Word: hawing
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Candy Farmer. Like so much of TV, Hee Haw is a show that nobody likes -except the viewers. Newspaper critics reacted as if it were good reason to pull the plug on rural electrification. CBS, with unaccustomed humor, is running promotion spots replaying the show's most outrageous vignettes, with a kicker: "The critics are unanimous about Hee Haw-but watch anyway...
What the public is watching is gags lifted from tales as old as the Arkansas Traveller (ca. 1860) but spliced together with production as new as Laugh-In. On Hee Haw, the graffiti adorn not bikini-clad boogaloo dancers but Burma-Shave signs, and the routines occur not at cocktail parties but in cornfields. That is their natural habitat. One of the company announces, "I'm a farmer in a candy factory." "Whaddaya do?" asks a chorus of rural voices. "I milk chocolate." In another rib cracker, the straight man wonders: "Hey, Junior, how come I saw you eating...
Many viewers presumably tune in not for the comedy but for the country-and-Western songs that fill up nearly one-third of Hee Haw's air time. There are top-name guests, and the hosts themselves are no slouches. Roy Clark-the one who looks like a heftier Sander Van-ocur-was twice the national banjo champion. Guitarist-Composer Buck Owens-the cross between Andy Griffith and George Segal-is a leading country recording artist...
Extraordinary Nielsen. Emerging as the real stars of Hee Haw are some of the previously unknown supporting players, who are less polished rustics. Stringbean, the emaciated chap who appears with the puppet crow on his shoulder, can barely read, according to friends, and has to be taught lines by his wife. Junior Samples, the fat man (275 Ibs.), professed to have nothing to wear but his "Sunday overalls" at a CBS celebration party. Introduced to a key network executive-"Junior, this is the vice president"-Junior ingenuously responded: "Hello, Mr. Agnew...
...party was a bit uncomfortable for Junior, but despite "The trouble with some of the words I'd never heered before," he says, "I'd like to do it again some time." Undoubtedly, he will get the chance. As a summer substitute, Hee Haw will go off the air Sept. 7, but its extraordinary Nielsen rating makes the show a likely CBS replacement for January dropouts. Apparently, many American viewers are fed up with the "crisis of the cities" programming that fills the TV news, and are seeking solace in the eternal verities -and inanities-of the country...