Sartain, Gailard

GAILARD SARTAIN earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Tulsa after graduation from Will Rogers High School.

In 1971, he began his entertainment career on KOTV, Channel 6, when he created The Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting aka Dr. Mazeppa Pompazoidi. Gailard was a regular on the popular country comedy music show Hee Haw for 20 years.

He has appeared in over 50 motion pictures, notably Mississippi Burning, Fried Green Tomatoes and Elizabethtown. Today, Gailard is also well known for his accomplished work as a painter and illustrator. He designed the cover for fellow Rogers’ Hall of Fame member Leon Russell’s Will o’ the Wisp.

He currently resides in Tulsa with his wife Mary Jo.

WILL ROGERS HIGH SCHOOL in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was built during the Great Depression and opened in the fall of 1939. It is named after "Oklahoma's Favorite Son." William Penn Adair Rogers, who was an American stage and film actor, vaudeville performer, cowboy, humorist, newspaper columnist, radio personality, and social commentator from Oklahoma. He was a Cherokee citizen born in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma), about 30 miles from Tulsa. As an entertainer and humorist, he traveled around the world three times, made 71 films (50 silent films and 21 "talkies"), and wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns. By the mid-1930s, Rogers was hugely popular in the United States, its leading political wit and the highest paid of Hollywood film stars. He died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post when their small airplane crashed in northern Alaska.

Will Rogers High School, an art deco masterpiece, is on the National Register of Historic Places (with historic significance). It has produced many graduates who have distinguished themselves in their careers—of national fame, personal achievement, or social significance. A list of Hall of Fame inductees and their biographies is available at: https://willrogersfoundation.net/.