Frank Cady

Frank Randolph Cady (September 8, 1915 – June 8, 2012) was an American character actor most celebrated for his role as the affable storekeeper Sam Drucker, a part he inhabited concurrently on three classic 1960s sitcoms—Petticoat Junction, Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies. Born the youngest of three children in Susanville, California, Cady grew up in a modest family; his father Leon and mother Clara moved the household to Wilsonville, Oregon when he was a teenager. While attending high school he cut his teeth on the local newspaper The Lassen County Advocate, and later pursued journalism and drama at Stanford University, where he contributed to the humor magazine The Stanford Chaparral and earned a graduate assistantship. After a brief apprenticeship with the Westminster Theatre in London and an early BBC television appearance in 1938, he returned to Stanford, met his future wife Shirley Katherine Jones, and married in 1940. Cady’s post‑college years were a mosaic of broadcasting jobs until he enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in 1943, serving in England, France and Germany during World War II. Discharged in 1946, he transitioned to acting in Los Angeles stage productions, which led to his first film credit in 1947. Throughout the 1950s he accumulated a string of uncredited and supporting roles in classics such as D.O.A., The Asphalt Jungle, When Worlds Collide, Ace in the Hole and the iconic Rear Window (1954). He also became a familiar face on radio, notably on Gunsmoke. The breakthrough came in 1953 when Cady was cast as Doc Williams on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, a role he held for over a decade. In the early 1960s he guest‑starred on Perry Mason and Gunsmoke before landing the part of Sam Drucker, a character that would define his career. From 1965 to 1971 he appeared in 142 episodes of Green Acres, 152 episodes of Petticoat Junction and ten episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies, making him the only actor to play the same recurring role on three sitcoms simultaneously. After the sitcom era his on‑screen appearances dwindled, with his final performance in the television movie Return to Green Acres (1990). Cady remained active in public life, attending fellow actors’ milestones, and in a 1995 interview he reflected on typecasting with humor and gratitude. He died peacefully at his home in Wilsonville, Oregon on June 8, 2012, aged 96, and was interred alongside his wife at Los Osos Valley Memorial Park in California.