Mister Ed
Format Sitcom
Starring

Alan Young
Connie Hines
Country of origin United States
No. of seasons 6
No. of episodes 143 & pilot
Production
Running time 24-25 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel Syndication
CBS
Original run January 5, 1961 – February 6, 1966 

 Mr. Ed was a parade and show horse, named "Bamboo Harvester". He was foaled in 1949 in El Monte, California. The Mister Ed Company bought him & 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. Mr. Ed did many of his scenes in one take.

On a television special Alan Young was interviewed and said that they used peanut butter for the horse to eat so he would move his mouth. In 1968, Mr. Ed was 19 years old and began to suffer from a variety of problems, including a broken leg.

He was put quietly to sleep with no publicity.

 The horse which died in Oklahoma in 1979 who everyone thought was Mr. Ed, was a horse who once posed as Mr. Ed for publicity photos used by the production company. There has been a long lasting secret to when & where the real Mr. Ed died. Was it before or after 1970? It is very possible that poor old Mr. Ed's life may have ended in the Santa Clarita Valley of southern California

This series is about a talking horse and the architect who loved him. It was a syndicated series on January 5, 1961 and aired on CBS by programming chief James T. Aubrey, on October 1, 1961. The show lasted until September 4, 1966. Arthur Lubin, was director, who also directed the early films of Abbott and Costello, & Francis the Talking Mule films.

The pilot for the series was entitled "The Wonderful World of Wilbur Pope." Produced by George Burns, the pilot never aired. Mr. Wilbur had to keep the secret that Mr. Ed the horse could talk. Mr. Ed only spoke to his owner Wilbur Post (played by Alan Young) who worked as an architect out of his office in the barn at 17230 Valley Spring Lane. Mr. Ed did talk to children on several episodes. Mr. Ed told Wilbur - "Who would believe a kid saying a horse can talk?"

Mr. Ed continuously becomes involved in comedy situations, such as 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, meeting baseball player Leo Durocher. Zsa Zsa Gabor was a guest on one of the shows.

George Burns also made an appearance on the series. Donna Douglas, the actress who was "Elly May" on the "Beverly Hillbillies" comedy series in the 1960's.

 She acted as Clint Eastwood's girlfriend on one of the shows. That was when Clint was starring on "Rawhide" television western series. 

 Remake
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, had committed suicide shortly before the pilot's completion.

The peanut butter legend
It is often said the crew was able to get Mister Ed to move his mouth by applying peanut butter to his gums in order for him to try to remove it by moving his lips. However, Alan Young admitted in 2004 that he had started that story himself, and explaining the actual method used. Alan Young, in an interview 7th April 2007 on radio station 3AW, Melbourne, Australia, again admitted that a loose piece of Nylon was inserted under Mr. Ed's lip which the horse attempted to remove on his trainers cue. Mr. Ed was so well trained that the insert would be ignored until the required cue.

Careful examination of Mister Ed footage shows indisputable evidence that the "marionette theory" (i.e., Ed's handler pulled strings to make him talk) was at work at least some of the time. Excerpts exist from a few episodes where the lighting and camera angle reveal a visible nylon "bit" being pulled for each word Ed spoke. Alan Young denied this occurred in the radio interview mentioned in the above paragraph.

Some may claim a nylon bit was needed in order to have Ed turn his head or perform some other movement without his trainer having to be in the camera shot, but the evidence is clear that the bit was also used when Ed was standing still and merely had to talk.

Young finally admitted during his interview for the Archive of American Television that a string was pulled to make Ed talk, noting that "this is for the Archive, right?" before explaining that he'd used the peanut butter fable for years in radio interviews instead of telling the truth.