HOLLYWOOD REPORTER – Lulu Roman, the brash Hee Haw comedian and gospel singer who delighted fans of the long-running country music variety show while turning her life around in the process, has died. She was 78.
Roman died Wednesday in Bellingham, Washington, her son, Damon Roman, told The Hollywood Reporter. She had moved there to be with him seven months ago. No cause of death has been determined.
Roman appeared on the first episode of CBS’ Hee Haw in June 1969 and on the last one, with the show in syndication, in June 1993. During its impressive run, she reinvented herself as a gospel singer, and she would release more than a dozen albums, perform in concert and record with the likes of Dolly Parton. (Watch and hear her sing “Crazy” here).
Born Bertha Louise Hable in a home for unwed mothers on May 6, 1946, Roman was dropped off at a Baptist facility for orphans in Dallas. A thyroid condition would cause her to be overweight, and she was never adopted.
She said she developed a drug problem while attending W.W. Samuell High School, and after graduating in 1964, she made ends meet performing in a comedy act billed as “Lulu Roman, the World’s Biggest Go-Go Dancer” in nightclubs owned by Jack Ruby.
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She would become friends with country music superstar Buck Owens.
“He liked my sense of humor,” she recalled in 2020. “He told me once that he’d just sit and observe me. I said, ‘Lord have mercy!’ He said it was real interesting: ‘You’re a master at quick wit.’ I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but I got hold of it later.”
With Owens set to star on Hee Haw — a country version of NBC’s Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In that was going to serve as a summer replacement series for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour — he brought her to the attention of producers …