Touchstone Plus-Or-Minus: Ernest Goes To Camp

On May 22, 1987, the day Ernest Goes To Camp was unveiled to moviegoers everywhere, I had just graduated from high school. Obviously, I could have no idea where my life would take me. I knew I had vague aspirations to be a writer of some kind but still wasn’t entirely sure how that would manifest itself. Like any young person, I spent a lot of time imagining different possibilities. But I can say with absolute certainty that at no time did I imagine I would one day find myself in a position where I’d be doing a deep dive into the life and career of Jim Varney and his alter ego, Ernest P. Worrell. But here we are.

Jim Varney was born and raised in Kentucky, taking an interest in performing while still in high school. He acted locally in Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee before deciding to try his luck in Hollywood in the mid-70s. Varney appeared in several episodes of the great cult comedy Fernwood 2 Night and was a regular on the short-lived sitcom Operation Petticoat (which also starred future Disney star Jamie Lee Curtis) and on the even shorter-lived bizarro variety show Pink Lady And Jeff.

But Varney would have to return to the southeast to get his big break. Before moving out west, Varney, like most gigging actors, had done a few local commercials for the Nashville-based advertising agency Carden & Cherry. In 1980, co-founder John Cherry III hired Varney to portray the firm’s latest creation, a rubber-faced rube named Ernest P. Worrell for a spot promoting Beech Bend Amusement Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Ernest essentially appeared fully-formed from the jump, addressing the camera directly to place the audience in the role of his frequently harassed neighbor, Vern, and spouting his instantly iconic catchphrase, “Knowhutimean?”