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.
Mr. Sartain played the character with barely concealed malevolence, proving that he could portray a serious character.
“Nobody likes to be typecast as a barefooted hillbilly,” he told The Tulsa World in 2017, “so when I had the opportunity to do other roles, I happily did it.”
Lawrence Rainey, the former sheriff of Neshoba County on whom Mr. Sartain’s character was based, was acquitted of civil rights violations for conspiring to kill Mr. Goodman, Mr. Chaney and Mr. Schwerner. Seven other men were convicted. A year after the film’s release, Mr. Rainey sued Orion Pictures for libel.
Gailard Lee Sartain Jr. was born on Sept. 18, 1943, in Tulsa. His father was the chief of the Tulsa Fire Department, and his mother, Elizabeth (Bell), Sartain, was an administrative assistant in the oil and gas industry.
A gifted illustrator and painter, Mr. Sartain graduated from the University of Tulsa in 1969 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and hoped to become an art teacher. That ambition was derailed when he was hired as a cameraman at KOTV, a TV station in Tulsa.
Some goofing around in front of the camera led him to be named host of a late-night Saturday sketch comedy show, “Dr. Mazeppa Pompazoidi’s Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting,” in 1970. The show’s cast also included Gary Busey, who would later play the title role in “The Buddy Holly Story” (1978).
“I started doing Mazeppa, and it got out of hand,” Mr. Sartain told The Tulsa World in 1972, at about the time he joined “Hee Haw.” He continued to play the role for another year.
And he stayed on “Hee Haw” until 1992. He was also seen on “The Sonny and Cher Show,” “9 to 5” and other TV shows, and in films like “All of Me” (1984), “The Outsiders” (1983) and three of Jim Varney’s lowbrow “Ernest” comedies, “Ernest Goes to Camp” (1987), “Ernest Saves Christmas” (1988) and “Ernest Goes to Jail” (1990).
Mr. Sartain retired after playing an undertaker in “Elizabethtown” (2005), Cameron Crowe’s film about a sneaker designer (Orlando Bloom) for a Nike-like company who is fired from his job and returns to his family home in Kentucky after his father’s death.
In addition to acting, Mr. Sartain created artwork, including the cover of Leon Russell’s 1975 album, “Will o’ the Wisp,” and posters for the Tulsa International Mayfest, a celebration of performing and visual arts.
Mr. Sartain’s marriage to Ann Rummerfield ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, a former festival chair of the Mayfest, he is survived by three children from his first marriage, Ben Sartain, Sarah Lee and Esther Pitcock; a granddaughter; and a great-grandson.
In “The Grifters,” a 1990 crime thriller starring Annette Bening, her con artist character seduces her landlord, played by Mr. Sartain, rather than pay her overdue rent. The director, Stephen Frears, instructed a fully clothed Mr. Sartain to get on top of Ms. Bening in bed and “wiggle around.”
“I don’t want to mash you,” Mr. Sartain recalled telling Ms. Bening, who said that it was not a problem. During filming, he told The Tulsa World, Mr. Frears demanded “more wiggling, more wiggling!”
Richard Sandomir, an obituaries reporter, has been writing for The Times for more than three decades.
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