This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we return to our American stories.

And now it's time for another Hollywood Goes to War story from Roger McGrath.

Eddie Albert played a sadistic prison warden in 1974 as The Longest Yard, starring Bert Reynolds.

Roger McGrath is the author of Gunfighters, Hollywoodman, and Vigilantees, Violence on the Frontier,

a U.S. Marine, and former history professor at UCLA, Dr. McGrath has appeared on

numerous history channel documentaries, and he's a regular contributor for us here at Our American

Stories. Here's McGrath with the story of Eddie Albert.

Eddie Albert is probably best remembered for starring in the television series Green Acres, which aired from 1965 through 1971.

In this series, he plays a New York City attorney who escapes the frenetic life of the metropolis to live the life of a gentleman farmer near the town of Hooterville.

He and his glamorous Hungarian wife, played by Ava Gabor, are the proverbial fish out of water,

trying to adjust to their new life on the farm and their new down-home friends.

Long before the highly popular Green Aircrews, though, Albert appeared in movies, beginning with Brother Rat in 1938.

All together, he appeared in more than 80 movies, both as a leading man and as a supporting actor, and was twice nominated for an Oscar.

While Eddie Albert was a highly recognizable actor to generations of movie and television fans, his World War II service in the Battle of Tarawa is largely unknown.

Eddie Albert is born Edward Albert Heimberger in Rock Island, Illinois in 196.

His father is Frank Heimberger, and his mother is Julia Jones.

He is the first of five children.

His paternal grandparents are German immigrants.

His mother's parents are immigrants from Wales and from Germany.

The family moves to Minneapolis when Eddie is one.

At six years old, they begin selling newspapers

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