Jerry Haynes
To a generation of children in Dallas, Jerry Haynes was Mr. Peppermint. He hosted the local programme of that name for thirty years, first from 1961 to 1969 and then, retitled Peppermint Place, from 1975 to 1996, making it one of the longest-running local children's shows on American television.
A film career ran alongside it, in and out of Texas productions, and the record puts him in more than fifty pictures. What is striking about the list here is the tonal distance from the children's studio: a deputy in Places in the Heart, the record producer Owen Bradley in the Patsy Cline film Sweet Dreams, Dr. McNamara in RoboCop, a minister in My Boyfriend's Back, Harlan in The Locusts, and the judge in Boys Don't Cry.
He graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas in 1944 and spent decades in local and regional theatre. He was also the father of Gibby Haynes, frontman of the Butthole Surfers, which is the sort of fact that quietly reorganises a biography around itself.
Movies (8)
Where to start with Jerry Haynes
Of the eight films listed here, Places in the Heart is the best, and the one where a Texan character actor being properly Texan matters: he is a deputy in a Depression-era story with no interest in flattering anybody.
Boys Don't Cry is the hardest watch here, and he is the judge in it, a small part in a film that gives its small parts a great deal of weight.
RoboCop is the fun one, and there is a specific pleasure in hearing the voice of Mr. Peppermint come out of a company doctor in one of the most violent studio films of its year. Sweet Dreams casts him as the record producer Owen Bradley, the closest thing here to a substantial role, and The Locusts is the obscure late one, worth a try if you like slow rural melodrama.