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Jim Varney
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== Early life == Varney was born in [[Lexington, Kentucky]]. As a child, he displayed the ability to memorize long poems and significant portions of the material from books, which he used to entertain family and friends. When Varney was a boy, his mother would turn on cartoons for him to watch. His mother discovered that Varney quickly began to imitate the cartoon characters, so she started him in children's theater when he was eight years old. Varney began his interest in theater as a teenager, winning state titles in drama competitions while a student at [[Lafayette High School]] (class of 1968) in Lexington. At the age of 15, he portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in a local theater production; by 17, he was performing professionally in nightclubs and coffee houses. Varney studied Shakespeare at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, and performed in an Opryland folk show in its first year of operation, in the 1970s. He listed a former teacher, Thelma Beeler, as being a mentor in his becoming an actor. When he was 24, Varney was an actor at the Pioneer Playhouse in Danville, Kentucky. The theater was adjacent to an Old West-themed village, and before the show, the audience would tour the village where apprentices would play townsfolk. Varney and the company usually played in the outdoor theater to audiences of only a few dozen people. He entertained the young apprentices by throwing knives into trees. He performed in ''Blithe Spirit'', ''Boeing 707'' and an original musical, ''Fire on the Mountain''. He once jokingly threatened a long-haired apprentice, John Lino Ponzini, that he would take him up to Hazard, Kentucky, where "you [Ponzini] wouldn't make it down Main Street without the townsfolk giving you a crewcut".
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