"I thought they were grasshoppers. G-grass-H-hoppers-don't stop-get your top-P-E-R, grasshoppers" - Junior Samples discussing a plague of locusts
The Hee Haw Collection: Premier Episode DVD Review
By Jude Clement
Take one cup Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, one-half cup Green Acres, one-quarter cup Grand Ole Opry, and a generous helping of candy corn. Mix all ingredients in a galvanized tin bucket, and then strain the mixture over a washboard. Serve in a moonshine jug, using a reed of hay as a straw. That, my friends, is the recipe for the cornpone variety series Hee Haw, and if any of the ingredients sound distasteful, perhaps you should skip this review and read one of a nice, refined British show instead. Otherwise, your tolerance for google-eyed donkeys and braying jug-band theme songs is sure to be severely tested.
After Laugh-In became a stellar hit for NBC, executives at CBS decided to rip-off...er, borrow...that show's unique concept: a mixture of sketch comedy, blackout gags, running jokes, and mile-a-minute timing. CBS, however, was home to The Beverly Hillbillies, Gunsmoke, Mayberry RFD, and many other "rural" shows - not exactly a perfect match for Laugh-In's style of sophisticated stupidity. Then someone had the bright idea of melding the basic structure of Laugh-In with the rural sensibilities of CBS' other hits, and Hee Haw was born. This new show would be a mixture of sketch comedy, blackout gags, and running jokes, but with plenty of haystacks, overalls, straw hats, and dancing pigs thrown in.
Just as Dan Rowan and Dick Martin serve as the ringmasters of Laugh-In, Hee Haw has country music stars Buck Owens and Roy Clark as its genial hosts. Clark, a guitar and banjo virtuoso, is the jolly, hammy one who is not above wearing drag as an advice columnist in "Ask Royella" sketches. Owens, a progenitor of country's "Bakersfield Sound," mostly functions as the musical straight man. In a regular feature, "Pickin' & Grinnin'," Owens plays his guitar and Clark picks his banjo while the two exchange jokes. Needless to say, they do not possess the suave urbanity of Rowan and Martin, but as this DVD of Hee Haw's first episode proves, their down-home charms go a long way.
The cornfield is Hee Haw's version of the Laugh-In joke wall. Pairs of performers stand up in the charmingly unconvincing studio-based "field," crack an appropriately corny joke ("My brother's wife is forty, but he didn't like her, so he turned her in for two twenties"), and then crouch back down. Presiding over the field is a wiseacre scarecrow (played by Stringbean, singularly named ala Madonna and Cher) and his buddy, a cawing crow puppet. The worst jokes (and really, we're only talking a matter of degree here) get a resounding "boo" from the other cast members.
The jokes on Laugh-In tend to be of the "so bad they're good" variety. The same is true here, but with many more "so bad they're bad" jokes thrown in for good measure. (Example: "How come I seen you eatin' with a knife at dinner?" "My fork leaked.") Most of the humor has a hillbilly slant, and many of the jokes are delivered by various cast members dozing in the front yard of a shack, using sacks of cotton as pillows and with moonshine bottles never far out of reach.
One funny recurring sketch is a country song parody sung by Archie Campbell and Gordie Tapp. The opening verse pokes fun at the mundane tragedies that seem to befall characters in many country songs, like falling in love with a woman who has a wooden leg, an artificial arm, and a glass eye. The sketch is performed several times throughout the show, but the particulars of this verse change with each performance. Only the chorus ("Where, oh where, are you tonight/Why did you leave me here all alone/I searched the world over and thought I found true love/But you met another and pfft you were gone") remains the same. Campbell and Tapp - two of the show's strongest performers - deliver the song in a perfect deadpan that makes each performance seem fresh and new.
Other performers include banjo playing coot Grandpa Jones, zaftig Lulu Roman, and hayseed Junior Samples. Samples plays Hee Haw's version of Goldie Hawn, constantly getting his lines wrong, struggling to read the cue cards, and generally acting like a complete moron. At least one hopes he's acting - at times he genuinely seems unable to read. Watching his eyes move in a panic from one side of the cue card to the other while he tries to decipher the writing proves once and for all that there is a fine line between humor and horror. Still, he is a genuinely likeable guy, and the audience is mostly asked to laugh with him rather than at him.
The cast appears in several recurring sketches throughout the show. "The Culhanes of Kornfield Kounty" is a funny soap parody featuring Jones, Roman, Samples, and Tapp as a surreally listless family who can barely work up the energy to react when their farm is plagued by locusts and washed away in a flood. Another sketch features Campbell as a barber who tells amusingly complicated stories to his customers. Tapp often shows up as a Mark Twain-esque gentleman whose bon mots lead an off-screen observer to whack him over the head with a banana.
The premier episode also features several appearances by special guest Minnie Pearl. Pearl plays a teacher in several sketches set in a school house and performs a standup act (while sitting on a front porch). Sample joke: "My brother was dragging a chain down the street. I said, 'What you doing dragging that chain?' He said, 'Ever tried PUSHING one of these things?'" Dumb, yes, but it is hard to resist Minnie Pearl.
There are plenty of laughs to be had in Hee Haw, but the series makes one appreciate how deftly the Laugh-In gang is able to deliver their corny jokes in a sophisticated way. The mock sophistication of the Laugh-In crew elevates jokes that self respecting elementary school students would be too ashamed to tell on the playground. The jokes on Hee Haw, however, have a greater chance of falling flat since many are simply variations on lazy hick jokes.
Hee Haw also makes time for musical performances by its talented cast members and by visiting country greats. In the premier episode, the legendary Loretta Lynn sings her classic "Your Squaw is on the Warpath." Wearing a sequined burnt orange dress, Lynn displays the grace, poise, and spunk that have made her a perennial favorite. Some thirty-five years after this appearance, Lynn is rapidly becoming a critical darling again thanks to Van Lear Rose, her new album produced by hipster Jack White of the White Stripes. Charlie Pride, one of the few African-Americans to achieve country music fame, performs two songs: "I Can't Help It" and the terrific "Kaw-Liga." The Hagers - two love bead wearing brothers - sing "Gamblin' Man," a bright, bubbly song about murder. This country/pop/rock fusion is actually rather likeable, even if it does feature a kazoo solo. Grandpa Jones' fingers fly when he performs "The Banjo Am the Instrument for Me." Sheb Wooley, who wrote Hee Haw's braying donkey theme song, appears as his alter ego "Ben Colder" to sing "Hello Walls Number 2," a parody of the Faron Young original.
Buck Owens and the Buckaroos perform "Johnny B. Goode" and "Who's Gonna Mow Your Grass." Playing his instantly recognizable red, white, and blue guitar, Owens is backed up on "Goode" by a contingent of countrified go-go dancers, including hefty Lulu Roman and a skinny Twiggy of the Sticks who is apparently so anemic she barely has the energy to move. "Grass" is accompanied by sub-Laugh-In location footage of overalls-clad men comically mowing grass. Roy Clark's "Sally Was a Good Old Girl" is similarly tricked up with "funny" bits. In this case, a chorus line of bikini-clad animated pigs dance across the screen during his number.
In addition to the premier episode, this DVD also contains Hee Haw Laffs, a half hour compilation of funny bits from the show. There is some ever-so-slight overlap of material with the premiere episode, but a lot of the material looks to be from subsequent seasons. Samples' unsuccessful attempt to say the word "trigonometry" in a cornfield joke is a funny recurring bit throughout the compilation.
This single DVD is housed in a keepcase. Two covers seem to be available. One features the Hee Haw donkey and a large "Hee Haw Collection" logo while the other features a photo of Clark and Owens. Presumably, the content is the same on both. Viewers can choose to play both the premier episode and Hee Haw Laffs consecutively or individually. The index menu allows viewers to choose specific chapters from either the premier or from Laffs. The premier episode's eleven chapters are keyed in to musical performances.
Incidentally, Hee Haw was filmed in Nashville, and visitors to that fair city can actually see one of the original Hee Haw cornfields on display at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
