Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 33

Here is the first David Desk blog of 2023. I haven't done a Carol Burnett Show roundup in quite a while. Here are some bits and pieces I came across since part 32.

Season One: Feb. 5, 1968: Jack Palance, Liza Minnelli

(Originally reviewed in Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 9, edited MeTV version includes gangster sketch; YouTube clips include Liza's two numbers, "The Ballad of Butterfly McHart" and "The Happy Time")

Carol as Trilby and Jack Palance as Svengali

Channel 21 continues to air full-hour reruns of Carol's show, but this is one of the rare ones that heretofore has not surfaced in its entirety. I discovered it several weeks ago and DVRed it. I had seen the MeTV edited versions plus YouTube clips of Carol's numbers with Liza. Previously unviewed material includes a typically lame Carol-and-Sis sketch where Carol and Roger entertain Crissy's date--a whacked-out hippie. But it turns out he's not her date, just a crazy guy looking for a hand-out, and then an even weirder guy in black leather motorcycle gear show up as Crissy's real date. Later Carol plays a saloon entertainer in the Wild West who destroys a bar with her Ethel Merman-like vocals. Then she has a solo warbling a slow version of "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nelly." 

The main missing piece of this show's puzzle is an extended musical parody of the Svengali story. Jack Palance is the demented mastermind who hypnotizes the innocent milkmaid Carol as Trilby into becoming a sensational opera star. There are clever ditties paying tribute to Trilby's feet and mouth, rhyming pharynx and larynx, and minus with sinus. The foot song ends with the hilarious "Now I ask you very confidentially, ain't those feet?" (instead of "Ain't She Sweet"?) Harvey, Lyle and Palance have a Wagnerian operatic trio as they battle for Carol-Trilby's soul. Harvey and Lyle punch Jack in the eyes so he can't hypnotize Carol. Finally, Lyle falls in the line of fire of Svengali's hypnotic gaze and he becomes a soprano star (lip-synching of course). Curtain.

Season 9: Jan. 15, 1976: Steve Lawrence

(MeTV) I included this hacked-up 22-minute one which I DVRed from MeTV because it included two of the shows best running bits: salutes to a specific movie studio and Carol being assaulted by various figures from then-current TV commercials in her kitchen. This time the studio was Universal with several short funny parodies. (We had just watched a documentary on Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal on TCM.) Harvey plays Olivier as Hamlet and John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn with Carol as an annoying Katharine Hepburn. Steve plays Freud with Vicki as his patient ("I gotta go shame-shame," the great analyst says after lecturing Vicki on not being inhibited about sex). Then, Carol and Steve have an amusing bit in a spoof of Earthquake.

There is also another of those great sketches where housewife Carol is beset by multiple strangers hawking commercial products in her kitchen. I think the sketch is from another episode since Edyie Gorme is in it and she is not listed as being a guest on this one. At one point, Harvey pops out of the kitchen sink as Joe Di Maggio selling Mr. Coffee and Carol promptly busts him one with a frying pan.

Season 10: Jan. 15, 1977: Glen Campbell

(Channel 21) This is the one where an audience member who looks and dresses like Beatrice Arthur as Maude steals the

Glen Campbell and Carol parody
Kris Kristofferson and
Barbra Streisand in the 
Star Is Born poster.

show by duetting with Carol on "You Made Me Love You" and then criticizing the star for missing the lyrics ("You screwed it up"). Country-pop star Glen Campbell was then enjoying a resurgence of his career with the chart-topper "Southern Nights" which he sings here. Campbell had been so popular in the mid-1960s he even had his own variety series (The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, 1969-72) and starred opposite John Wayne and Kim Darby in the original True Grit. 

After his solo number, Glen joins Carol in a brief sketch parodying the poster pose of Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand in the third version of A Star Is Born (previously filmed with Janet Gaynor and Frederic March, then Judy Garland and James Mason, subsequently with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga). The scene is only about three minutes long and the premise is that Glen and Carol are adulterous lovers glued together by her mischievous two-year-old. BTW, the dog (off-camera) is glued to Glen's leg. They can't get apart and her husband (Harvey's voice) enters the house and says he's going to take the pooch for a walk. This supposes that the two were making love, or sleeping after their sexual encounter, with the woman's toddler in the house. It was sorta funny. 

You could tell the writers were winding down since the other sketches were not particularly inspired: Carol as a secretary falling victim to her employer (Harvey)'s various defective products as he dictates a letter stating how marvelous they are; Carol trying to cover up for her friend's husband's supposed infidelity in a restaurant; Tim and Carol as a stereotypical working-class couple quarreling. Glen and Carol finish the hour with a musical medley featuring Glen's guitar skills and Carol trying to keep up on the ukulele. The dancers join in on Classical Gas.

Feb. 5, 1977: Helen Reddy

Vicki as Mrs. Tudball

(The Best of the Carol Burnett Show DVD Collection) Vicki gets to add to her comic repertoire by playing Mrs. Tudball, the wife of Tim's eccentric boss of Carol's Mrs. Wiggins. Carol and the gang audition as Helen Reddy's backup singers on "Ruby Red Dress" and they sound awful. Oddly this episode is a hacked-up one even though it's on a DVD collection because Reddy only appears in that one brief bit. There must have been a musical number with Reddy and they couldn't get the rights. (Reddy, who was a chart-topper with "I Am Woman" appeared on Carol's show previously with John Byner and she had her own summer replacement variety series.) The episode also includes Carol as a nervous wife returning from a sanatorium being driven crazy by her husband and Harvey and Tim trying to pick up Carol and Vicki as seeming rubes at a bus station. In the former sketch Carol brilliantly contorts her features as Harvey exhibits the annoying habits that sent her around the bend.

March 3, 1977: Hal Linden

Carol with guest Hal Linden

(Channel 21) Hal Linden had won a Tony in 1971 for The Rothschilds and parlayed that into the lead on the quirky cop comedy Barney Miller which ran from 1975 to 1982. He sings the Carpenters hit, "I Won't Last a Day Without You" from an leather upholstered easy chair with a lamp as if he's cosy and at home. There is a funny sketch with Carol and Harvey as the Ham Actors Funt and Mundane playing an intimate romantic melodrama in the Astrodome Theater where they have to throw props and their voices around the huge space. Tim does his Old Man bit as a sea captain with Harvey trying not to crack up.

The entire second half of the show is taken up with another marvelous musical parody Riverboat, satirizing Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's Show Boat. Carol plays the Irene Dunne-Ava Gardner role as the tragic Julie (called Ruby here). Her awful secret is not that she is of mixed race, but that her grandmammy used to be a (ugh!) saloon singer. Hal plays the Howard Keel-Allen Jones lead, Snakey instead of Gaylord. Vicki is Wisteria (not Magnolia). Harvey is the lovable Pappy (Charles Winninger-Joe E. Brown). In this version, Julie-Ruby's love is combined with Magnolia-Wisteria's so Carol's tragedy is doubled when Snakey dumps her for Wisteria. Hal gets to display his impressive pipes in parodies of the original score--"Pretend" in place of "Make Believe"; "Lovin' That Bum of Mine" replaces "Can't Help Lovin' That Man of Mine." The weirdest casting is Tim singing the take-off of "Ole Man River." The finale has Carol getting hit in the head with a giant bale of cotton.

March 19, 1977: Neil Sedaka

(The Best of the Carol Burnett Show DVD Collection) Yet more refugees from commercials attack Carol in her kitchen. Neil Sedaka, a top singer-songwriter of the day, gets into the act and almost shoots her when she squeezes the Charming Toilet Tissue. Sedaka participates in a short bit with Carol about autographs which is basically a time-filler. The two main sketches involve Harvey trying to cheat the IRS and Carol getting into bed to get rid of overstaying dinner guests Tim and Vicki.

The finale is inventive as Neil plays variations on his big hit "Love Will Keep Us Together" with Vicki singing it classically in 18th century garb, Carol warbles it honky-tonk style, Harvey does a flamenco and there's a gospel section with Vicki leading the chorus in smacking those tambourines. The finale has Carol and Tim parodying The Captain and Tenille, the husband-and-wife duo who sang the song and had their brief variety summer series (which had an even shorter run than Helen Reddy's). Tim is hysterically deadpan as the banal Captain. The Captain and Tenille later guest-starred on Carol's show in the 11th and final season.

Sketch found on YouTube (circa 1977)

Carol as Anita Bryant

In this brief but elaborate musical sketch, Carol is dressed as Anita Bryant, singer and anti-gay activist. She's a forgotten relic now, but in the late 1970s Bryant was a prominent homophobic figure and the butt--you'll excuse the expression--of many jokes.

I found this segment on YouTube, but there was no identification as to which Carol Burnett Show episode it was part of. It was probably from the last season (1977-78) since Bryant was at the height of her media notoriety, plus Don Chrichton and several of the Ernie Flatt Dancers appear as partygoers in costumes as such campy figures as Mae West, Gene Simmons from Kiss, Mr. Spock, and Dolly Parton. Evidently Anita has stumbled into some kind of gay Halloween party. After Carol sings about the Florida Sunshine tree in a parody of Bryant's orange juice commercials,  Don tells Anita that the PTA meeting is next door. She asks "Well, then, where am I?" Tim shows up as Truman Capote and lisps "I'll never tell." The chorus boogeys and sings about what a swell Hollywood party this was and then Tim warbles "I'm so glad we had this time together."

Season 11: March 12, 1978: James Garner, George Carlin, Ken Berry

(Channel 21) An odd last-season entry with three big name guests. Dick Van Dyke had left by this time so the three

Vicki in the big tap number.

males took the place of a male foil for Carol. Garner later co-starred with Carol in Robert Altman's HEALTH. The highlight is Ken's excellent tap number with the chorus called "My Cutie's Due on the Two-Twenty-Two" and then Vicki enters magnificent Bob Mackie 1910s outfit with a great hat (pictured at right). The sketches are not bad, but not great either. The funniest is George Carlin's solo bit as a record pitchman hawking a collection of every song ever written. The cost: a mere $27,000. Carlin later appears as a dental patient getting his teeth cleaned by his bitter ex-wife. Ken plays a psychiatrist and everyone else is his patient. In a running gag, Tim is a construction worker bent on offing his annoying wife (Carol).