told<\/a> the Tulsa World newspaper in 2017. \u201cI was cast in that, and that kind of turned things around. I wasn\u2019t just typecast as a funny guy. That was a little bit pivotal.\u201d<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tOn Hee Haw, clockwise from top left: Gordie Tapp, George Lindsey, Gailard Sartain and Minnie Pearl.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCBS\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n
\n\tThe son of a fire chief, Gailard Sartain Jr. was born in Tulsa on Sept. 18, 1943. After getting kicked out of private school for mischief, he graduated from Will Rogers High School and the University of Tulsa, then moved in 1968 to New York. There, he landed a job as an assistant to illustrator Paul Davis, a fellow Oklahoman whose work appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times and Playboy.<\/p>\n
\n\tBack in Tulsa to pursue his master\u2019s degree, Sartain was a cameraman at local station KOTV when he created the late-night show The Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting. He also hosted the program, which featured comedy skits sprinkled amid old B-movies, as the wacky wizard Dr. Mazeppa Pompazoidi.<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter three years on that show and starting out on Hee Haw, Sartain made his movie debut in a scene at a lunch counter with Keenan Wynn in Nashville (1975) \u2014 Rudolph was Robert Altman\u2019s assistant director on that \u2014 then wrote and did skits on CBS variety shows hosted by Cher and the mime duo Shields & Yarnell from 1975-78.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the early 1980s, he and Byrge starred as Chuck and Bobby in commercials produced by the Nashville ad agency Carden and Cherry, which also did spots with Varney as Ernest. The two played twin brothers that didn\u2019t look anything alike; the burly Chuck was a loudmouth, while the slim Bobby never spoke.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn his Tulsa World interview, Sartain said he enjoyed working with Rudolph because he \u201cwould just turn me loose. So I would come up with character accents and stuff, and he would go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tSartain also portrayed an adviser to Louisiana Gov. Earl Long (Paul Newman) in Ron Shelton\u2019s Blaze (1989), and his impressive big-screen r\u00e9sum\u00e9 included Howard Deutch\u2019s Getting Even With Dad (1994) and The Replacements (2000); The Hollywood Knights (1980); The Big Easy (1986); Irwin Winkler\u2019s Guilty by Suspicion (1991); Roger Spottiswoode\u2019s Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992); The Patriot (1998); and Cameron Crowe\u2019s Elizabethtown (2005), after which he retired.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs an illustrator, Sartain created the cover for Leon Russell\u2019s 1975 album Will O\u2019 the Wisp (Russell was from Oklahoma, too).<\/p>\n
\n\tIn addition to his wife \u2014 they married on New Year\u2019s Eve in 1988 \u2014 survivors include his children, Sarah, Esther and Ben; his granddaughter, Chloe; and his great-grandson, Teddy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gailard Sartain, the very funny character actor who spent some 20 years on Hee Haw, appeared in three…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,593,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-356","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-obituaries","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114717988646642554","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}