R.I.P. Frank Cady, aka Sam Drucker

Every now and then I think to myself that I'm gonna stop writing celebrity obits on my blog; for one thing by the time I get around to it everyone from CNN.com all the way down to the Stammerville Weekly Shopper has already covered it, plus it's kind of morbid. But then someone whose life actually meant something to me dies, and I think, "OK, one more time."

This time it's actor Frank Cady. The name might not be familiar, but his face certainly will be if you watched any TV at all in the 1960s and 1970s. Cady died June 8, 2012 in his Wilsonville, Oregon home. He was 96. His daughter didn't mention a cause of death, but it couldn't be too awfully hard to figure out. The man was nearing 100.

My first reaction upon hearing the news of his death: Sadness or course, followed by open mouthed surprise. I honest to god didn't realize he was still alive.

Cady's most famous role was of course that of Sam Drucker, owner and proprietor of Drucker's General Store on Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. Sam Drucker was a regular on both series, and even made a few appearances on The Beverly Hillbillies.

All three series had a shared continuity and existed within the same world, one that I always called the "Hooterverse," named of course after the fictional town in which Petticoat Junction and Green Acres took place.

That makes Frank Cady one of the only actors I know who regularly played the same character in three different shows. The only other actor I can think of that comes close is Richard Anderson, who played Oscar Goldman simultaneously in The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman.*

Cady guest starred on many other TV shows prior to his Hooterverse role, including The Andy Griffith Show and many, many Western TV series. He was also in several of my all time favorite movies, including The 7 Faces of Doctor Lao and When Worlds Collide. After seeing his earnest and over-enunciated performance as Sam Drucker my whole life, it was a bit jarring to see him in anything else, especially as a villain in When Worlds Collide.

* It's entirely possible that an actor has played the same character in several of the various Law and Order series, but I've never watched a single episode of any of those, so I can't say.

Famous Business Cards

One of my many fascinating hobbies is collecting old business cards. Here are just a few from the collection:

Here's a card from the McMann & Tate Advertising firm. For many decades they were the number one ad agency in New York; none of their other competitors could touch them. No one could ever figure out the secret to their success. In fact one of their rivals said their ability to win over important clients and come up with innovative campaigns was almost "like magic."

A rare matching sets of cards from a now defunct California bank. It's unusual to find two cards in such good shape from the same business. The Commerce Bank was a cornerstone of the California financial system for many decades. Then tragedy struck as their largest depositor pulled his assets from the bank sometime in the 1980s, sending the institution into a downward spiral from which it could not recover. Tragically the C.E.O. took his own life by leaping from the roof of the bank when the F.D.I.C. arrived to take control.

Here's the story of this classic card dating from the 1970s. Phillips & Associates was a small architectural firm that produced few noteworthy designs. Many of their critics denounced their concepts as "out of date" and "stuck in the past." They limped along for many years, barely managing to survive, until sometime in the early 2000s. Suddenly their retro designs were "in" again, and the public went wild for their work, generating their greatest successes to date.