There was also a clause in the contract that Burnett
describes in retrospect as a “push the button” option. After five years, if Carol wanted to do a
variety show of her own, CBS would be obligated to put the program on the air
for a guaranteed season of thirty episodes—even if it only consisted of the
performer simply scratching herself for sixty minutes. The Powers That Be (represented by Mike Dann,
head of CBS) tried to wave Burnett off this, chauvinistically explaining that
the variety hour was “a man’s genre.” Despite
the support for this theory (most of TV’s top variety shows were headlined by
males such as Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton…and Carol’s old boss, Garry Moore)
Carol and husband Joe Hamilton were determined to take advantage of the clause
(particularly since the alternative was for Burnett to star in a expectedly lame
sitcom titled Here’s Agnes). Nothing
brightens the mood more of a die-hard couch potato when The Suits turn out to
be wrong…because the result of Carol and Joe’s efforts would run for eleven
seasons and become one of CBS’ most successful variety series: The
Carol Burnett Show.
It would be a major understatement to say that Carol Burnett’s
long-running variety hour set a high bar for programs of its type. It’s due in large part to the lady herself; I
know it’s a bit of a cliché to use words like “comedic legend” and “genius”
when discussing Burnett’s boob tube legacy…but there’s a reason why The
Carol Burnett Show turns up on so many “Greatest Shows of All Time”
lists—it was damn good television, and Burnett was just aces. When I think of Burnett, I think of the word “fearless”;
I know of very few performers who would throw caution to the winds and not care
about how they looked if the rewards for being goofy resulted in loud,
appreciative laughter. There is a magic
quality about Carol Burnett: she comes across as gangly and gawky one minute
and movie-star glamorous the next. But
there’s also a genuine, down-to-earth warmth about the woman, which clearly
came across in every portion of her show from her opening give-and-take with
the audience to the unpretentious and often endearing sketches on the program.
I find that a lot of people enjoy the program despite its
occasional lapses into corniness because much of it was steeped in a “classic
Hollywood” tradition, from its high-wattage guest stars (Betty Grable, Lana
Turner, Mickey Rooney) to the frequent parodies of old films (Gone with the Wind, Sunset Boulevard). During my halcyon high school years, the
Burnett show was a Saturday night tradition (it’s funny how I associate the
show with Saturday nights, when during most of its run it was seen on Mondays
and then Wednesdays) as well as a weekday attraction thanks to the syndicated Carol
Burnett and Friends, a half-hour compilation of comedy sketches that
aired on the primetime hour from 1972 to 1977.
(MeTV recently added Burnett and Friends to their lineup…which
we are not able to watch here at Rancho Yesteryear because Dish refuses to
carry the substations of our local channels, boo hiss.)
It's not an acid flashback. Only on The Carol Burnett Show can you find (L-R) Carol, Phyllis Diller, Bobbie Gentry and Gwen Verdon as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. |
And so it begins. |
But here’s where I get redemption, friends and
neighbors. Thanks to Michael Krause at
Foundry Communications, I have rediscovered what an absolute delight The
Carol Burnett Show can be.
Michael made available to me a “screener” of The Carol Burnett Show: The Lost
Episodes—a slimmed-down version of Time Life’s previous 2012 release The
Carol Burnett Show: The Ultimate Collection (Carol—have you lost
weight?). Lost Episodes, released
this past September 15, is a six-disc collection featuring sixteen uncut
episodes originally broadcast between 1967 and 1972 and is designed more for the
casual Burnett fan (if you’re really
crazy about Carol, you should spring for the whole enchilada). I’m not kidding about the “uncut” part of
that, either; they don’t include commercials but they left in the “bumpers,”
allowing you to reminisce about the good old days of Jubilee wax polish (I
think they still make this, btw) and Cold Power detergent.
Included on this set is the September 11, 1967 premiere,
which established Carol’s good friend Jim “Shazam!” Nabors as her “good luck
charm” (Nabors would be the guest on each subsequent season opener) and the
highlights include a melody of Broadway show tunes sung by the pair as well as
an amusing sketch where Carol and Jim play klutzes vacationing at a ski lodge. Carol also introduces her Shirley Temple
parody (Shirley Dimple), and I wound up on the floor laughing when she tells
interviewer Harvey Korman: “Jane Withers said something to me once in a movie
that wasn’t very nice and you know what happened to her? My fairy godmother changed her into a plumber!” (I know—I laugh at the strangest things.)
Which twin has the Toni? (Both of them have Emmys, I know that.) |
Hey, everybody! It's William Schallert (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Patty Duke Show)! |
November 4, 1968: Guests Lucille Ball, Eddie Albert and Nancy
Wilson appear in an edition of “As the Stomach Turns” where Nancy plays Canoga
Falls’ first black resident. The “As the
Stomach Turns” parodies number among my favorite Burnett Show sketches
mainly because soap operas in themselves are so insanely insipid they naturally
lend themselves to great comedy. But the
addition of Wilson as the “town Negro” is both dated and yet slightly
subversive (Nancy introduces herself as “Julia”—a dig at the Diahann Carroll
sitcom—and at one point straight-facedly remarks to Albert’s character “You’re
a credit to your race”).
From November 17, 1969: the King Family are profiled on "V.I.P." (The family member to the right in the back row is Isabel Sanford, later of The Jeffersons.) |
January 19, 1970: With guests Vikki Carr and Flip Wilson (who
would launch his own successful variety show in the fall until he got his ass
kicked by The Waltons), the Burnett show sends up Mission: Impossible with the
side-splitting “Mission: Improbable.”
Every time Carol finishes a speech as the Barbara Bain-like “Oregano
Farber,“ someone hands her an Emmy (a reference to Bain’s multiple wins), and
Flip gets to don drag as a Geraldine-like character. The parody ends with a surprise appearance
from Mission’s
star foursome at that time: Peter Graves, Leonard Nimoy, Peter Lupus and Greg
Morris!
Admittedly, this telecast is no great
shakes (though you will get to see Chita Rivera perform “Lucretia MacEvil” as a
spider-woman years before Broadway’s Kiss
of the Spider Woman) but it’s worth it just for the Nelson Eddy-Jeanette
MacDonald parody “Naughty Rosemarie” and Bob Newhart’s swishy turn as “The
Marquis de Fop.” A year later in a
February 23, 1972 show, Burt Reynolds camped it up as “The Lavender Pimpernel.” Burt also performs a song-and-dance to “As
Time Goes By,” which shows off his previous talent as a Hollywood
stuntman. Stuntman. (See what I did there, Hal?)
Regardez. |
November 3, 1971: No Carol Burnett Show sketch in this collection made me laugh harder (not even the “Mission: Improbable” skit) than “The Drunkard’s Daughter,” a send-up of those old-time moralizing melodramas. Guest Bing Crosby is “the drunkard,” whose daughter (Carol) ineffectively tries to keep him from succumbing to demon rum, Lyle Waggoner plays a Dudley Do-Right-like Mountie, and guest Paul Lynde and regular Harvey Korman play “twin” villains, complete with twirling moustaches and stovepipe hats. (Lynde channels his “Hooded Claw” voice from The Perils of Penelope Pitstop and Harvey mimics him flawlessly every step of the way.) Bonus points to costume designer Bob Mackie for that incredible “vamp” costume he provided for Vicki Lawrence.
I believe the word we're searching for is "Yowsah!" |
Carol Burnett Show fans know that Lyle Waggoner functioned not only as the program’s announcer but as a featured player before exiting in 1974 (he didn’t really give up this gig for Wonder Woman, did he?). Actor-comedian Tim Conway became an official member of the cast in 1975 after many, many years of appearing as one of the Burnett Show’s favorite guests. Conway’s debut appearance on the program (October 2, 1967—also Lucille Ball’s first Burnett Show appearance) is included in this set, in addition to three other shows (the January 6, 1969 telecast features “The Night They Raided Rimsky’s,” which I chuckled at throughout because The Night They Raided Minsky’s is a favorite movie of mine). Tim is an achingly funny guy…but he got absolute screams from me during one “Q&A” segment in which he introduces some of his family members in the audience.
Vicki and dancer Don Crichton pay dance tribute to a pair of memorable Laugh-In characters. (The real Ruth Buzzi and Arte Johnson appear at the end.) |
Vicki Lawrence would be the only Burnett Show cast member to stick with Carol for the entirety of the program’s eleven-year run; Harvey Korman (who had some impressive variety hour chops before he began his association with Carol, having been a semi-regular on The Danny Kaye Show) left the show before its last season for a development deal with ABC (which included Snavely, a pilot for an Americanized version of Fawlty Towers that was mercifully killed in its crib) and television legend Dick Van Dyke joined the Burnett Show cast briefly in Harvey’s place. At the end of eleven seasons, Carol announced to CBS that the variety show as they knew it was starting to die on the vine and that she was ready for a rest. There were a few attempts to apply paddles to the program (including a four-week ABC summer series entitled Carol Burnett & Company in 1979, and a return to CBS in 1991 for a revival version with new cast members) but for the most part, The Carol Burnett Show is now in rerun heaven as Carol Burnett & Friends.
There are any number of explanations as to why the “lost
episodes” of The Carol Burnett Show have been AWOL for so long (I suspect it’s
the usual legal entanglements involving copyrights) but I’m so glad they were
able to jump through the hoops to put together this collection because it’s
really a first-rate release. (I’m also
so glad we had this time together…just to have a laugh or sing a song.) I cannot recommend this set highly enough,
and suggest you hie yourself to your nearest brick-and-mortar or online store
to pick up a copy.
2 comments:
I believe that "buttload" is indeed the technical term for the number 6.
I believe that "buttload" is indeed the technical term for the number 6.
My sordid secret is revealed to the world: I really stank at math.
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