‘Hee Haw’ honeys bared too much for the camera
Article by: C.J. , Star Tribune
If there are developments more astonishing than media reports of, gulp, “Hee Haw the Musical,” being, gulp again, Broadway-bound, it is that Harold Crump’s brain has not been picked for story lines.
Over lunch a long time ago when Crump was GM of KSTP-TV, he mentioned working on “Hee Haw,” the CBS country music variety show that ran for 20 years in local syndication.
“The folks from ‘Hee Haw’ would come in twice a year and tape all these segments that we would edit and then package after they left that would turn into the different shows, putting them together with various music acts that came in and performed on the show. They would bring in some technical people from Los Angeles and of course, all the other folks they wanted outside the country music type folks we had in Nashville,” Crump said.
“Mainly this was all the young women, that you saw on there. You remember they had these girls dressed in next to nothing in all the skits and that sort of stuff?” he asked.
“The funny thing is that each time the girls came in I’d have to have a meeting with them on the second day and explain to them that we were having problems getting everything shot as it should be because our cameramen were so distracted by the apparel,” said Crump. “Maybe the lack of apparel,” he corrected himself.
“I explained that while they were in Nashville and while they were at the station, that on the air they had to wear panties. And they kept telling me that nobody in Los Angeles wore panties. I told them, ‘Well, I don’t care about that. In Nashville you have to wear them.’
“They’d be jumping up and down and putting their legs up on props and all sorts of stuff. It’s not that the cameramen had to be so low,” Crump said. “They were being exposed. I thought it was funny that we had to do this every time.”