Visit Mister Ed’s Grave. Maybe

Did you know that you can visit television’s famous Mister Ed’s grave? You do remember Mister Ed, don’t you? Okay, I guess that I’ll have to admit that not everyone is as old as I am. There were reruns for years – let me remind you:

Yes, that Mister Ed! This famous actor was buried in Oklahoma and you can visit the place and see his grave. Well, sort of….

You see, Mister Ed’s real name (most actors use a stage name, after all) was Bamboo Harvester. When he had become too old to remain a star of the silver screen he was retired to a farm in Oklahoma (or California?). In 1970, he died. Well, probably. There’s a mystery about the way he ended his days.

Some say that he was euthanised because of several health problems. But Alan Young, who co-starred with Ed as Wilbur Post, claims that the horse was accidentally given a tranquiliser that proved to be too much for him. Poor old Ed was cremated and his ashes scattered in Los Angeles. Or, as some say, he had been sold, moved to Oklahoma where he was buried in an unmarked grave in Tahlequah. Confused? I am.

So who is in the grave with its fancy memorial stone in Oklahoma? It seems that Mister Ed had a stand-in and stunt double, as most famous TV stars do. He wasn’t used on the television show but was used for publicity photography and so forth (he wasn’t much of an actor – he probably couldn’t even talk).

But when Mister Ed died in 1970, the stand-in, Pumpkin, took over as being the ‘real Mister Ed’ for publicity purposes. Pumpkin left us for the great paddock in the sky in 1979 and only then was it reported that ‘Mister Ed’ had died.

It was twenty years later that fans decided to erect the memorial to Mister Ed on the gravesite in Tahlequah? Is it the ‘real’ Mister Ed or is it Pumpkin?

If you’re a true Mister Ed fan, maybe it doesn’t really matter. Craig Robertson of Weird Oklahoma says “Multiple dogs have played Lassie, and none of them are considered ‘false’ Lassies. Therefore, we say Tahlequah is indeed the final resting place of everyone’s favorite talking horse.”

WHERE IS MISTER ED BURIED?