TV SERIES · 1961– · USA
Mister Ed
33 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (33)
- #001
When Mister Ed got tired of working, he would leave the set.
- #002
The horse would not respond to any of his co-stars, only to his trainer, Lester Hilton. This meant Hilton always had to be on set, giving commands or hand signals.
- #003
This was one of the few television series that began in syndication and was then picked up by a major network.
- #004
Jay Livingston sang the theme song as a demo with the intention of having a professional singer re-record it, but the producers liked his vocals and kept Livingston's version on the series.
- #005
Alan Young and Mister Ed were friends off set even after the series was completed, and Young regularly visited trainer Lester Hilton's farm to ride Mister Ed.
- #006
Larry Keating (Roger Addison) died in the third season and was replaced by Leon Ames (Colonel Gordon Kirkwood).
- #007
Mister Ed's daily diet consisted of twenty pounds of hay consumed with a gallon of sweet tea.
- #008
Alan Young was reported to own a share of this series. The syndication and network runs made him very rich.
- #009
CBS refused to put the production on its own network at its first premiere in 1960, so the Studebaker Corporation bought the series and offered it in syndication. It drew great interest immediately, and CBS bought it a year later.
- #010
Mister Ed was a Golden Palomino.
- #011
Mister Ed originated from a series of magazine stories. The horse not only talked, he also got drunk.
- #012
The series was initially produced by George Burns's McCadden Productions. Burns later said he hired Alan Young for the role of Wilbur Post because he "looked like the kind of man a horse would talk to."
- #013
The original sponsor was the Studebaker Corporation, which provided the series' cars and trucks.
- #014
Mister Ed spoke to Wilbur only because (by his own judgment) he was the only person worth talking to.
- #015
Alan Young refused to have the series named after him. He did not want it to fall if it were bombed. So the series was named Mister Ed.
- #016
Mister Ed really could answer the telephone. He just could not talk.
- #017
Wilbur Post (Alan Young) received his training where he studied architecture at UCLA.
- #018
In one episode, Alan Young played a dual role as Wilbur and Wilbur's father, Angus Post. Angus was Young's real name.
- #019
AP News, April 22, 1963: Television's talking horse Mister Ed and Walt Disney's dog film star Big Red won Patsy awards as the best animal performers of 1962. The awards were presented Saturday by the American Humane Society.
- #020
When CBS decided to remove the series from its prime-time schedule, it did not cancel it outright. The sixth and final season aired Sunday afternoons at 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
- #021
Mister Ed really could open the barn door.
- #022
Wilbur Post (Alan Young) was a U.S. Air Force veteran and served alongside Colonel Kirkwood (Leon Ames).
- #023
It was one of the first programs broadcast on Nick at Nite.
- #024
Producer and most frequent director Arthur Lubin and Larry Keating had both been involved in another series starring a talking animal, the talking mule Francis. Keating appeared in the film Francis Goes to the Races (1951). Lubin directed that film and five other Francis films.
- #025
The house used in the series was the childhood home of singer Katy Rose years after the show ended.
- #026
Working as chief makeup artist on this series was Jack Pierce's final makeup assignment, ending a makeup career of nearly 40 years. He was one of Hollywood's legendary makeup artists and headed Universal's makeup department throughout the 1930s and 1940s; he is best remembered for creating the special makeup for Universal's classic horror productions.
- #027
Long after production on the series had stopped but while it was still being seen in syndication, a fundamentalist religious group in Ohio claimed that the show's famous theme song was "Satanic."
- #028
Although he was 10 years younger than Allan Lane (Ed's voice), Alan Young outlived him by 32 years. Both died at the Motion Picture retirement home in Woodland Hills, California; Lane in 1973 at age 64 and Young 43 years later in 2016 at age 96. Young was 12 years older than his TV wife Connie Hines and outlived her by 7 years. She died in 2009 at age 78.
- #029
The first show was to open cold, without the theme song and without Mister Ed addressing the audience, because that would have revealed the secret before the series began.
- #030
Animating the horse's mouth every time Mister Ed spoke proved too expensive, so the horse's upper lip was tickled with a string to make its lips move in a way similar to human speech. After training with Les Hilton, however, the animal star formed a bond strong enough that it would respond only to him, and the horse learned to flap its lips whenever its hoof was touched. By the second year it already knew what was expected of it, and it moved its lips when Alan stopped talking.
- #031
Mister Ed was played by Bamboo Harvester, an American Saddlebred/Arabian cross. He was born in Los Angeles in 1949 and was about 12 years old when he began playing the role of Ed, and about 17 when the series' run ended. Bamboo, whose Saddlebred sire was a valuable show horse, was a parade horse before playing Ed. There is some mystery about what actually happened to Bamboo. The official and generally accepted story is that he was euthanized in 1970 at age 21 after suffering various health problems including arthritis and kidney trouble, and was laid to rest in rural Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The grave site is in the backyard of a private residence. However, Alan Young, who played Ed's human companion Wilbur, claimed that Bamboo was alive and well throughout the '70s and that he (the horse) visited his former co-star in retirement before dying in 1979. It is nevertheless believed that the horse Young visited was actually Bamboo's stunt double, another palomino named Punkin, who reportedly looked almost identical to Bamboo and was also used as Mister Ed for photos and public appearances. After Bamboo's death, Punkin was presented to the public as Mister Ed, and the fact that Bamboo had died was not disclosed to the public for years. So Bamboo Harvester, AKA Mister Ed, almost certainly died in 1970 after suffering poor health for several years.
- #032
Based on short stories by Walter R. Brooks, the series first aired in syndication from January 5 to July 2, 1961, and then on CBS from October 1, 1961 to February 6, 1966.
- #033
The Posts' telephone number was State 11781 (781-1781).
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