestigious Mark Taper's Forum. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide Biography But although enrolled primarily in journalism courses at Stanford University, he was asked in his sophomore year to write a skit and a song for his fraternity, which creation became part of the annual student musical show, the Big Game Gaieties. Forty years later, he moved out of Los Angeles and out of the business. Almost. Frank's latest acting role, since "retiring" in 1978, is in his old part of Sam Drucker, the storekeeper, in Return to Green Acres, a 2-hour film for TV, which he completed in March of 1990. Between 1963 and 1970 he portrayed that character in 145 episodes of Green Acres, 152 episodes of Petticoat Junction and 11 of The Beverly Hillbillies. He swore his last appearance would be in an After Mash episode in 1984. After that, he was offered two new series (the latest in 1989), but he turned them down and, in doing so, he says, "I guess I may have burned my last bridge to Hollywood." Well - almost. His retirement might have ended in 1983, when he agreed to make a pilot for CBS called Sutters Bay, on which he played the town doctor. For better or worse, the pilot didn't sell. An earlier series with which Frank was associated was The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, in which he played the recurring character of Doc Williams, a neighbor, over a period of 12 years, beginning in 1953. He appeared in some experimental TV in New York in 1939 and made his West Coast television debut sometime in the 40s doing those terrifying, no-retake live shows, such as CBS's Studio One, Life With Father and others long forgotten. The list of TV credits, piled up through the years, included such oldies as The Alaskans, Broken Arrow, December Bride, O,Susanna, GE Theatre (with a guy named Ronald Reagan), Andy Griffith, Perry Mason, Rawhide, Hawaiian Eye, Guestward Ho, Maverick, The Investigators, Pete and Gladys, The Joey Bishop Show, You Are There, Glynis, Make Room For Daddy, Grindle, Dennis The Menace, The Untouchables, Jane Wyman Theatre, Cheyenne, The Best Years, Sugarfoot, The Virginian, The Deputy, The Real McCoys, Desilu Playhouse, Wagon Train, Hazel, Great Adventures, and some more recent ones such as The Practice, Gunsmoke, and Hawaii Five-O. Just before leaving Hollywood in 1978, he filmed several ABC-TV Weekend Specials, including the 3-part Winged Colt, for which he received an Emmy nomination. Other major motion picture credits: Rear Window, The Big Carnival, The Asphalt Jungle, When Worlds Collide (now a sci-fi classic), Hearts of the West, The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, the Girl Most Likely and perhaps 20 or 30 other pictures best left undisturbed. From there, he went to an apprenticeship with a repertory company at the Westminster Theatre, London, where he stayed until 1939, appearing in Marco Millions, Troilus and Cressida, Dangerous Corner and The Farewell Supper. A season of summer stock in Brattleboro, Vermont, followed in 1939 and then he returned to Stanford for two years of graduate work, a year as a teaching assistant to Prof. Elizabeth Buckingham in Shakespearean interpretation and he also appeared in many more plays. The academic life was not for Frank and he abandoned plans to teach, taking a job as a radio announcer at KGDM in Stockton and later moving to KYA and subsequently KGO in San Francisco as announcer-newscaster and editor. From 1943 to 1946 he was with the USAAF in England, France and Germany and, with hostilities at an end, was able to appear in The Road To Rome with James and Pamela Mason, in the Wiesbaden Opera House. Following his discharge in 1946 he appeared in two plays in Hollywood, which led directly to a beginning in motion pictures. A season of 8 plays in professional stock at Laguna Beach and more plays in Hollywood, La Jolla and Pasadena, led up to the year 1953 when an appearance in The Square Needle caught the eyes of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson and his TV career was launched in earnest. He returned to the theatre in 1972, performing What Are You Doing After The War? with the Center Theatre group and later appearing in,Henry IV, Part I at the Mark Taper Forum, playing first Northumberland and later Worcester. He was also active with ANTA West, appearing as Cassius in Julius Caesar and playing in Born Yesterday and others. Except for one or two minor backslidings, the vow to retire and stay retired has been kept. Frank has busied himself with his private business interests and found relaxation and recreation in writing for the local newspaper, hiking in the Swiss Alps, and taking off whenever asked to play in his beloved celebrity golf tournaments in cities throughout the country. Frank and Shirley moved to Oregon in September of 1991, primarily to be nearer their daughter, Catherine, who lives in Olympia, Washington. Their son, Steven, lives in Truckee, California. Until January of 1995, Frank stuck with his retirement game plan. But the Chris Cusick of Portland Agency sent him out on two auditions and, on both, he came out on top. the first was for an Oregon Lottery commercial and the other was for an industrial film for Hewlett-Packard. (The H-P film is "in house" and was not broadcast, which he regrets because his part, a college professor, was well-suited to him and, as he modestly admits, "I was very good in it.") The biggest thrill of his acting career? It was getting a part in a picture that was never made. While living in Cambria, his agent asked him to come down to Hollywood because Orson Welles wanted to see him! It seems that Orson knew his work, felt that Frank was just right for a film Orson had written and would direct. After an hour's talk at Wells' home, Frank was cast in and given the script to The Cradle Will Rock, which was the story of how the play of that name was produced years ago. The picture was to shoot in Italy in a few months. Unfortunately, production problems developed, resulting in the picture's postponement and, before it could be re-activated, Orson died. End of a story that could have had a much happier ending. What comes next? "Probably nothing," says Frank, "unless some feature film or TV show decides to do some principal casting in Portland, instead of Hollywood." Otherwise, it's back to golf, travel, hiking and whatever else the old body can put up with. Above dated November 1997 What's the secret to playing Sam Drucker: "I just play myself," says Frank Cady, who played the same role on three different series. "Sam Drucker and I are old friends. I played him on Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, and The Beverly Hillbillies, and we were going strong until 1971, when Fred Silverman canceled every show with a tree in it." Born and raised in California, Cady graduated from Lassen Union High School with the goal of becoming a journalist. He entered Stanford University, where he ended up majoring in speech and drama. After graduating in 1938, he went to London and apprenticed at the Westminster Theater, performing plays of Shakespeare. It was while he was there that he made one of the earliest television appearances in history. "In 1938 we performed a Shakespeare play on BBC Television. That's got to be just about a record. Unfortunately hardly anyone had a set back then to watch it." Returning to Stanford for graduate work, Cady met his future wife, actress Shirley Jones, while teaching acting at the university. "I always call her the real Shirley Jones," he laughs, "to distinguish her from Shirley Jones of The Partridge Family." Tiring of academia, Cady settled on the idea of becoming a radio announcer and landed a job at KGDM in Stockton California. Eventually he moved on to KYA and subsequently to KGO in San Francisco. In 1943, Cady was drafted into the army and sent to Europe, where he spent the better part of World War Two writing news stories for the army's public relations department. Later, with hostilities at an end, he was able to appear in The Road To Rome with James and Pamela Mason at the Wiesbaden Opera House. After his discharge, Cady headed to Los Angeles to pick up his radio career where he had left it, but he couldn't find a job. "I just completely bombed out," he says. "I ended up teaching in a radio school and picking up a few small movie parts. Those parts included Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. "Hitchcock liked me so much he gave me two roles. He wrote a part for me talking with Jimmy Stewart on the telephone, but it got left on the editing room floor. I worked 8 weeks on the picture and my only appearance is a long shot of me on a fire escape." "Shirley came down to see the play and dang if Lee didn't jump his cue and cut me out of the whole play. Afterwards, Shirley and I went out to eat and Lee walked in and apologized profusely. He promised to perform my scene for her right there and then. So, we did the scene right there in the middle of the restaurant." It was while he was appearing on stage that Cady was spotted by Ozzie Nelson and given the role of "Doc Williams" on The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, a part he played on a recurring basis for 12 years. It was a 1962 appearance on The Beverly Hillbillies that began his "career" as "Sam Drucker." The episode, called "Christmas In Hooterville," led to his becoming a series regular on Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. He recalls those days fondly. "Eddie Albert was the greatest straight man I've ever seen. He made all of Green Acres' absurd and loony characters work." After Green Acres, Cady was offered job after job-providing he would play a storekeeper. Finding the prospect less than enticing, Cady turned to film and commercial work, and considers his role as "Pa" in Zandy's Bride (starring Liv Ullman and Gene Hackman) to be one of the highlights of his career. Another high point came in 1984 when he received a call from Orson Welles asking him to appear in an upcoming film, The Cradle Will Rock. Sadly, the picture was pushed back and Welles died before it could be shot. "I asked Mr. Welles why he had picked me to play the part of an old vaudevillian. It turned out that he was a big fan of Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. Imagine that!" Cady's final appearance as Hooterville's "Sam Drucker" was in the 1990 TV movie Return To Green Acres, but as with so many remakes, he felt it wasn't as good as the original. "They had a rotten script. They had the characters all wrong, and they even had somebody else playing the postmaster," he says with dismay. Retiring to Oregon in 1991, Cady and his wife keep active playing golf and hiking. Until recently, they took annual month-long hiking trips to Switzerland. Filmography Notable TV Guest Appearances Frank Randolph CADY and Shirley Katherine JONES were married in June 1940.1863 Shirley Katherine Jones was born Nov. 28, 1916, in Oakland, Calif. She graduated from Stanford University and was a professional singer, teacher and legal secretary in several places in California and lived in Cambria, Calif., before moving to Wilsonville in 1991. In 1940, she married Frank R. Cady. Survivors include her husband; daughter, Catherine Turk; son, Steven; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Remembrances to charity. Arrangements by Cornwell. Frank Randolph CADY-47400 and Shirley Katherine JONES-47404 had the following children:
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