Episode #21 Guest Star: Donald Harron

- April 21, 2018

Donald Hugh Harron, OC OOnt (September 19, 1924 – January 17, 2015) was a Canadian comedian, actor, director, journalist, author, playwright, and composer. Harron is perhaps best known for the comedic character Charlie Farquharson from the country music television show Hee Haw. Harron's parents owned and operated Harron’s Cleaners and Dyers in Toronto. Beginning at the age of ten, he earned extra money for the family during the Great Depression, doing "chalk talks" telling humorous stories while drawing caricatures in coloured chalk at company or club banquets, making $10 or $15 a talk. As a result of his performances, he was invited to audition for, and won, a part in the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission radio series Lonesome Trail in 1935.

After university, Harron appeared in a number of plays and revues in Toronto, including the annual Spring Thaw revue, giving him national exposure when the 1952 edition was broadcast on the newly launched CBC Television network. He spent two years in London, England, travelling there variously performing in a West End production of A Streetcar Named Desire and also working for the BBC as a comedy writer, acting on a radio series, playing the part of a clown in the film The Red Shoes (1948) and writing scripts for Gracie Fields.
Harron played Art Harris in the two-part The Outer Limits episode titled "The Inheritors" (1964), the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea ("Doomsday", 1965) as the naval missile officer aboard the SSRN Seaview who could not bring himself to perform his duties to launch nuclear missiles and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. ("The Four-Steps Affair", also 1965) as an Australian U.N.C.L.E. agent named Kitt Kittridge.

He married his third wife, Canadian singer Catherine McKinnon in 1969. Harron and McKinnon divorced in 2003. He moved in with and later married his fourth wife, Claudette Gareau, who had played the separatist weather girl in Shh! It’s the News (1973) appearing with Harron. Harron's daughter Mary Harron from an earlier marriage to Gloria Fisher, is an independent film director whose credits include I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho. She directed "Alias Grace" which won the 2018 Canadian Screen Award for Best Limited Series.

Harron died at 90 surrounded by his family in his Toronto home after deciding not to seek treatment for his cancer. His daughter, Martha, told Canadian Press "He was still sharp. He was still capable of being funny even though his voice was barely above a whisper... It's horribly sad, but it's beautiful too."

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