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Gailard Sartain, the very funny character actor who spent some 20 years on Hee Haw, appeared in three Ernest films with Jim Varney and displayed a flair for the dramatic in The Buddy Holly Story and Mississippi Burning, has died. He was 81.

The pride of Tulsa also showed up in three Ernest movies, played The Big Bopper in ‘The Buddy Holly Story’ and did nine films with Alan Rudolph.

Gailard Sartain, the very funny character actor who spent some 20 years on Hee Haw, appeared in three Ernest films with Jim Varney and displayed a flair for the dramatic in The Buddy Holly Story and Mississippi Burning, has died. In 1972, Sartain joined the cast of the syndicated country variety show Hee Haw, and he would stick around for the next two decades playing such characters as Orville the cook at Lulu’s Truck Stop and the inept clerk Maynard at Gordie’s General Store. Earl Long (Paul Newman) in Ron Shelton’s Blaze(1989), and his impressive big-screen résumé included Howard Deutch’s Getting Even With Dad(1994) and The Replacements(2000); The Hollywood Knights(1980); The Big Easy(1986); Irwin Winkler’s Guilty by Suspicion(1991); Roger Spottiswoode’s Stop!

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