Jim Varney

Jim Varney smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and read Shakespeare in his spare time.

Many viewers saw him only as a rubber-faced guy making impossible grimaces, but behind the character of Ernest P. Worrell was a classically trained actor who found a goldmine in advertising. In 1980, he filmed the first commercial playing Ernest for a Kentucky amusement park.

That meddling neighbor in the cowboy hat and vest became so popular that local agencies started selling the character to hundreds of companies across the country. Varney could shoot twenty-five different commercials in a single workday. He pitched everything from milk to used cars and diesel fuel.

And the gamble paid off.

The Business of Four Thousand Commercials

Before reaching the big screen, Varney was already a millionaire thanks to regional advertising. The agency Carden & Cherry realized Ernest worked because he talked directly to the camera (to a guy named Vern who never appeared), making viewers feel like part of the joke. By 1985, the character was so well known that Disney came knocking.

In 1987, he premiered Ernest Goes to Camp. The film cost just $3 million and ended up earning more than $23 million in the U.S. market. It kicked off a franchise of cheap movies that critics hated but families devoured at neighborhood video stores.

Ernest was a gold mine.

But Varney didn't want to limit himself to physical comedy and pratfalls. In 1993 he played Jed Clampett in the movie version of The Beverly Hillbillies, a role that let him step away a bit from the constant grimace of his star character. Critics were not kind to the film (it grossed about $42 million against a budget of 25), but his performance was among the most watchable parts of it.

The Shadow of Slinky Dog

Varney had a remarkable voice that the general public didn't always appreciate beneath the noise of his comedies. In 1995, he lent his vocal cords to Slinky Dog in Toy Story. His raspy, warm tone gave the spring dog a humanity that made him one of the most beloved toys in the Pixar franchise.

So while he kept milking the Ernest character in direct-to-video movies like Ernest Goes to Africa (1997) and Ernest in the Army (1998), his career as a voice actor took off. In 1998, he appeared in 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain and voiced characters in the animated series The Simpsons.

He never stopped working.

During the filming of Treehouse Hostage in 1998, he developed a persistent cough that wouldn't go away. Varney was a heavy smoker, and doctors diagnosed him with lung cancer shortly after. Despite chemotherapy and surgeries, he kept recording his lines for the sequel Toy Story 2 in 1999.

His last job was for Disney in the film Atlantis: The Lost Empire, where he voiced the cook Cookie. Varney died on February 10, 2000 at his home in White House, Tennessee, at age 50. The studio had to bring in Steven Barr to record some additional dialogue lines after his death.