Although Frank Cady's most famous role would be that of general-store owner Sam Drucker, one of the less nutty residents of Hooterville in both Green Acres and Petticoat Junction, he had a history as a film, stage and television actor long before those shows. Usually cast as a gregarious small-town businessman, druggist, store clerk or other type of all-around Midwestern-type good guy, Cady was actually a California native, born in Susanville in 1915. The acting bug bit him when he sang in an elementary school play, and after graduating from Stanford University he headed to London, England, to train in the theater. When World War II broke out he was already in Europe, so he enlisted in the Army Air Force and spent the next several years in postings all over the continent. After his discharge he returned to the US and headed for Hollywood. An agent saw him in a local play, signed him, and he was on his way. One of his earlier--and more atypical--roles was as a seedy underworld character pulled in for questioning in a cop's murder in the noir classic The L.A. Investigator, and he played a succession of hotel clerks, bureaucrats, henpecked husbands and the like for the next 40+ years. He did much television work from the mid-'50s onward.
He is one of only three co-stars of Petticoat Junction who stayed with the series for its entire seven-year run (the other two being Edgar Buchanan and Linda Henning. Only actor to play a recurring character on three TV sitcoms at the same time--The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres and Petticoat Junction--from 1968 to 1969. Two children: Steve and Catherine