The Corn Is Still Green

When the cast of the new CBS summer series, Hee Haw--a hillbilly version of Laugh-In--arrived at the train station to start taping in Nashville last May, the performers were paraded ceremoniously through town atop mule-drawn hay wagons. "We felt like such goddam fools riding down the main streets," recalls Co-Producer Frank Pep-piatt. "We thought there would be throngs to meet us, but we ended up waving to each other."

If the response to Hee Haw seemed ho-hum in Nashville--the holy see of Grand Ole Opry and country show biz --then it seemed likely that the cast would be greeted anywhere else in America by bags of chicken feathers and cauldrons of tar. In a TV summer season stolen by Armstrong and Aldrin, the show's only acknowledgment of the moon was the crescent-shaped opening in its prime prop--an outhouse. Had the public outgrown that sort of thing? And would TV viewers be turned off by the program's shameless plagiarism of their No. 1 favorite, Laugh-In?

The answer to both questions was no. In Nielsen audience figures published last week, Hee Haw finished first with a Sunday night average of 27.3 million viewers.

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 with a knife at supper?" Junior: "My fork leaked." After the worst lines--not that any of them are good--an offstage hand socks it to the culprit with a rubber chicken. Or an animated donkey pops up and chortles: "Wouldn't that sop your gravy?" To the relief of CBS, Hee Haw, which has taken over the Smothers Brothers' time slot, never gets more controversial than: "What's the difference between a horse race and a political race?" "In a horse race, they use the whole horse."

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."

The CBS 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.

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