Gailard Sartain, Character Actor and ‘Hee Haw' Regular, Dies at 81

New York Times

25-06-2025

Gailard Sartain, a character actor who moved easily between comedy, as a cast member on the variety series 'Hee Haw'; music, as the Big Bopper singing 'Chantilly Lace' in 'The Buddy Holly Story'; and drama, as a racist sheriff in 'Mississippi Burning,' died on Thursday at his home in Tulsa, Okla. He was 81.
His wife, Mary Jo (Regier) Sartain, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause.
Mr. Sartain spent 20 years on 'Hee Haw,' the country equivalent of 'Laugh-In,' hosted by Buck Owens and Roy Clark, which combined cornpone sketches with music. The characters he played included a bumbling store employee, a chef at a truck stop and Officer Bull Moose. At the same time, he also developed a movie career that began with 'Nashville' (1975), Robert Altman's improvisational drama set against the background of the country music industry.
In that film, Mr. Sartain played a man at an airport lunch counter talking to Keenan Wynn. 'I just said, 'Ask Keenan what he's doing in Nashville,' and he did,' Alan Rudolph, the assistant director of the film, said in an interview. But Mr. Rudolph saw something special in Mr. Sartain and went on to cast him in nine films he directed over the next two decades, including 'Roadie' (1980) and 'Endangered Species' (1982).
'I only wish I could have fit him into another nine,' he said. 'Gailard had a certain silly magic about him. Most of my films are serious and comedic at the same time. In 'Roadie,' he was opposite Meat Loaf, as beer truck drivers, and that was about 700 pounds in the front of a beer truck. That should be funny.'
One of Mr. Sartain's most notable roles was in 'Mississippi Burning' (1988), Alan Parker's film about the F.B.I.'s investigation into the murders in 1964 of the civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were buried in an earthen dam. Mr. Sartain played Ray Stuckey, a county sheriff whose deputy was among the Ku Klux Klansmen who killed the men.
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