C6


JOHN AYLESWORTH, 81


Producer, co-creator of TV’s ‘Hee Haw’


by Matt Schudel


John Aylesworth, 81, a televi- sion writer and producer who was co-creator of the long-running country variety show “Hee Haw,” died July 28 at a hospital in Ran- cho Mirage, Calif. He had pulmo- nary fibrosis. Mr. Aylesworth and his writing


partner and fellow Canadian, Frank Peppiatt, had never visited the rural South or Midwest before developing “Hee Haw,” a fast- paced hour of cornball jokes and music, in 1969. The program, with country singers Buck Owens and Roy Clark as hosts and a stable of other comedians and musicians, aired on CBS for two years. Despite high ratings, “Hee Haw” was canceled during a purge of CBS’s rural-oriented shows in 1971. Mr. Aylesworth, Peppiatt and a business partner found advertis- ers and syndicated the program on their own — an unheard-of prac- tice in TV at the time. “Hee Haw” remained in production until 1992 and, with 585 episodes, was one of the longest-running shows in TV history. In 1970, Peppiatt told the Los


Angeles Times how he and Mr. Ay- lesworth came up with the idea for “Hee Haw.” “We were looking at the ratings,


and ‘Laugh-In’ was the leader fol- lowed by ‘The Beverly Hillbillies,’ ” he said. “We wondered what kind of show would combine both ele- ments.” The writers had previously


worked with performers including Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Julie Andrews and Perry Como and knew next to nothing about rural life. But, as Mr. Aylesworth once recalled, “Country music was sweeping the country and there had never been a network show devoted to country music. We did


the old ‘Jimmy Dean Show,’ and we remembered that Jimmy . . . al- ways wondered why his show was so little country.” Peppiatt and Mr. Aylesworth de- vised a formula that featured down-home music and the hay- bale humor of Minnie Pearl and Junior Samples. As a result, “Hee Haw” was one of the few prime- time shows not geared toward ur- ban audiences and became a point of pride in rural America. John Bansley Aylesworth was born Aug. 18, 1928, in Toronto. While in high school, he became a radio actor and voice-over artist. In 1950, while working for a To- ronto advertising agency, he met Peppiatt. The two wrote and per- formed TV comedy skits and cre- ated the quiz show “Front Page Challenge,” which ran on Canadi- an television for 38 years. Mr. Aylesworth moved to the


United States in 1958 to write for “Your Hit Parade” and a series of successful variety shows, includ- ing “The Andy Williams Show,” “Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall,” “The Judy Garland Show” and “Hullabaloo.” He received a Peabody Award and was nominated for an Emmy for his writing on the landmark 1965 special “Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music.” He also wrote for specials featuring Bing Crosby, Groucho Marx and Dolly


S


KLMNO OBITUARIES


John Aylesworth, left, works with actor Lorne Greene on Hee Haw in 1976. When CBS canceled the series after two years, Mr. Aylesworth and his creative partner found their own syndicator. The show


became one of the longest- running in TV history.


FAMILY PHOTO MAURICE HINES SR., 88 Performer, father of tap-dance stars by Valerie J. Nelson


Maurice Hines Sr., 88, a drum- mer who toured for a decade in the nightclub act Hines, Hines and Dad that helped propel his tap-dancing sons to fame, died July 27 at a hospice in his long- time home of Las Vegas. The cause of death was not reported. Mr. Hines’s sons, Maurice and


Gregory, had performed profes- sionally as the Hines Kids since they were young boys in the 1950s, tap-dancing onstage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and touring.


Parton and was a writer-producer for “The Jonathan Winters Show” and “The Sonny and Cher Show.” After selling “Hee Haw” to a


syndicate for $15 million in 1982, Mr. Aylesworth and Peppiatt wrote a musical stage show about Jimmy Durante.


Despite his long record of suc-


cess, Mr. Aylesworth found little work as a TV writer after turning 50. In recent years, he was a plain- tiff in a series of class-action law- suits accusing studios and agents of age discrimination. “I pretty much gave up” looking for writing jobs in the 1980s, he told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2002. “Every time I went to a meeting,


everybody was very young, and they were intimidated by an old guy coming in,” he said. “There was an expression going around that I heard from my agent. He pitched me for one show, and they said, ‘No, we already have our ‘gray.’ ” Mr. Aylesworth wrote a satirical


play about Palm Springs, Calif., and published a book this year about “Hee Haw” called “The Corn Was Green.” His first three marriages ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife, Ani-


ta Rufus of Palm Desert, Calif.; five children; and a grandson. schudelm@washpost.com


By 1963, his sons decided to emphasize singing in addition to dancing and asked their father to join the group. The elder Hines had been a salesman for White Rock soda when he taught him- self to play the drums. Father and sons toured until 1973, performing in nightclubs in New York, Las Vegas and Europe. They also appeared on TV variety and talk shows. “The highlight for us was when


Johnny Carson saw us at the Play- boy Club in Chicago and he said, ‘I’m going to put you on my show,’ ” said Maurice Hines Jr., laughing at the recollection be- cause the trio had seven failed “Tonight Show” auditions behind them. “He was true to his word, and he put us on many times,” Hines said Friday. “He made us stars and made us hot in the business.” After Hines, Hines and Dad


broke up, the senior Hines at- tended maitre d’ school and ran the gourmet room at the Thun- derbird Hotel in Las Vegas. His younger son, Gregory, be- came an innovative and influ- ential tap-dancer and actor. He died of cancer at age 57 in 2003. “My father has always been my


hero,” Gregory Hines said in a 1997 interview while promoting “The Gregory Hines Show,” a short-lived sitcom that he said was inspired by his relationship


SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 2010


PUBLICITY PHOTO


The musical act Hines, Hines and Dad toured from the mid-1960s until 1973, performing in New York, Las Vegas and Europe.


with his father. “I grew up in the ’50s, a tough time for African Americans. I had friends whose fathers would openly say, ‘Just bite your tongue, don’t cause any problems.’ My fa- ther was not like that,” he said. “Even in the toughest times ra- cially, if somebody disrespected his family, they were in trouble.” Maurice Hines Jr. is a Tony- nominated actor who has choreo- graphed and directed his own original musicals on Broadway. From his father, he “really learned to be your own man, to have your own principles and to not let people take away your principles, especially in this busi- ness.” Maurice Robert Hines was


born Feb. 9, 1922, in North Caro- lina. His mother, Ora Hines, danced at the Cotton Club in Har- lem in the 1920s.


When his sons were featured in


Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Cot- ton Club,” Mr. Hines served as consultant to the 1984 film and brought his mother to the set. During World War II, he joined


the Merchant Marine and met his future wife, Alma, through her brother, who served with him. She died in 2000. After marrying in 1942, Mr.


Hines settled in Harlem and was a “tough guy” who worked as a bouncer, said his nephew, Rich- ard Nurse.


About 30 years ago, Mr. Hines moved to Las Vegas. He played golf, and his nephew said he was “a great cook, precise about ev- erything” and a “great dresser” who “always had a hundred pairs of shoes.”


Besides his son, survivors in- clude his wife, Gloria J. Hines; four grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.


— Los Angeles Times


SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST This letter from Pvt. Leimbach to his mother on June 9, 1945, appeared two weeks later in The Post. D-Day soldier was a man of letters leimbach from C1


dropped the news that he planned to marry his sweetheart, Harriette Brice, when he came home. Golly Mom, he wrote, I’m just about the happiest guy on earth. ... Looks like you got yourself an- other daughter. Pvt. Leimbach’s mother com- piled his letters in two notebooks bursting with wartime photo- graphs and newspaper articles. She kept not only the official Western Union telegram about his wounds in action but also ev- ery boilerplate message on War Department letterhead assuring her that her son was making “nor- mal improvement.” The impossibly light moments of war are preserved in the scrap- books, too. In a photo captioned “Snow Horseplay,” Pvt. Leimbach and his buddies are making a hu- man pyramid about the time of the Battle of the Bulge. On a page labeled “Preparing for our V-J Day celebration,” there’s a photo of him in a kerchief and apron with some type of fowl in hand. Cap- tion: “ ‘Old Lady’ Leimbach.” To look at such a notebook is to consider the weight of the war as it was lived out by one mother and her son. One book weighs six pounds; the other, six and a half. “Ladies keep scrapbooks, and mothers in particular keep big scrapbooks,” said Drez, who has interviewed as many as 3,000 vet- erans of the D-Day invasion. To- day, he said, the collections are gold mines for historians. Unlike battle plans and after-action re- ports, soldiers’ words put the reader in “the shoes of the men who were actually there.” Occasionally a barrage of 88 and mortar fire would hit the beach, Pvt. Leimbach wrote in an- other letter published by The Post in edited form during the weeks


FAMILY PHOTO


Frank Leimbach, a World War II veteran, rose from pressman to owner of Acme Printing.


after the invasion. I don’t mean a couple every 10 or 15 minutes, but from three to six every two or three minutes. No matter how much battle experience a man has, he still feels jumpy when un- der this kind of fire — and I was jumpy and scared as hell. He was awarded the Bronze


Star Medal and the Purple Heart for his actions in the invasion. There is no reason to believe


that he expected anyone but his family to read his letters. Some, such as the first published in The Post, begin with “Hello Momer.” Others open with “Hi Ya, Pop.” But as Pvt. Leimbach recuperated in a hospital in England, newspaper readers across the Washington area woke up to his reports. “What happened to one fellow on one city block was of great in- terest to everyone else,” Drez said. Practically everyone had a loved one fighting overseas, and a letter from any of the boys brought all the boys home. Which is where Pvt. Leimbach wanted to be. You close your eyes and do some dreaming, he wrote in the second


letter published in the news- paper. Pangs of ecstasy wracking your heart . . . the warming, heart-touching, over-joyous visu- alizations of homecoming and its very near future. It wasn’t so near, actually. The hospital patched up Pvt. Leim- bach in time for the Battle of the Bulge, which he survived to serve through the end of the war. The family scrapbooks also hold mementos of Pvt. Leimbach’s life after the war — a photo, for example, of him cuddling with Harriette at the base of the Capi- tol. He did marry her, just as he had promised in the letter. She died in 2001 after 54 years of marriage. A son, Jim Leimbach, died in 1987. Survivors include another son,


Mike Leimbach of Cheverly; three daughters, Beth Swanson of Silver Spring, Linda Leimbach of Ar- lington, Tex., and Rie Crowley of Tampa; one brother, Henry Leim- bach of Washington; seven grand- children; and one great-grand- daughter. In a eulogy for his father, Mike


Leimbach read from one of the letters written in the hospital in England:


Solitude — quiet, unbroken, sometimes fearful, other times comforting; the kind that only comes from the mixture of the liv- ing hell of war and the heavenly, almost forgotten, bliss of peace; the startling comparison of the two, and the sudden realization of how near everything you loved and hated, worshipped and de- spised, was to vanishing forever. A reverie — so brutal, yet at times so tender. The words of Frank Leimbach, man of letters.


langere@washpost.com


Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.


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