(light music) - [Announcer] "Facing the Laughter, Minnie Pearl" was made possible by the support of the Jeanette Travis Foundation, dedicated to improving the wellbeing of the Middle Tennessee community.

Amazon.

- [Narrator] An alumni of Ward Belmont, the predecessor of Belmont University, Sarah Cannon demonstrated the entrepreneurial spirit and sense of purpose that are hallmarks of a Belmont education.

We celebrate her legacy and that of her character, Minnie Pearl.

- [Announcer] The First Horizon Foundation, Carlene Lebous and Harris Haston, Hamilton and Emily Bowman, Brent and Shelley Bowman, Colley Bowman, Gilda Bowman, in memory of Jody Bowman.

The Harpeth Hall School.

Steve Sirls and Allen DeCuyper, and by members of NPT.

Thank you.

(upbeat country music) ♪ We are that summer sunset ♪ ♪ That Southern chicken fried ♪ ♪ First kiss in a Chevy ♪ ♪ On a football Friday night ♪ ♪ Where the smell of sweet magnolias ♪ ♪ Back where you learn to drive ♪ ♪ Where a dusty old bar stool Coke can and Coors Light ♪ ♪ From the river banks ♪ ♪ Of the Mississippi ♪ ♪ To the Smoky Mountains Tennessee ♪ ♪ From Louisiana to Mobile, Alabama ♪ ♪ Land of the free ♪ ♪ This country is you and me ♪ (light music) - As I sit here on the stage of the Opry, look around this empty auditorium, I have the feeling that I would never be alone.

Because to live forever in the hearts of our friends is never to die.

A worker hangs a sign, a symbol of the sadness that hangs over Nashville's Music Row.

Storekeepers and shoppers mourn the loss of a country legend.

- Everybody loved Minnie Pearl and she was always like our big sister.

And all of us girls would go to her and ask her advice.

She was always there for me.

In my times of need she was there.

- Live flashes by way too quickly.

And this is, you know, just another gift Minnie has given us, a chance to be still.

- [Narrator] Four Tennessee governors, Nashville's mayor and country music's finest.

From Eddy Arnold and Chet Atkins to Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire and Barbara Mandrell.

All feeling the loss of family.

- Feels like somebody went to the corner of the the house and kicked one of the cornerstones out from underneath it.

- When I was 10 years old and I was the little girl in the mountains of Virginia, I got a letter once from Minnie Pearl and she wrote to me to tell me that I should never be like her.

I should never be like anybody except myself.

- For the benefit of those who tuned in late, Minnie Pearl's the one with the hat on.

- Oh.

- Minnie Pearl was a visionary.

I feel like she understood the trajectory of where country music and who country music needed to embrace.

- I really can't stress enough how profoundly theatrical that creation was in the Annals of American cultural history.

- Them old jokes come back like old friends.

Now, speaking of old friends.

- It's a small club of people who have alter egos.

It's not very many people.

And so she absolutely had an alter ego.

- Howdy.

- Howdy.

- Howdy.

Oh, wrong opera house.

- Come on man.

It's two syllables.

One word and they've got 800 different versions of her doing it, right?

But how come every time she said it was just for you?

- Howdy.

- [All] Howdy.

Oh, I tell you, y'all are in fine shape today, aren't you?

- Somewhere around 50 years ago, a pretty young lady walked out on a stage in a cotton house dress and a straw hat with a price tag on it and yelled "Howdy" to the audience.

And ever since then, all of us have been howdying back.

- Ladies and gentlemen, the only comedy star ever elected to the country Music Hall of Fame, Mrs. Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon, the one and only Minnie Pearl.

(upbeat music) ♪ Let's go slam dance dressed like Minnie Pearl just ♪ ♪ You and me punk rock girl ♪ ♪ Punk Rock girl ♪ (upbeat music) - How do you describe her?

You don't, you have to see it.

- She felt more like a emotional safety net.

- You could learn something from someone like her.

- He said, gimme your money.

I said, I haven't got no money.

He frisked me up down.

He said, you haven't gotten any money have you.

And I said, no, I haven't.

But if you'll do that again, I'll write you a check.

- She was smart, she was a classy woman.

And funny, there was several personalities in there.

- One producer wants to film my life story?

I said, I've got to be honest with you, I'm not a coal miner's daughter.

And he said, "Don't be funny.

You look like the pits to me."

- She would build other people up and put herself down.

- And I thought, where did she get this character?

How did she even think of this whole thing?

(upbeat music) - Well, he is very handsome.

course he isn't to you, but I can't afford to be choicey.

- She transcended the boundaries with the magnitude of success that that character had in terms of being indelible on culture.

- Any woman that was doing it at that level back then was, you know, breaking the mold.

- A lot of comedians today from Carol Burnett to Chelsea Handler, everyone owes their kind of career to the groundbreaking that Minnie Pearl did on stage.

- Rural people, like any group of people, they like the type of stuff they can relate to, you know?

But I feel like they feel less catered to or less served by most other types of comedy or comedians.

- When we think about the role of comedy there, what we're really thinking about is how important it is for people who are underrepresented or perhaps don't have access to structural power to be able to tell their own stories.

- What what about your brother?

I ain't heard nothing.

Nothing about him.

Well, I'll tell you, he's a smart boy.

That runs in our family.

- Yes sir.

- Like big feet, everyone of us have to back up to a door if we aim to knock on it.

- Is that right?

- You don't have to be a country music fan to appreciate all kinds of comedy.

But she kind of aimed her comedy at rural America.

And back in the time when rural America was sort of not thought of very much.

- There's definitely an overlap in the fan bases or the demographics that those two genres, country music and rural comedy, you know, appeal to regular people, working class, salt of the earth, however you want to put it.

- One of the things that we know as historians is that in the late 19th century, a new national American culture emerged.

One that was rooted in minstrelsy, vaudeville.

- I'll have another drink.

- [Kristine] Minnie was well steeped in that culture.

- And then Vaudeville of course led into radio and comedy made its way into radio.

And then of course radio went into television.

And along the way the best standup comedians actually came straight out of vaudeville.

- Born of normal parents from a long line of normal ancestors on both sides of the family.

Where did I come from?

Nobody in my whole family background ever thought of getting up and showing off, much less making a career of showbiz.

- Minnie was really steeped in the lost South mythology that the Confederate South always imagined itself as its own country.

And when it went to war, it was nation fighting nation, as opposed to state fighting state.

- [Sarah] Daddy was seven years old at the time of the Battle of Franklin in the Civil War.

My people back in the years never liked to call it the Civil War.

They said there was nothing civil about it.

She talks about being a young child and these traveling shows coming to her town.

And so that was still an era where showbiz traveled out into rural areas and her saying, "I wanna be in showbiz, I wanna be in showbiz."

(dramatic music) - [Ralph] Minnie Pearl, tonight this is your life.

- [Sarah] And then Ralph said, Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon, this is your life.

And I scream bloody murder.

- Well now who can that be, Ophelia, your childhood and lifelong friend.

Flown here by my (indistinct) from her home in (indistinct).

(screams) (audience applauds) I know nobody heard me.

So I'll say it again.

From Matanzas, Cuba.

Monette Dewey, right?

Oh, that's right, old pals here.

Well Monette, now you and Ophelia used to perform at every opportunity, didn't you?

- Yes, we'd play queen and aunt and ship you remember?

- Yeah.

- You remember those performances we put on at the Liberty Pharmacy?

Yes, I know we got run out of there several times, that town drugstore.

We sort of took over every once in a while.

- What would you do?

- Well we used to, well I'll tell you what we did, we showed off.

- Pretty good showing off 'cause it was kind of the beginning of monologues and things like that for you.

You two girls, did you ever dream about the future, Monette?

- Yes.

We'd sit out on that big old tree.

You remember, Ophelia?

- I always wanted to be in show business.

Monette didn't.

- As anxious as I was to travel and as anxious as I was to be in show business, I knew that I had to go to college first.

- You make good grades at Hickman County High School and you act in all of the plays, musical shows that are put on.

- No studying.

- And by the time you're ready to go to college, the family finances have reached a very low ebb.

But your parents wanted you to have college education and through their scrimping and saving and mama kicking through there.

You're sent to Ward-Belmont School.

- I closed it up.

(light music) - Sarah came to Ward-Belmont in 1930 full of a lot of hope and promise.

Ward-Belmont was a private elite all girls finishing school, people came from all over and boarded here.

Fancy families from New York, Texas, Alabama, and Florida.

And while Sarah was a big deal in Centerville, she quickly found the first day at Ward-Belmont that she was nothing compared to these society women.

- There were still a lot of rules in place for her, later on between the family and her upbringing and the the kind of structure that she learned at Ward-Belmont.

It helped put some checks and balances into her career and life in a way that you did not have for a lot of those male performers.

- [Sarah] Ward-Belmont was a very, very fine what they brought to as a finishing school here in Nashville.

But at the same time, it had one of the best dramatic departments in the South.

- Mom and daddy spent their last cent and they're both gone now.

And I will eternally thanked them because they sent me to a dramatic school where I learned a lot of things that have been invaluable to me in working comedy.

Although I didn't think I was gonna be a comic.

(light music) - I didn't have sense enough to recognize the fact that I should take a lighter touch and play up the comedic talent that the Lord had given me, but I couldn't see it then.

I was so dead set on being a dramatic actress.

- I don't know if you know this or not, but I act.

Real theater kinda acting.

- She said, I had a college theater teacher, a woman that said Sarah, my dear, I'm afraid that you'll bruise the tips of your fingers on points of stars.

But you'll never be one yourself.

She was very proud of having gone to Ward-Belmont.

She majored in theater and she was from Centerville.

And to come to Nashville and go to Ward-Belmont was a big thing for her.

- She begins her career out of college, again a unique moment in time in the thirties when she goes out of South Central Tennessee where she's raised.

- [Sarah] It was dangerous for a young inexperienced girl like me to travel around all over the country dealing with all sorts of different type people in these different towns.

I was determined to see the world and to do something about getting into show business.

And it seemed about the only avenue I had left.

I was 21 years old and went to work for this company.

His main slogan was, "Sell yourself first and then sell your play."

Well he was teaching us the rudiments of salesmanship without our knowing that, that's what it was.

- What was the Wayne P. Sewell producing company, Marjorie?

- Well, I ran that outta business too.

Mrs. Sewell wrote them and they were booked by organizations like PTA, Rotary and the Lions Club.

And Ophie and I were coaches.

We would go into towns and sell advertising.

- Oh, that's why my feet are so narrow.

- And then transitioning into she being the director for those plays.

And taking that culture out into rural communities and her character is born on the road.

- I'm always insanely fascinated by people of her era, comics of her era specifically because I have no idea how you would've even gone about getting into it back then.

- [Sarah] During this next six years, this was where I was to really formulate and crystallize Minnie Pearl.

I had never been away from home except the two years that I spent at Ward-Belmont.

And that was almost like being in a convent.

(light music) - In 1936 while Minnie was performing on the road she boarded with a rural family in Northeast Alabama.

- You said that Opie found the famous Minnie Pearl character while she was traveling with Wayne P. Sewell.

Baileyton, Alabama, you ain't never been to Baileyton.

- [Ralph] No, I never been, Pearl.

- The woman I stayed with is one of the loveliest ladies I've ever known in my life.

She was a typical mountain woman.

And she paid me the highest compliment that anybody's paid me before or since, Ralph.

When I left there, after living in this mountain cabin with her and her husband and her son, whom she called brother, she said to me when I left, she said, "We just hate to see you go.

You're just like one of us."

Mr. Sewell's business was about gone, by that time, radio had become very big and and people weren't paying as much attention to amateur shows as they did.

We weren't having the crowds that we had back in the thirties.

- 1940 Was a terrible year for Minnie.

She came home, back home, broke, back to Centerville.

No job, no husband, no career prospects.

28 years old and almost seeing herself as a failure.

- [Sarah] I was at the lowest time of my life and still determined to be an actress, not comic.

I wanted to play it straight.

I wanted to be dramatic.

I wanted to be glamorous.

I wanted to be all these things that Minnie Pearl was not.

- A banker's convention was in Centerville and they invited Minnie to perform, and Sarah did not have her Minnie Pearl hat and costume and shoes.

And so she went out there anyway, she had to be coaxed out there 'cause she really didn't want to go out without her costume that she had been used to.

- [Sarah] "This guy's coming in from Chicago," And he said, "He's gonna land in Nashville and he's going to drive down here and he may be late."

And he said, "If he's late, will you kill time till he gets here?"

Got myself together and came out and said, howdy, I'm just proud to be here.

I would like to give you my interpretation of the Mountain Girl Minnie Pearl.

I had them right in the palm of my hand.

- Oh, he's eligible.

- Is he?

- Yeah, he's breathing.

- When we think about women, standup comedians, women comedians in general, how exponentially harder it was for any female comedian to sort of get that kind of success, because the audience was largely male dominated.

- In the fall of, of 1940, the Middle Tennessee Bankers Association asks you to perform at one of its meetings after hearing you an important member suggest that you try for the Grand Ole Opry on Radio Station WSM, that wonderful station in Nashville.

Now what happened?

- [Sarah] I came up here for the audition and went on the Opry never once thinking that this was the direction in which my life led.

- The War Memorial Auditorium was the finest and fanciest concert hall in the state of Tennessee.

And that's where Minnie Pearl had her Opry debut.

She was very nervous on that November, 1940 day.

And when she stepped on the stage at 11:05, the audience just went crazy.

Her mother was in the audience and her mother said to her after her performance, well some people woke up.

- Music if you please.

"What name do you work under on the Grand Ole Opry?"

And I said, "Minnie Pearl."

- "Am I ever glad to see you?"

She said, "Please take all this big sack of mail with you when you go.

It's cluttering up that we don't have room for back here back where this Opry mail comes in."

I knew that anybody got that much fan mail on that first appearance on the show was good for a couple of more appearances.

And she said, "We want you to come a member of the Grand Ole Opry."

Well, there was no contract, there was no a written agreement.

I just said, "Oh, I would love to."

- Hank Williams came to Nashville in the forties to be a member of the Opry.

They said he wasn't ready.

He didn't have a hit song.

Go down to the Louisiana Hay Ride.

Kitty Wells, the same thing.

She wanted to be a member of the Opry.

They said she wasn't ready.

She went back to Knoxville.

Minnie Pearl is on the Opry for one show and she's immediately invited to join this great American institution.

- I've got an uncle that used to be on a showboat like this.

Uncle Filbert.

- Filbert?

- Yeah, Uncle Filbert.

He had his act there where he put his right hand in arm in a lion's mouth.

- Oh no.

- Yeah.

- Put his right right arm in hand in a lion's mouth?

- Yeah, we call him Lefty now.

- Oh!

(upbeat music) R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company at this time, decided that they would put out three units of USO shows, like USO shows called the Camel Caravan.

I was tickled to death to get my $50 a week.

And aside from that, they gave me $50 a week to be chaperone of the cigarette girls.

I didn't know what I was getting into then.

- From June of 1941 to Christmas of 1942, the Camel Caravan, we were on playing army camps and navy bases all over the world.

- [Sarah] There's nothing in the world is good for polishing an act as a soldier audience.

'Cause they were pretty rough.

- On the toughest conditions she always came through.

In fact, Minnie Pearl, you had more soldier sweethearts than any girl I could think of.

- Well, I had MPs, they had my name on their sleeves.

See, MP Minnie Pearl.

Oh shut up.

I'm not working tonight.

- The pinnacle of television culture at that point, she was invited by Sid Caesar, none other than Sid Caesar in terms of comedy greats and Imogene Coca to go to New York City and appear on your show of shows as a guest with her partner in crime, Rod Brasfield.

- I bumped into her down there a while ago and she walked right up to me and she said.

- Howdy, Rodney.

- I do.

Well, I'll declare if it ain't Jane Russell, and it ain't.

- [Sarah] Rod Brasfield and I played on the network for 10 years.

We've played double comedy for 10 years.

- A lot of her acts with Rod Brasfield for example.

You know, he's coming in and he plays a character that's kind of the town drunk.

And oftentimes he may have been.

- Y'all seen Bud Yips?

- No but I'm looking for him buddy.

- Now, Rodney, you know, we're always pleasant to our visitors.

- What you got up your sleeve, Rod?

- Oh well I don't- - Ah, he's jealous.

- They come out, I'm sure with an idea of what they're gonna talk about.

But then as the sketch goes on, you can see that she's having to react to what he's saying and the sketch evolves as they go along.

- And then my friend Mr. Rod Brasfield, he'll overwhelm you.

Yeah, yeah.

I will.

Do what, Minnie?

- Rodney, overwhelm, you know, like I'm overwhelmed, he's overcome.

- I'm over here.

- Oh.

- Quite frankly, I see her as the one that's keeping the wheels on the car.

Like she's the one keeping them going.

- You ought know about the dive.

What do you mean by that?

- Well, you've been in plenty of them.

- She was really the lead in those scenes with him.

Even though she was kind of written in as the sidekick in a lot of cases.

She's also then has this more of the sponsors sort of input in the back of her head.

And then she's got the live show and then there's an audience.

She was juggling a lot.

- My favorite Texas Troubadour, Ernest Tubb.

(upbeat music) - Now I wanna make it clear that I didn't care for the Opry music when I first came to it.

I would be a hypocrite if I said that I did, that came after I became part of it.

I grew to love it.

(upbeat music) - She was keenly aware of how difficult it had been to get where she was to become successful.

How few other women she would see on the road headlining or doing any of what she was doing.

She was so smart.

- You either can do it or you can't and you can obviously you learn to get better.

But so there's no training.

- The Opry itself was called a good natured riot because it was a cacophony of people coming and going.

Not done on time and not very well organized.

And Minnie dealt with that and was able to perform and perform on a stage when there's a whole lot going on behind you.

- Ann-Margret was the same way the other night, Alan King was there, he felt the same way.

It frightens people to death to go on the Opry.

- The Nashville that Minnie was in 1940 was an optimistic town, but still a town that had been on its feet for a decade because of the Great Depression.

And any opportunity was opportunity during that time.

- [Sarah] What I didn't realize was, is when I came on the show in 1940, I was coming on a show that was already 15 years old, and they knew what they were doing.

The radio is important for making it a good audience show.

'Cause the audience realizes that this is going out all over the country and they feel more or less a part of it.

- [Announcer] Royal Crown Cola presents your Grand Ole Opry from Nashville, Tennessee.

- Radio then shifting to television and sketch shows.

It was just the perfect setting for a character like Minnie Pearl, because she could be a solo act, but she could also help transition between the other acts.

But it was all live.

- Minnie Pearl was certainly playing a lot of archetypes and she was playing with stereotypes, but it was still meaningful for her to give voice to those women characters.

Prior to that, we didn't see much of these characters at all.

- When you think about how she must have honed her chops, where and when she got to do it, and the stakes for getting it right, like there was kind of a no fail ratio, right?

- She was also great on her feet.

You know, she could improv if needed too.

- I mean though, is he dark or is he fair?

- Well in the dark he looks pretty fair.

- She fit into that mold and she was a transformative figure as the mediums changed.

- My wife's a good southern girl.

My wife is from a Arab, Alabama.

Oh wow, you know about Arab.

Then you know, she's white.

The whitest town in America.

All white people all the time.

That's except the day we got married, I had 20 Korean people there.

We freaked that town out.

- Comedy clubs in the eighties was a big boom.

They were everywhere.

I could tell jokes in any city I wanted basically, there was a place, she didn't have that.

The Grand Ole Opry was broadcast on WSM all across the country and most states could pick it up.

And so people knew who Minnie Pearl was.

- [Sarah] When I became Minnie Pearl, I was the only comic on the Opry only woman comic.

And I had a little kingdom going there.

I thought I was pretty important.

And then after I'd been there about five or six years, June Carter came in and June was playing comedy, and we heard June and I said, uh-oh, I better get home.

That girl was gonna take it away from me, and I mean soon.

I was reminded of my father when he said that, he said, "Don't never think you can't be replaced."

- I think we could make a lot of progress in the Deep South with just one new rule.

Don't listen to papa, man, it's the whole thing.

- The only way to actually learn how to do it is to do it, you know yourself, and watch other better comedians do it.

- She didn't have the circuit that some of the older guys actually did.

You know, standup comedy originated in gentleman's clubs, 'cause they had to have somebody there when the workers took a break.

- [Sarah] They called me from New York and said that they would like me to come to New York and they wanted to negotiate a contract.

Well I was just outta my mind.

That made everything better.

'Cause I realized then that they were gonna keep me.

One Saturday night, Roy Acuff came to me and he said, "I'd like to know if you'd like to travel with me on the road."

Roy and Bill were the most prominent members.

They would travel all week long, and they had cars, large cars.

He said, "Now I'd like for you to join my act.

I will pay you $50 a week and your board and your transportation and all you have is your food."

So with my $10 I was making with the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday night, well that just seemed like just an enormous amount of money.

There started part of my life that was to run for 27 years.

And that is the one night stands.

- 27 Years I did one nighters, 27 long years, and the first seven of them in automobiles with retread tires during World War II.

I remember one time we had 13 flat tires in one night driving 600 miles.

And Peewee King on that 13th one, he was ready to throw the tire jack through the windshield and we had to stop him.

I'll never forget it.

- So here she is in a car.

If she was lucky, it was a van and she's with five, however many can get in the vehicle.

It's not like there were seat belts and they didn't worry about any of that.

- [Sarah] Now this is a very important part of my career.

I had not been working comedy for long enough professionally when I went with Roy Acuff.

- Minnie Pearl always said, being a clown was not easy.

- She was smart enough to realize that she was plowing new ground here.

- [Sarah] I wanted to earn that money.

$50 a week was a lot of money with my room and board.

And I had my mother to support and I wanted to be a success.

- All you ever done, Minnie, was wrong when you first came to that, when I started working with you, you didn't wait at all for your audience.

You would run right over the audience go into another joke.

- [Sarah] In order to be a comic and particularly as a woman, you've gotta turn loose and let it fly.

It's got to go, and you've gotta be silly.

And I just couldn't be all that silly.

I felt embarrassed.

And you cannot be embarrassed and be a comic.

Well, I don't see why Roy kept me that first day.

He finally fired me.

But he took two, three months to do it.

- They were like brother and sister.

I think they had a real family affection and there was, you know, zero sexual tension between them.

- There is a love affair.

It's a friendly love affair.

- Oh, it's the best.

- And a lot of people didn't turn over in the article and read it.

- Well it said- - It's front just like they would the inquire and I don't think it was the best publicity me and Minnie could have got.

- I thought it was wonderful.

How Roy and I have remained friends for all these years when we had this very inauspicious beginning, I will never know.

- He won't let me stray.

If there's anything I'd like to do, it's stray.

- Not on stage.

Don't get straying and streaking mixed up.

- Roy was such a great foil for Minnie and I think loved her dearly.

You could see it when they were on stage together because he respected her.

- I've known him for 50 years and loved him for 50 years.

I'm gonna spank him one of these days.

- As far as the Opry goes, everybody other than Roy and Miss Minnie, came second she seemed to be the only person left that could reign in Roy Acuff and keep him on the tracks.

- Roy and Minnie are synonymous together.

You say them like you say Batman and Robin or Abbott and Costello.

They're just always together.

- [Sarah] As a woman performer, I know Roy Acuff better than anybody as a woman performer knows him, I know his attitude toward women.

Roy treated me as a lady.

Roy is a man of dignity.

I thought you were the cutest thing I ever saw in my life.

And I still do.

(audience applauds) - There's such a significant tradition of country musicians, Southern musicians performing for Southern politicians.

So part of this is, we've always done this.

- And I want y'all to know that politician runs in our family.

I know a lot about it.

I want you to know that my Uncle NaBob, I can't remember the day when Uncle NaBob wasn't running for something, even if it was the county line, but he had to whole town behind him.

- It's interesting though, when she is part of the George Wallace campaign opening for some of his rallies.

When you go back and look at all of that, I still find that a little bit surprising that she was that overt.

I don't know if it was the money piece.

She was certainly by no means, you know, pushing back or an activist for social justice.

- What she does know is A, she's gonna get paid, in a large amount.

- Brother's sitting at the crossroads and the feller says to brother, he says, "Where does that road go?"

Brother says, "I don't know."

He says, "Well where does that one go right there?"

Brother says, "I don't know."

Feller says, "You don't know much do you?"

And brother says, "I know I ain't lost."

- Most people don't know this about Nashville.

The tour bus industry started here because the stars had to be back on the Opry on Saturday night.

- Saturday night we came back to the Ryman and we're all together and it's like, well, where have you been?

Well, who wrote you a hot check?

- We wanted to be here.

And I've stood in the wings so many times and seen such fantastic things happen.

(upbeat music) - In 1947 we did play Carnegie Hall and it was one of the big thrills of my life.

This appearance at Carnegie Hall, was the first time I realized how many people had come into New York and settled and were so anxious and happy to come to a country music show.

'Cause the barriers were falling and we were breaking out into new fields.

- [Ralph] This is your life.

- [Sarah] I was gonna take that show and ride with it.

And I did.

I was gonna run with that show.

And that was the start of my being asked to be on quite a few network shows.

(upbeat music) - First off, let's just say before branding was the go-to word that she had the hat with the price tag.

- [Sarah] I used one of mama's hats for my first hat at the Opry.

I went down to the 10 cents store one afternoon to get the flowers.

And when I pinned them on the hat that night, I forgot to take the price tag off, and it hung off the side of the hat.

And people mentioned it and laughed at it.

And I thought, well I was trying to striving for identification.

And I thought, well, I'll just leave that.

That'll be an identification.

So I left the price tag and then I did the howdy loud.

Now those two things then became my trademark.

- She is known around the world because of that brand and because she always managed her brand really well.

She didn't show up in public places.

Halfway Minnie Pearl, if she was somewhere as Minnie Pearl, she was all the way Minnie Pearl.

If she was somewhere as Sarah Cannon, she was all the way Sarah Cannon.

- [Sarah] Every interview, practically that I've had, somebody has said, why the white cotton stockings?

Why the type dress, why the hat?

I dressed her like I thought a young country girl would dress.

Sunday go to meeting, to come to town on Saturday afternoon to do a little trading and a little flirting.

She wore a hat to keep freckles from getting on my face.

She never wore pantalettes and she never wore white gloves, and she never blacked out a tooth and never put on freckles.

All these have been erroneously stated.

- Well I was a kid first time I ever heard of Minnie Pearl.

And it's the amazing thing to me was even people that didn't know her or had ever really seen her perform.

Anytime somebody had anything with a price tag hanging off, you'd make a Minnie Pearl reference.

Didn't matter where you were.

- And maybe in the dictionary where it says a brand, they might say Minnie Pearl started that.

- You know, I created her from all the country girls that I've known all my life growing up here in the hills of Tennessee.

She never would win a beauty contest.

All the world she wanted was just to love people and make them laugh and have them love her back.

I guess love is a kind of a trademark of Minnie Pearl, like the silly price tag on the hat and the greeting.

"Howdy, I'm just so proud to be here."

- You have to hand it to her for being an entrepreneur enough to create her own image, which was original.

She certainly didn't have to spend a lot of money on wardrobe.

- Thanks, darling, just talk, don't look.

- Nobody else was doing anything like that.

There were other comedians around, but nobody was this country bumpkin.

I saw her as a woman who had absolutely no style.

You see this dress and you think, my goodness, who has the guts to be that frumpy?

- She put her career first.

She put her education first.

And while others had found their fella and been married, it took Minnie a while.

But she found Henry at age 34.

(light music) - [Sarah] I don't really remember meeting him as being an earth shaking event.

I just, I thought he was attractive.

I thought he was nice.

He loves music and he loves people playing the piano.

And so he seemed always happy for me to come 'cause I meant music and fun and just like people would do when they're having fun and at a party, he just turned me around and kissed me.

I had a feeling that something was taking place here that was a little bit unusual.

- Sometimes in life.

God puts people together and it's just right.

And God, on that day, God did his work, because they were perfect.

- [Sarah] He said, "Baby, after the Lord made you, he sure must have buffed his nails."

- Henry was a pilot.

Her husband had an aviation company.

- I know his business was flying celebrities around, mostly country singers.

He flew Elvis and Hank Williams.

A lot of people.

- I would fly with Henry and Minnie in the white poodle and I would fly on the plane with them and we'd go do our dates.

- [Sarah] Between the time he kissed me the first time and we got married, I would say that we only had weekends.

Well, that's all we had.

- I think the coolest thing about Henry is he never felt like he needed to compete with her stardom.

He was happy to be her wingman as it were.

The honor that they showed one another makes me, emotional.

- [Sarah] People that don't know Henry and me well are apt to think that my personality overrides his.

Or that I'm the stronger of the two.

There are certain areas that he's boss and there's certain areas that I'm boss.

He does not interfere in any way with what goes on on the stage.

- That takes a big man to have your wife character or not shamelessly flirting with whoever happened to be on stage.

I mean that's some pretty good communication skills at home.

- I'm just so proud to have you here.

- You better do something soon because my pucker upper is gonna be tuckered out.

- Don't let it get around that I'm easy, you know?

- Oh, that just sets my knees to knocking like a woodpecker in a lumber yard.

- Henry was really special.

I loved Henry almost as much as I loved Minnie, because he was always there with her and for her.

- But you were the favorite pinup girl of thousands of soldiers.

But there well was one in particular.

We're looking at him, he's over there now, a handsome Air Corps officer who really fell in love with you.

- And believe me there many times when I don't know whether I'm married to Minnie Pearl or Sarah Ophelia.

- Your husband, Minnie Pearl, Henry Cannon.

- And Henry, I hate to say this, but it's true, he was, he didn't mean to be, but he was about as funny as she was.

I think sometimes, he was clever.

- They had a nice house there and tour buses would pull up out front.

And Uncle Henry was down front one day doing some yard work and one of the people got off the tour bus and said, "Hey, do you ever get to see Minnie Pearl?"

And Uncle Henry started walking back towards the house, kinda looks over his shoulder and says, "Yeah, yeah."

And she goes, "Sometimes if I'm really good, she lets me sleep with her."

- [Sarah] I never fail to be surprised.

And I think, well after 30 years I shouldn't be.

But he still knocks me out when we're just the two of us together.

He says the funniest things of anybody I've ever known in my life.

(light music) - They seem just like classic love birds.

She just beamed and lit up when she talked about him when he was in the room.

- She was his universe, you know, center of his world.

And he just doted on her.

- It just worked.

And they were partners, real partners.

And I think it was always about Minnie, and to Minnie, it was always about Henry.

They were perfect.

- The best thing that ever happened to me was 43 years ago when I met this man, Henry Roth Cannon.

He is not only a long suffering husband, but he's the nicest man I ever married.

(audience laughs) - Uncle Henry had a single engine plane that and the engine went out.

Yeah, here it is 1967.

He had to land on the interstate on I-40.

This was back in the sixties when it wasn't quite as crowded as it is today.

- But I remember her saying though, that when that engine went out, she said, "I did not say a word."

She was just as still as she could be.

- [Sarah] There was no pilot error involved.

Henry flew the plane expertly, as I said, and for 20 years and landed it expertly on this forced landing.

But he never flew the plane again.

- You know, things are late getting the Grinder Switch and streaking just got there.

- You don't, is that right?

- Yeah, she come, Miss Lizzie Tincum, she come running down the main road at Grinder Switch the other day without a stitch on.

- Lizzie?

- Lizzie done it.

Just come running down there, just running as hard as she could.

Steve Jones run out of his general store and said, "Miss Lizzie, what in the world are you doing?"

She said, "I'm a streaking in my birthday suit."

He said, "Well it'll looked a lot better if you'd have iron it."

(audience laughs) - "Laugh-In" and "Heehaw" were very similar.

I was on "Laugh-In" for several years.

They offered me a regular running role and simultaneously I was offered a role on a brand new show called "Heehaw".

(upbeat music) ♪ Heehaw ♪ ♪ Heehaw, heehaw, heehaw ♪ - [Narrator] Welcome to "Heehaw".

- "Laugh-In" was counterculture and "Heehaw" was heartland.

- For people who knew country music.

"Heehaw" was a comedy, for people who didn't know country music they thought "Heehaw" was country music.

The great thing was the people that were on "Heehaw", they understood exactly what it was.

- Honest now, Minnie, don't you have any past regrets?

- Honey, my only regret is that I have no past to regret.

- Everybody embraced it and everybody wanted to be on it.

It made stars out of a lot of people.

- I decided to turn down "Laugh-In" and do "Heehaw" and I know I made the right decision.

"Laugh-In" went off the air.

- When that show occurs, right, it's post "Laugh-In", it's a counterpoint to "Laugh-In" the pop rock kind of, you know, whacked comedy show that that was.

♪ And then I recalled the day that you fired me ♪ ♪ You paid me off with a $3 bill ♪ ♪ Where oh where are you tonight?

♪ ♪ Why did you leave me here alone?

♪ ♪ I searched all over and thought I'd find true love ♪ ♪ You marry another and you are toast ♪ - "Heehaw" was the whiskey infused country slickers.

- "Heehaw" was fascinating to me because I didn't grow up in the country and I grew up in Nashville.

But I loved the idea of small town.

- You had Andy Griffin, you had Gomer Pile, you had "Green Acres" and "The Beverly Hillbillies".

Everyone was laughing at good old fashioned Southern humor.

And Minnie Pearl was the top of that list.

- Coming in, you know, in between the acts and sharing some of that country humor.

And there's no, there's nothing else like it.

- Miss Minnie, I think she's a fixture on "Heehaw".

I don't think the show would've been the same without her.

- Ain't she a hindsight for sore eyes?

- Well everybody said it was so corny and so hick, but why did they keep tuning in?

Is it because they wanna laugh, they wanna laugh at us with us?

- Well I think if you'll take the rating of "Heehaw", you'll find out that country humor is going very big.

- They gave the hillbillies a little format and that blew up.

- "Heehaw" was like ubiquitous in the rural South, was definitely a part of the fabric of Americana for a long time.

And I think because like people in the rural parts of the country and whatnot felt like that was probably one of the only things that they had, you know, in terms of entertainment geared towards them.

- The Heehaw Honeys were ripped from the Hugh Hefner playbook.

None of this stuff is ever created in a vacuum.

All these other genres of television, everybody's borrowing from each other.

There was a lot of cross-pollinization in that cornfield.

- Do you speak to strangers, Lisa?

- Certainly not, unless they're men of course.

- [Sarah] Women were liberated.

Women comics were liberated.

Now there's a difference in playing country comedy and playing situation comedy like Rhoda, Phyllis, Mary Tyler Moore, Carol Burnett, this is different.

This caricature comedy.

That's what I was doing.

- So much of just her being her and doing what she did was groundbreaking in so many ways.

In terms of feminism, in terms of women, period.

- Ladies are just pushed aside.

You don't count.

That still happens.

- And if you're a woman, you've got a hill like this to climb while everybody else gets to run downhill.

She had everything against her.

Everything.

And still she turns out to be not only an icon but the founding pillar of one of the greatest families.

The longest running radio show in history.

- I don't think we can know for sure whether the glass was too thick to break the glass ceiling or whether she was gonna stay in her lane.

But I think it's safe to say that her success was dependent on her following the rules, so to speak, in Southern society.

And I think if she had pushed too hard or too far, it would've ended her career.

- So for her to be loud and funny and filling up the room was in itself a kind of revolutionary act.

(upbeat country music) - For a female to step out in comedy.

When I look back, that is really saying something, you know, 'cause at least as this singer, you've got this song that stands on its own and the band, she was out there on her own.

- [Sarah] I shouldn't try to analyze comedy because I'm not an expert, and they say don't analyze, it's a chemistry.

And sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't.

When it does, it's the most beautiful thing in the world, when it doesn't, it's just terrible.

Well I worry every time I go on because I don't know when I'm gonna get laughs and when I'm not.

There are ways of recovering after a bad start or there are ways of losing them after a good start.

So my risk element is about four or five times as high as the singer.

Because I die a thousand times to his 10.

But the comic's on his own.

- They gotta do something about the parking out here too.

I couldn't get nobody to park with me.

- She was playing a role.

She was nothing like that.

I'm sure everyone will tell you the same thing.

So she was playing a character, but was it natural?

Absolutely.

I mean, I think that's what a person with an amazing alter ego has is that there's some kind of realness and believability and naturalness to it.

To be a comedian that really is high-wire without a net.

- I think it's easier being a musician.

I'd rather be a musician than be a comic.

In the case of being a comedian, I mean you're naked.

I guess you know once the jokes, once you said the joke, you know there's nothing else to hide behind.

I mean it's a you, you either like it or don't.

She was sardonic in her wit.

The charm of that character that she created was she was able to do things that Sarah would not have felt was maybe necessarily a good taste in terms of, you know, behavior in polite company.

- As openly teasing about how women were perceived, how flirting was executed, all those things.

You just have to look at Sarah Cannon and say Minnie was doing things that nobody had done before, not in public.

- The folks at the wedding are gonna be tickled pink about this.

- The wedding?

- Oh yes.

Hadn't you heard?

- I ain't heard.

- Eliby Hucklehead is gonna marry up with Fludge Smeed.

- Eliby Hucklehead.

What's her name again?

Is that a fact?

You're breaking the glass.

- Excuse me.

- Is that a fact, old Fludge Smeed took the plunge?

Who's giving the bride away?

- Well, so far everybody's kept their mouth shut.

Are you all set?

- Yeah.

Well what shall I say here.

Oh, here.

- What shall I say?

- Well I think you better start out by saying hello to Moonshine McGinney.

- Huh?

- He's sort of our moonshiner to the stars.

Oh, and you better say howdy to his dog.

- His dog?

- Oh, his dog's awful smart.

He's got that dog so smart.

Did I tell you about his dog?

- No, but I'm going to hear it.

- Oh, okay, look out, Minnie.

- I'm sorry.

You've got another foot.

- I know.

- She always had that sparkle in her eye.

You know, it was always in a joking matter.

- She was funny and she was dirty and she was a woman.

You know, back in the day again, who was, women weren't really expected or allowed to be funny.

She was funny and racy.

I recall telling a lot of her jokes in my monologue at Opryland.

I blushed when I told some of the jokes.

- I remember she got away with things.

I think "Heehaw" gave her a secondary license to be a little racy.

- A lot of sexual innuendo in in her comedy.

Yes, especially for then.

I mean, yeah, she was racy.

- And the girls that work on "Heehaw", you know those fortunate, they got little feet.

Things won't grow in the shade.

- She wanted to think that she was blazing the trail.

And she even told me, "I want you to work on comedy.

I want you to follow in my footsteps."

- [Sarah] I wish that there were more women who would play in comedy.

And it isn't that I feel inferior.

because with all conceit, I will say that I am due to the fact that there aren't more women in comics right now in the country music field.

I do hold a certain amount of prominence in the field.

If I had any competition, I wouldn't feel that way.

But I just don't happen to have any competition.

- She was a pioneer way out ahead of her time as far as female comedians go.

But also what I loved about her was she did this.

She kind of meant in that era, the Paul Harvey kind of, here's the truth, but in a very tongue in cheek way.

- That's what a gifted writer and a creative artist does.

- You're just holding a mirror up for the audience.

But it takes a keen intelligence to make those observations.

- It wasn't politically correct and she would say things that you go, oh, don't believe you could say that today.

- But if you're an outsider like me, that's, I don't know how to describe it, colloquial.

I mean, it's just, it's just colorful.

- I feel like Minnie Pearl was my wacko aunt or my favorite cousin.

- When we think about Minnie Pearl giving voice to rural women, which she called them hillbillies.

This was a group of people who have been historically maligned in media portrayals and made fun of.

And particularly women were not given agency or voice.

- What Minnie Pearl represented was, you can look at her, she looked like everyone's mom or grandmother or aunt.

And you know, when you think about the context of the time when she became known around the world and her fame sustained her for decades, those were the women that were left out of conversations.

- Where Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett were the voices of the city folk, the city women.

I think Minnie Pearl was the voice for the country folk, the mountain folk, the people on the farm.

- So she was a little bit of a bridge between that hillbilly times.

And then in the modern era.

- Roy, it's awful nice to have seen you.

I've got to go now, there's a fella out there kind of gimme a funny look.

And I said, "Didn't you gimme a funny look?"

And he said, "Lady, you've got a funny look, but I didn't give it to you."

There a lot of funny women in the world.

Why are There so few women who make a business outta it really.

And I said, because they hate to lose their sex appeal.

Even though you're not glamorous, you're not pretty, you like to think of yourself in that concept.

- I thought she was beautiful.

She was timeless to me.

Which doesn't always fit the slice of what we considered beautiful at the time.

- What she wanted to portray, country girl.

I don't think she thought about beauty at all.

I never saw her fixing her hair or doing anything like that.

She didn't really spend a lot of time on that.

- When you looked at Minnie Pearl, you saw like somebody that's, you know, in a spitting contest with the boys.

- Whoever it was that Minnie had, the girl next door, the average person we wanted to be like.

- I thought she was hot.

- I love Minnie.

You know, always had a crush on her.

- Well, first of all, Vern, I wanna give you a big kiss.

- Well, what in the world is that for?

- That's a birthday kiss.

- Well, my birthday ain't till February.

- I know, but I ain't a girl to put off things till the last minute.

- She tried to look homely.

She tried to look like a girl you didn't wanna kiss.

- She dressed her intelligence down.

She dressed her own beauty down.

- Because they told this fella told me that they told this antique fella that's looking for antiques says, you've got to see Minnie Pearl.

She's got a mahogany chest with cross grain drawers.

- But I always remember how, just how pretty she always was.

- Dang, she had a great body.

She was tall, sleek, shapely.

She didn't work that angle.

- They're out on the road with these men that sell themselves as good family men.

And when they're out on the road, they behave as decidedly not family friendly.

- The big thing for me is she's a girl in a man's world, and she held her own big time.

As a matter of fact, if you go back and look at the old shows, and even when we got to see her live in person, the men were always subservient sorta to her.

- [Sarah] I was in a man's world, So I accepted the fact that they were going to talk like they did.

In fact, unfortunately, I found myself talking the same way.

I learned strange things where these friends of mine, these men might use rough language if they became aggravated.

In front of me, they were the first ones to stop somebody else from using rough language in front of me.

These men became my brothers as the years passed, I earned a certain amount of acceptance and I hope respect from these boys in a way that I was able to take the road.

(upbeat music) - There's a lot that happens and you do kind of have to roll with it.

And it's often not a place where a lady feels comfortable.

But I have a feeling that there was a deference to Sarah Cannon.

She was an immensely powerful feminine presence.

And they highly respected her.

I think she demanded it.

They knew not to get outta line with Ms. Minnie.

And that's a compliment to her.

I think she changed the entire tenor and tone of a car ride.

You know, a soundcheck, a backstage hang.

She was ever the lady.

And people noticed.

- When I met Miss Minnie, she became almost like another mother.

She's kind of took me under her wing.

- [Sarah] I was older than anybody.

And I quickly turned into this maternal instinct.

I was their confidant.

I was their sort of mother confessor.

And I would get involved in their lives without meaning to.

- Because daddy was on the road when I was a baby.

There was a handful of us young artists that she kind of thought of as her kids.

I know she's awful partial to Dwight Yoakum.

And she thought of me as one of her youngins, - If the word Minnie Pearl came up, which it did always.

Oh, I met her and she was so good to me and she gave me advice and I didn't even ask her for it.

And oh, she didn't have to do that.

And I'll never forget that.

And that was Minnie.

- She gave me, not a piece of advice, but she stopped me in my tracks at the first ever CMA awards that I'd gone to.

There had been some articles where I was perhaps overly candid in my commentary on country music, because I'd been waiting a long time to be asked my opinion.

And so, you know, kind of stupidly, I gave my opinion when I was asked at some point, and had the opportunity to express myself that way.

And I was gonna pay a price for that candor.

And that set a very kind of tenuous stage because I was nominated and kind of knowing that there was a lot of upset and there was a lot of negative feelings about my opinion-stating in the previous year.

So the show had finished and I got my just desserts, which was, you know, not being awarded whatever CMA.

And we all stood up to leave and I felt a hand grab my arm, and she pulled me around and she forced me to look at her.

I mean, I smiled because we turned around.

It was Sarah, it was her, you know, well it was Minnie, grinning?

But it was also, you know, Sarah.

And she said, and she pulled me.

She said, "Listen to me.

Listen to me."

She said, "We need you."

I was flattered, but I was humbled and hadn't really thought that anybody there felt they needed me for anything.

And those words that she spoke to me that, you know, just nearly broke me in two.

One of the seminal moments of my career ever, her stopping me and knowing that would let me reset myself in terms of my actual intent.

And I carried her in my heart, you know, from then on.

- [Sarah] You worry.

I didn't have a family.

I had mama and I was taking care of her and didn't have a family like a lot of these boys.

I worried about them.

- I never confided in her that I was a closeted queer person.

Maybe she knew it and she was way ahead of her time.

She knew she was an incredibly well-read person, you know, very progressive.

I think she would've been an ally for me in a lot of ways.

I wish that I had confided in her.

- She never made me feel like I was dressing or background.

She always made me feel like I was her equal.

I felt like with her, I had the fire power.

- Just to call her a friend.

She was somebody who I knew she really liked me.

I have to pinch myself sometimes to believe that that really was the case.

- 1984, my kids and I were hit head on and I had really serious injuries, one of which was a head injury.

And I would in my mind, I'm never, never gonna perform again.

I would speak about Barbara Mandrell, in third person, I would, you know, it was a serious injury.

She came out to our house.

It was out of her way, but I remember her, the way she was speaking to me.

It was encouraging for wanting me to, 'cause I wasn't gonna perform anymore.

And then with some things my father said after, that's what made me come back to work.

But she cared that much.

That wasn't a fun thing for her to do, to come out there.

You know, I'm in a dark bedroom where I don't want any light.

I don't want people, I don't want, but she loved me.

(light music) - You didn't know where Sarah started and Minnie started and where they stopped.

It was just a blending and yet they were so entirely different.

- Sarah Cannon would always use correct English, correct manners, Minnie Pearl just got away with anything.

- There certainly were no female comedians not doing what Miss Minnie did.

And I often wondered that myself because she was so refined to start with, very well educated.

- And a lot of people ask me if I like to be called Minnie Pearl or Sarah Cannon.

And I always tell him I love to be called either one.

Just the tone of voice has gotta be right.

- Her little country girl Minnie Pearl image was very different from in her real life of her.

And 'cause she had a lot of style.

- To me, Minnie was a tincture of Sarah, a distillation and a focus point of Sarah.

And that all of Sarah Cannon's worldviews and opinions might have been tempered, but they were there in Minnie Pearl.

That's why she resonated with me.

- People I think really thought that's wow.

She's going off stage and she doesn't change her clothes and gets in an old jalopy and drives home to a shack.

- No honor in country music is greater than the induction into the Hall of Fame.

- [Sarah] Right from the very first when they started giving the Hall of Fame Awards.

My name was nominated and the first two, three years each year, the first one who went in, of course was Jimmy Rodgers.

And then I think the second one was Roy Acuff.

For over 10 years, I'd been nominated, and every year, I'd think, I know I'm gonna get it now.

Nope.

I just watched somebody else go by.

But I waited from 1961 to 1975, I had prepared my speech so many times that the moths had eaten it up.

(upbeat music) - Good evening.

This is quite a thrill and a big night for me.

This person joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1940.

After college years, our newest Hall of Famer toured Southern rural areas producing plays and musicals.

It was on those tours that the person we honor tonight met the honest and fascinating rural characters that were to change her life.

(audience applauds) She developed a character that became the best known name in country music.

Comedic circles, ladies and gentlemen.

The 1975 inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame is Mrs. Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon, known as Minnie Pearl.

(upbeat music) - Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

We have so little time and I can just say one more time, thank you to all of you, all the people who made this possible, thank you and God bless you.

I love you, every one.

Thank you so much.

- Laughter is in fact profoundly musical, the pentameter of her wit is lyrical.

So absolutely Minnie Pearl belongs in the country Music Hall of fame.

Her comedy, her humor was music.

- She went on that stage and told jokes that you had heard 150 times if you followed the Opry.

But her timing was so impeccable.

- Minnie Pearl created a sub-genre of country music and comedy.

You had Jerry Clower, you had Larry the Cable Guy.

You had all these people that came after her that kind of told jokes.

- She helped create the room that everybody entered, and that matters.

- Bowling Green.

Lord, I wish I hadn't raised my arm and looked at all that.

I could go to a costume party where you dress as a flower.

I could go right now and go as a dried arrangement.

- She did befriend everyone.

That's that inclusivity piece that I think, again, she did it before there was language around it.

She was the last person to judge and the first person to embrace.

- And she put her own reputation in the light saying, you know what, I'm gonna stand with this kid.

And to me, having someone take me under their wing like that, it's the kind of thing that I want to pay forward, that I continue to blaze, push doors down and push walls wider because of people like Minnie.

Because she kissed me on stage back in 1987 and that was a big deal.

- I watched her make a bee line to anybody that somebody might have said, they don't belong here.

Minnie would jump right in beside him when Minnie stands beside you.

Ain't nobody gonna say you don't belong here.

- We may or may not have had a shot of whiskey backstage on more than one occasion, but she may have seen in me that I felt like I didn't fit in.

- She was also working for the visibility of women and outliers.

- When we think about women like Minnie Pearl and we think about her earlier counterpart, like Lucille Ball for example.

I think these women definitely understood their own talent.

They understood exactly why they were funny.

They understood the personas that they were gonna play out on stage or on screen as it were.

- She could have gone to California and been another Carol Burnett if she'd have wanted to be.

That's not what she wanted.

- You can go to California, you say Minnie Pearl, and people know who you're talking about just as much as they do if you say Lucille Ball or Carol Burnett.

- I went down to the barn the other afternoon and he had got a new mule and he's trying to get the mule in the barn.

And the mule's ears was too long, couldn't get them in the barn.

So brother had a saw and was sawing off the top of the barn door to get the mule in the barn.

I said, well, it's a dirt floor, why don't you just dig a trench and take the mule in that way?

Brother said, "It ain't his legs that's too long.

It's his ears."

(audience laughs) Smart.

Smart.

- She was their, not only contemporary, but there equal, being a funny woman on "The Grand Ole Opry" or "Heehaw" or where wherever one would go to see Minnie Pearl would not be the same as "I Love Lucy" or "The Carol Burnett Show".

- I can see a silhouette of Carol Burnett.

I can see a silhouette of Lucille Ball and then I see a silhouette of Minnie, and I betcha 10 to one, the most recognizable of those silhouettes simply because of a price tag left on a hat, would be Miss Minnie.

- [Sarah] Dixie is gone now.

She was closest to me because she was the next one.

You know, she died of cancer in 1967.

That's why I immediately began working with the Cancer Society.

- Minnie Pearl left us laughing and Sarah Cannon left us so much better.

- To have that legacy too.

Have your name on a building where people come to get.

- Well, as a cancer survivor, I think that's a big deal.

I think that may be what she's most remembered for.

- The only other model at the time of a celebrity giving star power to an organization that became an institution is Betty Ford lending her name to the Betty Ford Clinic.

And Sarah Cannon would lend her name to HCA's Sarah Cannon Cancer Center.

- I'm not proud to say this, but I, you know, for me, they'd be the Peewee Herman Center.

I would want the credit.

- She had had breast cancer surgery, and that became a real aim to her to help people who had had cancer.

- What she shared with us when she herself went through cancer treatment and the encouragement she gave other people.

Yeah, what a legacy.

- She'd been through it.

So she wanted to help other women going through it as well.

- And that smile, that eternal light from inside that shines outside.

I think that's her, because in our darkness, especially with cancer, we need a lighthouse.

- I don't know how it happened, but Minnie and I wound up having to change clothes in a powder room.

It was a close space, and we were having to like shuck off old clothes and put on our nice stuff.

And so, you know, I had my back to her.

I think I was kind of over in the toilet area and, you know, we were this close, I could touch her.

And she was right in front of the sink and all of a sudden she said, well, would you look at this?

And I turned around and she had everything off and she said, over 70 up here, look like a teenager right here.

And I just, I loved that.

I just loved her.

You know, she'd had breast cancer and reconstruction and she just invited you in.

- I went to see her when she was in the nursing home and I walked in there, I said, "Wow, Minnie, this is nice."

She said, "It's a hell hole.

I wanna get out.

I wanna go home."

- [Sarah] If I hadn't had a Christian background living the life I've lived of such variegated experiences there's no telling where I would've flaked off.

- And then when you got to know her, you understood that faith was important to her.

- She was wise enough to know better than to judge anyone else.

♪ I come to the garden alone while the dew ♪ - She said, you know my favorite hymn, In the Garden, and it was one of my favorites.

♪ And the voice I hear falling on my ear ♪ ♪ The son of God discloses ♪ ♪ And he walks with me and he talks with me ♪ That song discusses it.

I come to the garden alone.

The fact of that would tell you everything you know about her spirituality.

That was a huge expression of her faith.

♪ None other has ever known ♪ Yeah, Minnie was spiritual.

- So I went to visit her when she was about to pass on, and she was very gaunt, but she was luminescent and it was really odd.

She looked like Katharine Hepburn to me.

- She leaned over and in almost kind of a, you know, conspiratorial way and said, "Do you know who I really wanted to be?

Who I always wanted to be?"

And I thought, I can't imagine.

I said, "No.

I said, who?"

She said, "Katharine Hepburn."

- [Sarah] I think of that little old poor rag tag girl beating her brains out for Mr. Sewell, going to all those little old towns and all those terrible things that happened to me and all the hardships and not having any money and not having any clothes, beating those deadlines on those buses and those trains and having no idea what the future held.

Then when daddy died and no money and mourning so terribly and all those lonely hours when I thought, will I ever, ever make anything of my life?

- And I went to see Sarah and ask her if I could name my daughter after her.

And she was bedridden by then.

This was after her stroke.

And she was so frail and so vulnerable.

But we talked a lot that day.

And she was talking about how important a name is and she said, "You know, the most important color in the color palette?"

And I said, "Is there a right answer to this?"

And she said, "The most important color."

And I said, "I have no idea."

I'm thinking primary colors.

And she said, "It's black."

And I said, "Why black?"

And she said, "Because when you mix black with any other color, you can create shadow.

And that's what creates depth in a painting."

And she said, "Life is that same way, that it's all the darkness that creates the depth."

I'm like, I'm writing all this down.

- She was one of those, you were in constant class.

You were in constant learning, taking notes after notes.

And she never, ever let on as a professor or anything.

She just says, "This is what I'm doing.

If you're wise, take note."

- And you hold the tater real, real, real tight now and then you kind of take it right here in the middle.

And then you start in.

Maybe you better tell the girls.

- Oh yeah, what Ernie?

Well, about this time, I think I'd better tell the girls something.

While you're doing this girls, you ought to be awful careful about getting, look, you can't get the tater too close to you, you're liable to get more into your work than you figured.

- [Sarah] I had the idea when I was growing up and wanting to be in show business that I wanted the plaudits of the mob.

I wanted the accolades from my fellow performers because the dream was the dramatic career.

The dream was the name in lights on Broadway.

I think perhaps it was a more selfish attitude that I had about the joy it would give me to be using my voice and using my talent to pleasure myself rather than the audience.

But I think what mattered most, after I got on the Opry and about two years into the Opry, when I finally relinquished the dream and I gave that up and exchanged all those dreams and all those concepts of that dream for the slap happy old, funny gal, Minnie Pearl, who had this beautiful rapport with the audience.

That's where the audience came in.

And the service that I could give, could do for the audience.

- What I loved about her is she held true to who she was and what she created.

And I think that's why she was so successful for so long.

- I just was struck with the words that she had written to me and spoken to me many times.

Love them and they'll love you back.

And love is not just lip service, it's how you live your life.

It's how you invest in other people.

It's how you welcome people.

- Minnie kind of not only embodied it, but I think taught it, illustrated it, lived it to so many other people and showed so many other people how to be genuine and sweet and amazing.

- And you wonder, how'd she get the time?

She took the time.

And that's the difference.

You don't get the time.

We've all got time.

It's a matter of what you do with it.

And she took the time to make other people's lives better.

Not just on the stage, but off the stage.

Whether she knew you or not.

- There are a few people as good with other human beings as Garth Brooks, and I'll bet he would tell you that he learned how to be with people, fans and industry people from Sarah Cannon, Minnie Pearl, and I think there are a bunch of us who would think that, who would say that.

- [Sarah] If you work in a dramatic play.

You have a screen drawn down at the footlights between you and the audience.

It's a scrim.

But with us in the country music business, that scrim is gone.

There's no curtain, there's no barrier.

- I think the most impactful part of Minnie Pearl's life was bringing such joy and laughter to the individual's listening to her, whether it was on television or in the audience, wherever they were.

She brought a smile.

And then when you have that smile on your face, you got a little hope in your heart.

And that's what she gave everyone.

- That elegance and grace and kindness and humility was a beautiful bridge for other artists.

And for, I guess, just a wonderful way to traverse life.

- I'm not so sure I took her advice from time to time, but I'm taking it now.

- Now you want to cram the hole in that tater full of this good sausage.

- I wish we'd have tried this on rehearsal.

(audience laughs) - Well, don't tip it out, mine are falling out.

And cram it good and full and good and tight.

We're hurrying.

We're hurrying.

- [Sarah] The other night I said, now you know, you crazy people you know you don't want to hear those old silly jokes, You've heard them a thousand times.

And this one woman said, out of the audience, she happened to be in the circle of light that I could see from the spotlight.

And she said it almost as if it were just the two of us.

She said, but we love you, Minnie.

And she went up steps and shook hands with me and kissed my cheek.

And this little boy came up behind her from another side of it of the aisle and gave me a red rose that he had brought to me wrapped in wet paper towel.

That was so touching to me.

I would not have gotten that if I had not taken the scrim down and gone into the country instead of into the dramatic.

And so God did turn me around.

He put me right where I was supposed to be.

And I never was supposed to be anything but a comic, never was supposed to do anything but country music.

- If they made a Mount Rushmore of the females in country music, you'll have Loretta, you'll have Miss Tammy, right?

You're gonna have Patsy, probably gonna have Reba and Dolly.

But the one woman there that wouldn't be a singer, but a hell of an entertainer would be Minnie Pearl.

- She was thrilled with the way her career turned out.

I don't think she looked back.

- I would like for there to be this theme of hope and of encouragement for people who feel that they didn't quite reach the goal that they wanted.

Some of us were never intended to reach that goal, but to take what we think is the second best and make it the best.

Because it ended up by Minnie Pearl not being second best.

It ended up by her being the very goal that I wanted to achieve.

Because she, in her simple way, in her blundering, raucous, crazier way, she has made people laugh.

But we went out and the girls went out and we was gonna tell one another how many times we got kissed the night before, but how many times we said the word morning next morning and nobody'd know what we was talking about.

So the first girl come in and she said, "Good morning this morning."

See she got kissed twice.

And the second girl come in and she said, "Good morning this morning, pretty morning this morning."

And the third girl, she come in and she said, "Good morning this morning.

Pretty morning this morning.

Pretty morning in the morning as is this morning, it'll be a pretty morning in the morning."

Made me so sick.

And then I come in, you know what I said?

"Howdy."

- Hall of Fame has given Minnie Pearl an extra honor that no one will ever get.

Minnie Pearl's birthday is right under her name, but there's no death date.

Sarah Cannon left us in 1996, but to the country Music Hall of Fame, Minnie Pearl lives forever.

- I'm a hat person.

I live in hats and I won't generally, I will not cut the price tag out.

It's my little thing.

I just feel she was a part of my life.

And I just go, it's just a little thing that I do.

And sometimes it'll poke out and people go, you forgot to cut your tag out.

And I'm like, Nope.

I didn't forget.

- Every night when I leave the Opry, there's a big picture of Minnie down by the exit.

Every night when I leave the Opry, I say, "Goodnight, Minnie Pearl, I love you."

Because I do.

- She's left a legacy that will never die.

Because she was one of the good ones, one of the real ones.

One that truly loved the industry she was in.

- [Sarah] I think back on the times that people have come to me and they've said, when I came down here tonight, I'd had some things that bothered me.

And then I came to the show and you made me laugh.

And for that length of time, I forgot my troubles and went with you back to Grinder Switch.

(light piano music) (upbeat music) - Never forgot those opening lines.

That was like her hit song that she had to play.

And she did it with perfection every time.

- And you don't get country music where it is now without Sarah Colley Cannon, creating that theatrical character and writing the material that she would deliver the world every night when she stepped on stage and said, howdy.

- Howdy.

- Howdy.

- Howdy.

That's a good one.

- Once she made her mark doing howdy and all those, the opening lines, you know, she could go anywhere.

I mean, she was on TV shows and she was, everybody accepted her, but she had to make her way.

- I wouldn't attempt to emulate it, it's just howdy.

I'm so proud to be here.

Yeah, what a creation.

Huh?

What a creation.

what a grand bit of Americana theater.

Almost Mark Twain-like, that character.

- [Sarah] It does seem a little odd to think that Minnie Pearl was a Shakespearean student, not a very good one.

(light music) - [Announcer] "Facing the Laughter, Minnie Pearl", was made possible by the support of the Jeanette Travis Foundation, dedicated to improving the wellbeing of the Middle Tennessee community.

Amazon.

- [Narrator] An alumni of Ward-Belmont, the predecessor of Belmont University.

Sarah Cannon, demonstrated the entrepreneurial spirit and sense of purpose that are hallmarks of a Belmont education.

We celebrate her legacy and that of her character, Minnie Pearl.

- [Announcer] The First Horizon Foundation, Carlene Lebous and Harris Haston.

Hamilton and Emily Bowman.

Brent and Shelley Bowman.

Colley Bowman.

Gilda Bowman.

In memory of Jody Bowman, the Harpeth Hall School, Steve Sirls and Allen DeCuyper.

And by members of NPT.

Thank you.

(upbeat music)