A look back at everyone’s favorite talking horse–who left millions laughing every week.
Jake a man that likes to talk but has nobody to talk to–and he’s likely to talk to a horse. That situation has a few million people laughing each week as they watch the Mister Ed series on television.
It makes no difference that it makes no sense–people just kind of like the idea. Maybe it’s the horse, maybe it’s comic Alan Young, who just brings out the best in the horse. Anyway, the show is a hit and will probably be around awhile.
The idea of a talking horse is nothing new, people have been telling tales about them for years, maybe longer. This horse, Mister Ed, is a handsome blond actor of gentle temperament whose only demand after a hard day on the set is a bucket of oats.
Mister Ed talks, but he’s no chatterbox. In fact, he limits his talk to his master, played by Alan Young, who doesn’t understand other horses no matter what they’ve got to say, only him.
Veteran wrangler and animal trainer Les Hilton says Mister Ed is 8, going on 9 years old, and a fine horse to get along with that just might talk if he happened to feel like it, anyway.
Like a lot of horses that act in movies and for television, this one gives no trouble. Not half as much as the people, for a fact, even when things go wrong, as they often do on any set. Actors forget their lines or move out of range, an airplane plugs by overhead, somebody bangs something, or the lighting needs fixing.
“It doesn’t matter,” says the producer. “Mister Ed is a ‘one-take’ star. We have to do scenes over like everyone else, but it’s never Ed’s fault. He’s always in position and very cooperative.”
Mister Ed actually isn’t his real name–to let out a big secret about the horse that’s probably the most popular equine on ‘any network right now–he used to be Bamboo Harvester, until it was changed for television.
Like a lot of actors, Ed has a dramatic coach–his ex-cowboy trainer Les, who trains him for his speaking part at a medium-size spread in the San Fernando Valley, not far from the studios.
Les Hilton has trained horses and other animals since the mid-30s when a movie company filming in Arizona hired him to make camera-shy horses behave during scenes. He has been working with Ed for three years and finds him a fine pupil–for a horse.
“Of course, dogs are easier to train for films because you can pick them up and carry them around to where they’re supposed to be,” says Les.
Picking up Ed would be quite a stunt, at that.
Each morning Ed waits patiently in his trailer like he’s anxious to go on down to work, although, according to Les he wasn’t so crazy for it at first. The two commute each day from the ranch to the studio, with Les carrying along a whip that looks like a fly switch, just to tap Ed into position. He also uses hand signals off-camera to give him other directions.
“He’s a pleasure to work with. He may talk back to Alan, but he never talks back to me,” Les declares.
They’ve had Ed in some crazy but kind of funny episodes to date. One time he tells his owner, name of Wilbur Post, that he wants to adopt a son and then makes his own arrangements to have the colt delivered to the house. But the young’un gets out of its stall and ruins some baskets of fancy apples about to be entered in the Fair and generally makes trouble.
Another time Mister Ed, naturally knowing a lot about his fellow horses in racing circles, brags he can pick the winners on any day’s racing card. But when Wilbur takes him up on it, real excited, he naturally backs out.
How did Wilbur come to get such a remarkable horse ? Well, he’s supposed to be this young architect who, with his wife Carol, buys a fancy country home. He finds that this crazy talking horse has been thrown in by the previous owner who probably couldn’t top Ed in the line of conversation.
You see, he doesn’t just talk the kind of horse talk anybody would expect, but a real literate kind of English that could scare some people–but then they don’t hear him, only Wilbur. Ed says Wilbur is the first person he’s ever met worth talking to!
Alan Young has spent so much time making people laugh he never had time to be much of a horse man. Now he and Ed get along swell, and he likes the show as much as the horse seems to.
There was fun on the set the day they brought in an elephant. Mister Ed, Les says, had never seen one of those things, although Bongo, the trained elephant, had seen and worked with a lot of horses. It took awhile for the two to get used to each other. The thing that really seemed to puzzle Ed was the tail on the wrong end that this big bozo carried around!
Then there was the episode when Ed was accused by his master of eating some prize goldfish–an insult to any horse–and it took some straightening out, even though Ed swears to the boss that he was innocent and wasn’t even hungry.
Then there’s that one that really happens in some neighborhoods. A group of people sign a petition to rezone and improve the neighborhood–meaning no horses! Mister Ed is mad as hops and has his bags packed ready to go where horses are appreciated, but good old Wilbur challenges the man who brought up the matter to a television debate to get the petition thrown out.
Mister Ed is such a smart horse he gets a job to pay for a color television set for his stall in another episode–and so it goes, usually good for laughs and watched by horse lovers who wish they had a horse like Ed they could gab with.
They’ve called Mister Ed an adult horse opera for kids, but kids aren’t the only ones caught watching Wilbur trying to keep his talking horse a secret. A series doesn’t get syndicated these days if it can’t carry its weight in laughs–Mister Ed does and did.
They help keep the series popular with some smart casting, too, like getting glamor girl Zsa Zsa Gabor as a guest star afraid of horses, until she meets this nice friendly talking horse that is such good company–even if he won’t talk to her.
There was the time recently when Ed was a headache on the set and unlike his usual cool self. The crew reshot the one sequence 10 times, until they got him to nod his head and react the right way. Then another star, Connie Hines, wasn’t pleased with the take and asked to do it again.
“Oh we can’t,” they told her, “the horse was perfect!”
Mister Ed thought so too. The way they could tell was by looking at him–he wasn’t yawning.
Like Alan Young says, “When he’s bored, he crosses his hind legs and lets out a big yawn!”
This article was originally published in the June 1962 issue of Western Horseman.
