Jim Varney

***James Albert "Jim" Varney, Jr.*** (June 15, 1949, Lexington, Kentucky, USA – February 10, 2000, White House, Tennessee, USA) was an American actor, comedian, and writer best known for his role as Ernest P. Worrell, who was used in numerous television commercial campaigns and movies, giving him fame worldwide and for playing Jed Clampett in the 1993 movie version of The Beverly Hillbillies. He also provided the original voice of Slinky Dog in the first two Toy Story films.

Varney was born in Lexington, Kentucky. As a child, he displayed the ability to memorize long poems and significant portions of the material from books, which he used to entertain family and friends. When Varney was a boy, his mother would turn on cartoons for him to watch. His mother discovered that Varney quickly began to imitate the cartoon characters, so she started him in children's theater when he was eight years old. Varney began his interest in theater as a teenager, winning state titles in drama competitions while a student at Lafayette High School (class of 1968) in Lexington.

At the age of fifteen, he portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in a local theater production, and by 17, he was performing professionally in nightclubs and coffee houses. Varney studied Shakespeare at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, and performed in an Opryland folk show in its first year of operation, in the 1970s. He listed a former teacher, Thelma Beeler, as being a mentor in his becoming an actor. When he was 24, Varney was an actor at the Pioneer Playhouse in Danville, Kentucky. The theater was adjacent to an Old West-themed village, and before the show, the audience would tour the village where apprentices would play townsfolk. Varney and the company usually played in the outdoor theater to audiences of only a few dozen people. He would regale the young apprentices by throwing knives into trees. He performed in Blithe Spirit, Boeing 707 and an original musical, Fire on the Mountain. He once jokingly threatened a long-haired apprentice, John Lino Ponzini, that he would take him up to Hazard, Kentucky, where "you [Ponzini] wouldn't make it down Main Street without the townsfolk giving you a crewcut".

In 1980, the first commercial featuring Varney as "Ernest" advertised an appearance by the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders at Beech Bend Park, an amusement park located near Bowling Green, Kentucky. The character was franchised for use in markets all over the country and was often used by dairies to advertise milk products. For example, the dairy bar and hamburger chain Braum's ran several advertisements using Ernest's catchphrase (as it was spelled in his registered trademark), "KnoWhutImean, Vern?" Purity Dairies, based in Nashville, Pine State Dairy in Raleigh, NC, and Oakhurst Dairy in Maine ran commercials that were nearly identical, but with the dairy name changed.[citation needed]

For the same agency, Varney created a different character, Sgt. Glory, a humorless drill instructor who harangued cows of the client dairy into producing better milk. In another spot, Sgt. Glory's home was shown as he had a date, which was so heavily decorated with the products of the sponsor and advertising specialty items that it was essentially devoid of any other decor. The Sgt. Glory character also appeared in an advertisement for a southern grocery chain, Pruitt's Food Town, in which he drilled the checkout clerks on proper behavior: "Bread on top. Repeat: Bread on top." He approaches one of them at the end of the commercial with a look of menace and says, "You're not smilin'." The checkout bagger gives a very nervous and forced smile.

Varney's character Ernest proved so popular that it was spun off into a TV series, Hey Vern, It's Ernest! (1988) and a series of movies in the 1980s and 1990s.

Ernest Goes to Camp (1987) was a huge hit, grossing $23.5 million at the U.S. box office, on a $3 million production budget, and staying in the Box Office Top 5 for its first three weeks of release. Though the film saw Varney nominated for the now-defunct Razzie Award for Worst New Star, only one year later Varney earned the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series for Hey Vern, It's Ernest!

The canon of theatrically released Ernest films also includes Ernest Saves Christmas (1988), Ernest Goes to Jail (1990), Ernest Scared Stupid (1991) and Ernest Rides Again (1993). After the financial failure of Ernest Rides Again, all further films were released direct-to-video: Ernest Goes to School (1994), Slam Dunk Ernest (1995), Ernest Goes to Africa (1997) and Ernest in the Army (1998).

In 1985, Varney co-hosted HBO's New Year's Eve special, along with Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson. Varney also starred as Jed Clampett in the 1993 production of The Beverly Hillbillies and played Rex, a carnival worker/associate of Dennis Quaid in Wilder Napalm. The latter story is about two pyrokinetic brothers, played by Quaid and Arliss Howard, and as the accident-prone entertainer/watch guard (aka "safety guy/human torch") Rudy James in the movie Snowboard Academy. He later played a small role in the 1995 action film The Expert as a weapons dealer named Snake.

Varney also lent his voice to Slinky Dog in Disney/Pixar's Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in the Toy Story series (Varney was replaced by Blake Clark in Toy Story 3 due to his death in 2000). Varney played numerous other characters, including "Cookie" Farnsworth, from Atlantis: The Lost Empire, released the year after his death (Steve Barr replaced Varney for the sequel Atlantis: Milo's Return), the carny character Cooter in the "Bart Carny" episode of The Simpsons, the character Walt Evergreen in the Duckman episode "You've Come a Wrong Way, Baby", Prince Carlos Charmaine (a royal suitor Jackie dates) for a few episodes of the final season of the 1990s television series Roseanne, and Lothar Zogg in the 1998 film 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, also starring Hulk Hogan and Loni Anderson.