So long, Buckaroo

I applaud the fond farewells to country legend Buck Owens, who died Saturday, except for one thing: Some are unironically citing "Hee Haw" as one of his great achievements. This upends somewhat the conventional wisdom, which is that it's a shame Owens will be remembered largely for "Hee Haw," and not for the pioneering Bakersfield country music he wrote and performed in the 1960s.

I happen to agree with the conventional wisdom. I can't deny that "Hee Haw" has its pleasures, but it was, let's face it, mediocre television at best. The music may have been good, often, thanks to Owens, but the show mostly dealt in unfortunate stereotypes of Southerners. Of course, unlike contemporary TV shows that did the same thing ("The Beverly Hillbillies," "Petticoat Junction"), at least "Hee Haw" was produced in the South by Southerners. But I'm not sure how mitigating that is. (When I was a kid in Nashville, I once went to a taping of "Hee Haw.")

Over the weekend, I watched as various news programs reported Owens' death. And the video clip I saw, over and over, was of him and "Hee Haw" co-host Roy Clark making bug eyes and exclaiming, "I'm a-pickin'!" "And I'm a-grinnin'!" Around them Nashville actors in overalls and straw hats bounced up and down. The performance seems undignified, unlike other video I saw this weekend of Owens from the 1960s, when he strummed a Telecaster and sang "Act Naturally."

I'm not sure how "Hee Haw" could have presented a more dignified image of the South, though. Readings by Robert Penn Warren?

All this brings to mind something Pauline Kael wrote about Alan Alda: "There is a price to be paid for being likable in a TV series week after week, year after year." Owens was goofy on "Hee Haw," week after week, year after year, and that has a way of obliterating our recollection of, for example, the tragic urgency of his 1965 hit "Cryin' Time," all two minutes and 29 seconds of it.

The paradox, of course, is that "Hee Haw" may be the only reason Owens is being hailed so widely at all. This is the power of the moving image: It makes personalities linger. And this is why we tend, collectively, not to remember famous stage actors like Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Stage performances do not linger.

Seen in this light, Owens reminds me of Agnes Moorehead, who is instantly recognizable to several generations of Americans as Endora, the mother of Elizabeth Montgomery on "Bewitched." Moorehead took the role at age 64, decades after the crucial performances she did as part of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre ensemble, on stage and radio, and in films. But it's Endora we remember.

That's not altogether a bad thing. Endora is one of the most indelible characters in television, and that surely is thanks to Moorehead's craft. And so at least everyone knows who Agnes Moorehead is, even if not for all the best reasons.

And likewise, everyone knows who Buck Owens is, perhaps thanks mostly to "Hee Haw." As well they should.