If it’s true that we’re known by the company we keep, then Texas humorist, First Amendment Advocate, “Hee Haw’s homespun philosopher, and 1950s media blacklist buster, John Henry Faulk’s character was first quality. His story intersects some of America’s best and brightest: Eugene Victor Debs, the “Texas Triumvirate,” Edward R. Murrow, Mark Goodson, Louis Nizer, Myrna Loy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Joe Papp, and host of others. Consciously risking a lucrative television career, he seized “the buzzards of repression” during the McCarthy era, and “rung their sorry necks.” However, living up to his father’s admonition to “do something for the people,” he kissed his big time media career goodbye, and people still ask what made him do what he did. Perhaps this biography will help explain.
John Henry Faulk’s reputation runs an extraordinary gamut from blue collared everymen who wonder why a man throws away a future on television and millions of dollars, to intellectuals who couldn’t imagine why a groundbreaking folklorist with his gifts, skills, and reputation would associate himself with such lowbrow entertainments as “Hee Haw.” Permanently identified by his precedent breaking lawsuit as, “the man who broke the blacklist,” John Henry spent a life baffling those who tried to pigeonhole him.
