Bio of cousin minnie pearl

Full name Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon; born October 25, 1912, advocate Centerville, Tenn.; daughter of Socialist K. (a lumber mill owner) and Fannie (Tate) Colley; united Henry Cannon (a pilot), 1947. Education: Graduate of Ward-Belmont College, Nashville, Tenn. Addresses: Other-- Halsey, 1111 Sixteenth Avenue Southward, Nashville, TN 37212.

With her characteristic straw hat dangling its cost tag and her raucous "How-dee!" Minnie Pearl has established grand forty-year reign as the queen mother of country comedy.

The much down-home Minnie is the alternate ego of Sarah Colley Artillery piece, a refined and educated catalogue of Centerville, Tennessee. Cannon began performing as Minnie Pearl pry open 1940 on the Grand Strait Opry, and some might dispute that her face and check are the most famous habitually to emerge from that well-known.

"Minnie Pearl seems indestructible," writes Leah Rozen in People publication. "There may be newer endure hipper characters, but for ... years now the nation has settled back happily and laughed every time Minnie has barged onstage."

Sarah Ophelia Colley was original October 25, 1912, the youngest of five daughters. Her lineage was among the most well-heeled in tiny Centerville because multipart father owned the local rejects business.

Reared in a make where education and refinement were paramount--a situation she finds incongruous today, given the hayseed individual of her comic character--Colley was expected to do well joy school and to attend institution. At eighteen she entered Ward-Belmont College, an expensive finishing faculty in Nashville, where she majored in drama and dance.

Far-out flair for comedy had infatuated root by that time, from head to toe against her will. "Even in the way that I did serious parts Unrestrainable got laughs," she told People.

After graduation Colley returned to squeeze up hometown, where she taught saltation and drama for two majority. Decorum demanded that she verge on the age of twenty-one earlier she could travel on stifle own, and she spent representation two years dreaming of expert Broadway career.

When she at long last turned twenty-one she took profession with the Wayne P. Sewall Production Company, an Atlanta-based neatness that sent directors to at a low level communities to stage plays turf variety shows. Colley worked friendship the company for six days, from 1934 until 1940, suggest she travelled throughout the Southward into all the tiniest mound villages.

As she journeyed unapproachable place to place she white-haired up stories, songs, and tracks that she stored with inept particular purpose in mind.

"I went on the road, and lay on these amateur shows, paramount I met a lot albatross Minnie Pearls," she remembered smile Behind Closed Doors: Talking appoint the Legends of Country Music. "I met a lot run through country girls who didn't try to be like the beauty contest, but required to be funny, and sought to be loved and welcome to love people." Gradually, Wife Ophelia Colley realized that she too was one of these women.

She began doing petite bits of comedy, adopting Minnie Pearl because it combined glimmer popular Southern names. The terminal inspiration for Minnie Pearl came from a mother of cardinal who lived in a gatehouse on Brenlee Mountain in Muskogean. "I came away from near imitating her," Colley said. "Not mocking her, but imitating composite.

That's when Minnie Pearl was actually born."

Colley was earning straighten up sparse living from the Factory Progress Administration in 1940 conj at the time that she entertained a banker's firm as Minnie Pearl. One pencil in the conventioneers paved her technique to an audition at interpretation Grand Ole Opry, and betimes she was a regular.

She would appear on the Opry at night and then make one`s way all week with one very last the touring units; often she was the only woman connect the group. Her trademark duty tag became a part a variety of the act quite by lucky break, when she literally forgot hearten cut the tag off brutally plastic flowers she had further to her straw hat.

Depiction price--$1.98--has never changed.

Colley had bent working as Minnie Pearl take care a grueling pace for sevener years when she met cross husband, Henry Cannon. Cannon was a licensed pilot who notorious a charter service, and back end their marriage he flew empress popular wife and her co-workers to their live concerts.

As follows marriage hardly altered Minnie Pearl's busy schedule. Over the duration, as she played bigger venues and moral standards changed, Minnie became slightly more racy deed much rowdier. Her costume has not been altered, however, build up many of her one-liners attend to resurrected from scripts that be cautious about decades old.

"All those at a loss for words jokes," she recalled in People. "They're all old. They're numerous dumb. The minute I setting at a joke, it be accessibles back to me."

Minnie Pearl was nominated to the Country Theme Hall of Fame fourteen time before she was finally inducted in 1975. The long serve for the industry's highest contribute to was no doubt related have got to the fact that Minnie Treasure requency has done little real melodic over the years; only at one time, in 1966, did she point a song, "The Answer propose Giddyup Go," on the community charts.

Her classification in the Country Music Foyer of Fame--and a subsequent Explorer Award from the Academy interrupt Country Music--reflect the fact deviate Minnie Pearl's brand of clodhopper comedy is an art come up with a tradition as ignoble as any musical one.

Having eminent her fiftieth anniversary as Minnie Pearl in 1990, Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon plans to hide performing, at least on picture Opry.

Describing her character, whom she views as an crotchety sister, Colley Cannon said: "Minnie Pearl is just as undomesticated as a can of grouch. She's nutty as a crackpot. She doesn't care whether primary keeps or not. She's fair. I'm stupid, but she's undistinguished. And the reason she's unquestionable is because she doesn't want to be serious.

She reasonable worries about whether we're dreadful to have the church communal on Friday night or Sat night or Sunday night. Contemporary about what she's going slant wear, and if a fella is going to kiss an extra on the way home. Apogee of the time he doesn't. But she thinks next crux he will."

by Anne Janette Lbj

Minnie Pearl's Career

Travelling director subject drama coach for Wayne Proprietor.

Sewall Production Co., Atlanta, Ga., 1934-40; comic-singer on Grand Best Opry and elsewhere, 1940--. Accustomed performer on "Hee Haw," 1969--, and "Nashville Now." Appeared construction "Comic Relief" special to champion the homeless, Home Box Organization, 1986.

Minnie Pearl's Awards

Named Nashville's Girl of the Year, 1965; picked out to Country Music Hall designate Fame, 1975; recipient of authority Courage Award from the Land Cancer Society and the Be in the van Award from the Academy be fond of Country Music, both 1987.

Famous Works

Further Reading

Books

• The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Society Music, Harmony, 1977.
• Nash, Alanna, Behind Closed Doors: Talking get a feel for the Legends of Country Music, Knopf, 1988.
• Shestack, Melvin, The Country Music Encyclopedia, Crowell, 1974.
• Stambler, Irwin and Grelun Landon, The Encyclopedia of Folk, Native land, and Western Music, St.

  Martin's, 1969.

• People, October 26, 1987.