System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Jim Varney
1950 - 2000
Comedian Jim Varney, best known for creating the character Ernest P. Worrell, died February 10, 2000. He was 50.
Varney was born June 15, 1950 in Lexington, Kentucky. At age 8, he began acting in a local theater. By the time he was 16, Varney was doing Shakespeare, and when he graduated from high school, he went to New York to pursue a show business career.
After years of doing stand-up comedy, and appearing in minor roles on television, Varney's claim to fame would come in 1972 when he created the character Ernest P. Worrell as a spokesman for a new theme part in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Varney came onto the national scene in the 1980's with a series of commercials casting him as the goofy Worrell who had a dialogue with his unseen friend Vern. Wearing a ball cap, jeans and blue jeans vest, Varney, as Ernest, was getting into trouble, while at the same time advertising a particular product, whether it be a dairy product, car dealership or pizza.
Through a series of nine Ernest movies from the late eighties to late nineties, Varney became a cult sensation. Beginning with Ernest Goes To Camp in 1987 and ending with Ernest In The Army in 1998, Varney cultivated his Ernest character to the point that the public could not separate Varney from his fictional creation.
Varney had attempted to distance himself from Ernest during the last two years of his life, playing an abusive father and a criminal defendant in two of his last movies.
Varney starred as Jed Clampett in movie remake of The Beverly Hillbillies in 1993. He was also the voice of Slinky Dog in Toy Story I and II.
As Ernest, Varney would visit children's hospitals, lifting the patient's spirits, even though the actor himself went through bouts of depression.
A heavy smoker, Varney was diagnosed with lung cancer in August 1998. After most of his right lung was removed, the disease went into remission for most of 1999, but returned and spread to his brain shortly before his death.
Varney died in White House, Tennessee on February 10, 2000.
