Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 17

Season One: 

March 18, 1968: Tim Conway, Jack Jones, Ruth Buzzi

(The Lost Episodes Ultimate DVD Collection) Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In had debuted on Jan. 22,

Ruth Buzzi thinks Roger is "groovy"

1968, just two months before this episode aired. That may have been the reason Ruth Buzzi was not announced as a special guest. She had not caught on yet as a major TV comedy player on that series. Instead her name was read over the closing credits but she did get to sign Carol's book with Tim and handsome singer Jack Jones. (That was something I loved about Carol, the non-star guest actors were treated equally to the big names.) Ruth would appear on Carol's show twice more and was an official guest star. She also made a cameo as her Gladys character with Arte Johnson as Tyrone when Vicki and Don Creighton did a parody of their old-maid-dirty-old-man act. Here, Ruth uses her rubber-like features in the Carol and Sis sketch as Gretchen, a studymate of Crissy who has a crush on Roger. She also appears briefly as a jungle girl in The Jungle Kook, one of three brief sketches satirizing the Late, Late Show reruns of old movies, good or bad. The highlight of this triptych is Shut Uppa You Face, a hilarious send-up of Italian films because of Harvey's ludicrous accent and slipping moustache as well as Lyle's appearance in a tank top. The middle sketch--Sing Sing Dingaling was funny mainly because of Tim and Harvey's reactions to a door that wouldn't stay closed. In other sketches, Tim suffers physical abuse as a drunken matador and he inflicts it on Carol when they play a pair of clumsy castaways. 

The finale is a bizarre combination of camp and hoedown. Jack and Carol sing a medley of Texas-related tunes while the chorus cavorts in weird outfits. The boys sport yellow rubber chaps with ten-gallon hats while the girls are in black-and-white checked blouses and bonnets with daisies. It's as if Bob Mackie dropped acid while in a yellow taxicab.

April 15, 1968: Minnie Pearl, Peter Lawford, William Schallert

(Treasures from the Vault/Ultimate Lost Episodes DVD Collection) A pretty routine episode with two

Peter Lawford and Carol with Lyle and Harvey
modelling 1968 fashions for men.

polar opposites as guests--country comedienne Minnie Pearl and chain-smoking Rat-Pack member and movie star Peter Lawford. Minnie does not make the cut in the hacked-up version, but in the complete episode on the DVD collection, she and Peter have a weird musical specialty number with Carol about a country girl and a city man and how they should get together. Carol is supposed to be the matchmaker I guess. The show is weak with mediocre sketches and dated humor. The hour begins with a weird, homophobic Q&A. Carol calls Peter out to meet the audience and then ribs him for wearing "modern" unisex styles. Lyle and Harvey put on a fashion show with hippie-ish, bold threads. Carol makes cracks about how these garments will keep you out of the army and they were inspired by The Odd Couple, meaning only queeny men who like men would wear them. 

Then we get a Carol and Sis sketch treating women like children as grown women Carol and Crissy are scared to death after watching a horror movie. William Schallert (Patty Duke's dad) plays Roger's drunken boss. (How many bosses did Roger go through? Harold Gould, Durwood Kirby, Eddie Albert, etc.) Minnie tells some Hee Haw-ish jokes. Carol and Minnie are Southern-fried American tourists in Paris. At first, it's kinda okay as these hicks from the sticks try to impress a handsome "Frenchie" (Lyle). Then it gets weird as Harvey shows up as Charles De Gaulle. Evidently DeGaulle, the French president, was in the news a lot for his arrogance and anti-Americanism. The humor turns political and unfunny. (Political humor is fine, it just has to be funny.) A short satire of Bonnie and Clyde, then the hottest movie ever, falls flat. Peter, Carol, Harvey, Minnie and an uncredited dancer just stand there recreating a still from the movie. The main source of yucks is Minnie as Estelle Parsons' Blanche having to go to the bathroom and not being pretty. Peter stars in the best sketch of the show. He plays a British colonial in deepest Africa or India or someplace tropical and foreign like that and Carol is his mail-order bride desperate to please him. There are genuine laughs as Harvey plays with a German accent as Peter's assistant and Carol runs to fulfill Peter's every wish. But Peter cracks up and breaks character every 30 seconds, ruining the truth of the scene. We conclude with a medley of songs from Peter's movies Good News and Easter Parade.

April 29, 1968: Tim Conway, Shani Wallis

(MeTV/Amazon/ShoutFactory) At the top of the show, Carol tells the audience the guests are Tim and Shani Wallis, who was then appearing as Nancy in the film version of Oliver. It would have been interesting to see the complete hour and what songs she sang. She is shown only at the end with Carol, dressed in matching Victorian bustiers, so maybe there was a naughty number about loose women. In the hacked-up, edited version, we only get two tired sketches depending on pratfalls for their yucks. In the Vicki and Sis vignette, Roger (Harvey) tries to impress the boss but falls all over himself because Carol has rearranged the furniture. Then Tim gives his fiancee Carol a cursed diamond for an engagement ring and bones are broken, steaming trays of hot food fall into laps, and Tim gets stabbed by a waiter with a shish kabob. There is a little bonus with a heavy-set, middle aged woman as the president of Harvey's fan club, drooling over him just before the good-nights. Just as silly as the cliched sketches.

May 13, 1968: Family Show (Season Finale)

The Old Folks continue to
bitch and moan

(The Best Of DVD Set) Carol set a precedent with this last show of the first season. There would be no guest stars and the regular crew of Harvey, Vicki and Lyle would be featured. She would follow this template for the remaining 10 season finales. Harvey serenades himself with "Look at That Face." Vicki croons a drippy pop song in a voluminous dress in front of the George Becker Singers (apparently they were on the Garry Moore Show). Lyle accompanies himself on the guitar for By the Time I Get to Phoenix. In her introduction of Lyle, Carol keeps talking about what a beautiful person he is both physically and spiritually and that people shouldn't judge him on his looks, almost as if he were a woman. The Old Folks tell jokes about Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, each of which were made obsolete by events that following summer. Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson did not run for re-election and Nixon won the presidency (the joke was based on his being a loser).

Season 2:

Oct. 21, 1968: Edie Adams, Tim Conway

(MeTV/Amazon/ShoutFactory) Yet another chopped-up butcher job where the musical guest (Edie Adams) is cut out and we are left with two mediocre sketches with Tim Conway. This time Tim is a klutzy, first-time bank robber and a virginal school teacher inadvertently sharing a hotel room with an equally shy Carol. The latter is a variation on a sketch with Soupy Sales from Season One. Isabel Sanford appears as a maid in the good nights and she signs the autograph book, but we'll never know what her scene involved.

Nov. 4, 1968: Nancy Wilson, Eddie Albert, Lucille Ball

(Lost Episodes Ultimate DVD Collection) The abridged version features only a Carol and Sis sketch

Lucy as Catherine the Great

and As the Stomach Turns with all three guest stars. The full length edition, available on the Lost Episode DVD collection includes Nancy Wilson singing "The Folks Who Live on the Hill," Eddie Albert in a solo turn about being the father of girls, and the big finale saluting the astrological sign Leo the Lion. Carol notes this zodiac theme was used in previous shows but I have yet to find them. The device was useful because it allowed for gags and specialty songs employing the famous people born under the particular sign. This means they could make jokes about Henry Ford, Lawrence of Arabia and the Wright Brothers. The weirdest part was the big finish where Vicki played a folk singer warbling about the romantic tribulations of three great queens--Cleopatra (Nancy), Elizabeth I (Carol) and Catherine the Great (Lucy in a spectacular white fur-trimmed Bob Mackie outfit). Each sings a chorus of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" with specialty lyrics. 

Dec. 2, 1968: Flip Wilson, Michele Lee, Vivian Bonnell

(MeTV/Amazon/ShoutFactory) Lyle announces the birth of his son during the Q&A, Michele Lee sings a Burt Bacharach song in her first appearance on the show, Carol imitates Mae West, and Flip Wilson does a monologue which really doesn't hold up. His routines include gags about a talking horse and getting beat up by a 7-year-old. From the good nights, it appears the finale involved Carol and Michele in sombreros driving a beat-up car. Lyle announced that the part of Selma was played by Vivian Bonnell and she comes on to join the others for the good nights, so there must have been a sketch with her in it.

Feb. 20, 1969: Soupy Sales, Barbara McNair, Harold Gould, Bernie Kopell

(MeTV/Amazon/ShoutFactory) It's variations on previous themes for this episode. Harold Gould (Rhoda's father, Rose's boyfriend) returns as Roger's boss in the Carol and Sis sketch. Previously he was eating while Carol was on a diet. This time, he smokes while she's trying to give it up. Then Carol and Soupy Sales reprise their repressed nerd characters as two sexually frustrated customers at adjoining perfume and cologne counters. Once again Harvey is a gay stereotype as the perfume salesman and the coded homophobic gags proliferate. When Carol douses herself with the sexy perfume, swishy Harvey proclaims, "You turn me on. My analyst will be so happy." In the Old Folks segment, Bernie Kopell is an aging hippie flirting with elderly Carol much to the jealous consternation of her husband Harvey. Why they couldn't get Soupy Sales to play the part is unclear. Barbara McNair is absent until the good nights. From their costumes, the finale had something to do with the cast dressing up as kids.

Season 3:

Oct. 19, 1969: Ken Berry, Tim Conway

(ShoutFactory) Amazon no longer carries all of the available 22-min. segments. Now there are certain episodes which are only on Shout TV. Maybe Amazon cut a deal with Shout. This one is particularly hacked up. The sketches are out of order and the finale is truncated. First is a salute to vaudeville which was originally the finale (you tell because they are wearing the vaudeville costumes for the good nights.) Harvey and Lyle tell old jokes and then Carol and Vicki perform a melodramatic duet. Tim and Ken's contributions to this sequence were edited out. After a commercial, there's another As the Stomach Turns with Tim as Marion's 90-year-old grandfather. This is the first time Tim played his old man character. We only see Ken briefly in this scene as a minister. This sketch is featured as a bonus on the Lost Episodes collection. Kay Medford shows up for the good nights so she must have played Roger's sister Mimi in a Carol and Sis sketch.

April 13, 1970: Nanette Fabray, Michele Lee

This comic-strip finale looks like great fun
but we'll never see it.

(MeTV/Amazon/ShoutFactory) This is one of the most tantalizing good-night sequences in the 22-min. edited versions. We get a brief glimpse of what must have been an amazing and fun finale and justification for someday getting the entire Carol Burnett series on DVD or through streaming. Carol sings her signature theme dressed as Olive Oyl, complete with a long, thin fake nose. Then we see guest stars Nanette Fabray as Little Orphan Annie and Michele Lee as Zeena, Queen of the Jungle. Harvey is padded with fake muscles as Superman and Lyle looks incredibly brawny as Captain Marvel. Vicki appears to be Little Audrey. There are balloons (both word balloons and blow-up ones) and pop art drawings, so the number must have been a salute to comic strips. This would have great fun and I'm trying to imagine what the songs and interactions among the colorful characters. Maybe Harvey and Lyle got into a super fight and matched biceps. 

The rest of the edited segment is replete with what would now be politically incorrect moments. Harvey flounces around as a swishy stereotype named Gaylord on As the Stomach Turns. His unmanly ways have driven his wife Nanette to popping tranquilizer pills. (Michele Lee makes her only appearance as a sexy nurse in this sketch.) Nanette and Carol play prudish censors watching endless dirty foreign movies and getting sexually aroused. There's even a reference to the size of one movie actor's endowment. I'm surprised that one got past the real censor. In a commercial spoof, Lyle ravages Carol thinking it's her young daughter Bambi. She responds, "Anyone can make a mistake" and then she ravages Lyle. Sexual attitudes have changed radically in 50 years.

Season 4: 

Oct. 5, 1970: Edyie Gorme, Joan Rivers

Joan Rivers, Edyie Gorme, and Carol
as Donna Rose and the Magnificents

(MeTV/Amazon/ShoutFactory) Carol plays Mrs. King Kong (a human, I guess she's supposed to be Fay Wray from the movie) in a VIP segment. There are some pretty funny innuendoes about what their marriage and sex life might be like. The sketch is short enough not to overplay its slender premise--basically Mrs. Kong is rattled and nervous from living and presumably sleeping with a giant ape. She constantly takes swigs from a liquor bottle until a giant gorilla hand enters and carries her off. Then Joan Rivers delivers a comedy monologue on how her marriage is getting routine. The butchered half-hour version ends with Carol, Edyie and Joan doing a take-off on Diana Ross and the Supremes: Donna Rose and the Magnificents. (I remember Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard did a similar parody of pop groups on The Mothers-in-Law called the Marvies.) Carol is the lead and even imitates Diana Ross's spoken verses in a credible spoof of the Motown style. The lyrics of their parody song are really quite good: "Where did our love go?/You and me, We are no longer us/I stood at the crossroads of love/and couldn't find a bus." "I never leave my room now/I need my guiding star/I can't go anyplace without you, babe/Why did you take my car?"

In the goodnights, lead dancer Don Creighton and one of the female dancers come out and join Carol, Harvey, Lyle, Vicki, Joan and Edyie. Maybe they had a specialty feature?

Oct. 26, 1970: Bernadette Peters, Donald O'Connor

Carol and Bernadette Peters

(MeTV/Amazon/ShoutFactory) This contains one of the few musical sequences to make the cut. Carol and Bernadette Peters compare notes on their prospective dull husbands in a bridal shop and break into Frank Loesser's "Marry the Man Today" from Guys and Dolls. It's pretty cute. The rest of the edited time contains the Old Folks kvetching about their wrinkles and Donald O'Connor as a doctor surreptitiously examining a physician-phobic Carol in the Carol and Sis scene.