R.I.P. Gailard Sartain

Character actor Gailard Sartain (1943-2025) passed away a couple of months ago; I opted to wait ’til his next birthday to post a long-planned tribute.

Sartain was one on a very short list of performers I know of who moved easily and frequently between mainstream show business (liberal, Hollywood) and the narrower world of rural, white, conservative entertainment we associate primarily with country music, but also includes comedians and actors. I’ve known about him through just about the entirety of his career because mine was a Hee Haw watching family, and Sartain was a regular on that show for around 20 years (1972-92). One would think that show was a ghetto from which no good-ole-boy style comedian would ever escape, but the list of prominent films and TV projects Sartain proceeded to be involved in is astonishing in both its respectability and its breadth. And while he generally portrayed rural characters, there was a lot of range in his work as well. He played sissies and tough guys with equal skill and aplomb. He was one of America’s last prominent low (physical) comedians, known for taking pratfalls and making crazy faces, but he also expanded into straight drama.

I have no idea what his politics were. He was a close friend of Oklahoma’s Republican governor and former Bush cabinet member Frank Keating. But that was back when it was possible for friends to disagree — things were already extreme, but not as extreme as they are now. And he retired from acting 20 years ago, long before MAGA, so there’s nothing in the public record indicating where he might have stood on the changes of the last decade. I’m not sure a Gailard Sartain would be possible nowadays.

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But when one reads about his early years, there is a distinct hippie flavor to it. He had a local late night TV show in his native Tulsa called The Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting, which he hosted as one Dr. Mazeppa Pompazoidi. (The first name is clearly inspired by this). Sartain had a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Tulsa and worked at a local station as a camera man, and that was how he got his foot in the door. He was basically a horror host, showing old movies, but he also put on sketches with a small core cast, one member of whom was Gary Busey. This photo alone makes me really wish he had starred in a bio-pic about Fatty Arbuckle:

He was very popular in Tulsa; it’s not a head-scratcher how his fame made its way to the Hee Haw producers. I’ve watched some of those early pre-Hee Haw clips on Youtube, and they’re freakin’ hilarious, funnier than a lot of later stuff he didn’t write. He was also a regular on the short-lived Keep on Truckin’ (1975), The Sonny and Cher Show (1976-77), Klein Time (1977, a Robert Klein special), and Shields and Yarnell (1978), so I caught a lot of that TV sketch work as a kid.

Sartain has a great little walk-on scene with Keenan Wynn in Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975). He’s a guy in the airport cafeteria; the two strike up a brief conversation. Obviously the film was shot on location, and Nashville also happened to be where Hee Haw was taped. It was Sartain’s first movie. Alan Rudolph, the assistant director on Nashville, later cast Sartain in his films Roadie (1980), Endangered Species (1982), Choose Me (1984), Songwriter (1984), Trouble in Mind (1985), Made in Heaven (1987), The Moderns (1988), Love at Large (1990), and Equinox (1992).

Sartain’s second movie? Was The Buddy Holly Story (1978) starring his old Tulsa friend Gary Busey. Sartain was extremely well cast as The Big Bopper.

His third movie? Was Steve Martin’s first feature The Jerk (1979), directed by Carl Reiner. His scene wound up on the cutting room floor but Reiner and Martin had him back for All of Me (1983).

Subsequently, Sartain had supporting parts in numerous major Hollywood films, many by top directors. His resume includes Coppola’sThe Outsiders (1983), The Big Easy (1986), Mississippi Burning (1988), Blaze (1989), The Grifters (1990), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), RocketMan (1997), The Replacements (2000), and Ali (2001).

At the same time, he was a core cast member in Jim Varney’s “Ernest” projects: the movies Ernest Goes to Camp (1987), Ernest Saves Christmas (1988), and Ernest Goes to Jail (1990), as well as the kids tv show Hey Vern! It’s Ernest (1988) on which he was cast as a regular. Can you wrap your head around the schizophrenia of all this?

There were also some oddities in the mix. He was in the notoriously dreadul Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992) with Sylvester Stallone and Estelle Getty; the western comedy Wagons East (1994) with John Candy and Richard Lewis; and The All New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy in “For Love or Mummy” (1999) in the plum role of Oliver Hardy (Bronson Pinchot was Stan Laurel).

Sartain’s last role was in Cameron Crowe’sElizabethtown (2005), which is set in rural Kentucky. The always hefty Sartain was waxing very large by that point. That, and the fact that he was now in his sixties no doubt played a part in his decision to quietly retire. Besides, he happened to have another avenue of expression available to him. Sartain was also a professional illustrator and had been since the very beginning (he had a bachelor of fine arts, recall). Unlike many dilettante actors who take up painting in retirement, Sartain was the real deal. His best known work was the cover to Leon Russell’s 1975 Will O’ the Wisp album:

Yeah, Gailard Sartain. That was a guy I would have liked to have met. I have a few questions for him!

For more on show biz history consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.