Ernest P. Worrell has gone to camp, jail and Africa, but the actor who played the beloved character never attended Murray State, contrary to a widespread Internet rumor.
Jim Varney, who died in 2000, never went to college and didn't graduate high school. That's according to Justin Lloyd, Varney's nephew and the author of the biography, The Importance of Being Ernest: The Life of Actor Jim Varney.
Varney may be best remembered for portraying the talkative, goofy neighbor 'Ernest' in several films and advertisements of the 1980s and 90s. He also voiced the character Slinky Dog in the first two Toy Story films.
In the book, Lloyd writes that Kentucky-native Varney attended Lafayette High School in Lexington where he won awards for his acting abilities. He repeated his senior year and as such was considered to be in both 1967 and 1968 classes. But he ultimately dropped out of school to begin work at the Barter Theatre in Virginia after successful auditions at the Southern Theatre Conference. His parents weren't convinced he could make it as an actor and he promised his father he'd eventually get his GED. There is no mention of Murray State in the biography.
Following up with Lloyd on Facebook, he wrote that he is aware of the Murray State rumor, but wasn't sure how it got started. "One of the reasons I wrote my book was to try and set the record straight on some of these types of things as well as offer a much more comprehensive look at his life than anyone had ever attempted before," Lloyd said.
A Google search for 'Jim Varney college' comes up with Murray State and the university is listed on several other web sites including Wikipedia and Biography.com.
In a comment to someone else asking about this on the book's Facebook page, Lloyd speculated whether Varney performed at Murray State as an actor.
Murray State's Pogue Library, which houses Special Collections and countless university historical records, found no mention of Varney in digitized Board of Regents minutes, yearbooks or the Murray State News archives. Thus, in the event he did perform, he was never photographed for yearbooks or mentioned in the papers.
The university's alumni association said they were familiar with the rumor, but had no mention of him in their database.
To further clarify the matter, the university's registrar's office found no information in their records of anyone named Jim or James Varney.
Of course, we can't definitively say Varney never visited campus or stopped through Murray. And if one has evidence to prove that he did, we will gladly update this story.
Hey Vern, the evidence strongly suggests Jim Varney's status as a famous Murray State alum is just another one of those Internet rumors, which is kind of a bummer - know-whut-I-mean?
