Bill Byrge, who showed up as the quiet but feisty Bobby on a kids TV show and in four of the goofy Ernest comedies that starred Jim Varney, has died. He was 86.
Byrge died Thursday in the Nashville area, according to a Facebook post from his friend John Ward, host of the web series The Appalachian Channel.
The rubber-faced Varney made his debut as Ernest P. Worrell, a dim-witted Southerner with an unseen neighbor named Vern, in local commercials for a Nashville advertising agency starting in 1980.
Byrge appeared as a gas station attendant when Varney portrayed Ernest and other characters in the horror spoof Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam (1985), and on the 1988 Saturday morning CBS kids show Hey, Vern, It’s Ernest!, he was Bobby alongside Gailard Sartain as Chuck in a brother shtick.
Byrge returned with Sartain as airport workers in Ernest Saves Christmas (1988) and as clueless bank security guards in Ernest Goes to Jail (1990); played Bobby with John Cadenhead as his brother Tom in Ernest Scared Stupid (1991); and was a brain scientist in Ernest Goes to School (1994). Those films were bankrolled by Disney.
“People may call [these films] corny, but they’re good family entertainment that you can take your children and your grandchildren to. They can enjoy them and not be embarrassed by what they see on the screen,” he said in a 2015 interview with Ward.
Varney carried on with three more direct-to-video Ernest films without Byrge.
Born in Tennessee’s Campbell County in September 1938, Byrge was working for the public library in town when he and Sartain starred in commercials produced by Carden and Cherry, the ad company that produced the Ernest spots. The two played twin brothers that didn’t look anything alike; Chuck was a loudmouth and Bobby never spoke.
Byrge also appeared in music videos for such Ray Stevens songs as 1990’s “Sittin’ Up With the Dead” and played Bobby one more time in Billy and Bobby the Whacky Duo on Vacation (2010).
While acting, Byrge kept his day job with the downtown Nashville library branch, and he retired from that in 1995 after a 27-year stint. He was very popular at conventions, autograph shows and visits to schoolchildren in his later years.
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