Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 42: Paley Center Visits 4 & 5

In the waning days of summer, I was able to make two brief visits to the Paley Center here in NYC in order to catch up on their archival collection of Carol's two series subsequent to the end of her long-running variety show. They had all four episodes of Carol Burnett and Company (1979) and some eps of Carol and Company (1990-1).

Carol Burnett and Company
Aug. 18, 1979: Cheryl Ladd

Carol with Cheryl Ladd on Carol Burnett and
Company (1979)

The first of Carol's four summer shows begins with her farewell speech for the last show of the 1967-78 CBS series. She talks about moving on from variety and how change is growth. Cut to Carol in 1979: "So I changed my mind." She explains the plan of this new ABC series is to do four shows for the summer and hopefully do it every August like summer camp. (Unfortunately, ABC opted out after one year and CBS decided to go with the Tim Conway Show instead.) This series is like an extension of the original with much of the same personnel (Carol's husband Joe Hamilton producing, Tim and Vicki, Peter Matz as music director, and many of the same chorus dancers. Craig Richard Nelson and Kenneth Mars sub for Harvey. The writing staff was reduced and joined by Ann Elder, formerly of Laugh-In and Emmy winner for her contributions to Lily Tomlin's specials.)

The first sketch is a reunion of Mr. Tudball and Mrs. Wiggins dealing with the energy crisis. Tim as Tudball mocks a poster of President Jimmy Carter for forcing him to cut back on electricity. Carol as Mrs. Wiggins almost gets herself fired for slow shorthand, general incompetence and asking for the afternoon off. (When asked why she wants to skip work, Wiggins answers, "I'm out of gas and I'm odd," referring to the national plan that drivers should get gas on odd or even days.) But she catches Tudball running an illegal fan and blackmails him into letting her keep her job. 

Cheryl Ladd then starring on ABC's Charlie's Angels, does a weird medley of Singin' the Greys and Boogie Wonderland with the chorus boys in some sort of tropical setting. Carol fills in some time with Kenneth Mars as an obnoxious audience member who would rather have seen Dinah Shore's show. Carol and Cheryl do a duet of Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are." Carol later appeared on Cheryl's ABC special "Cheryl Ladd: Scenes from a Special." 

The rest of the hour is taken up with a series of songs and sketches on the then-hot topic of palimony, a form of alimony for those splitting couples who lived together without benefit of wedlock. The most famous case was Oscar-winning tough guy Lee Marvin (Cat Ballou, The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance) getting sued by his former live-in lady Michelle Triola-Marvin. Ironically, Michelle later met and moved in with Carol's previous co-star Dick Van Dyke and lived with him for 35 years until her death in 2019.

Carol, Cheryl and Vicki start things off as a girl trio in 1940s outfits singing of the joys of palimony in a specialty number by Billy Barnes. The first sketch is the funniest thing in the whole show as Carol impersonates Triola-Marvin badly warbling and clumsily dancing through a rendition of "The Best Things in Life Are Free" with the chorus boys. The joke is that Triola claimed Lee Marvin prevented her from pursuing a singing career.

Then Tim, Vicki and Craig are at a restaurant. It appears that Vicki is a wife waiting for her late soon-to-be ex-husband so they can negotiate palimony. Tim is her lawyer and Craig seems to be the husband's lawyer. Kenneth shows up and apologizes for being late. The punchline: Craig and Kenneth are a gay couple splitting up and Tim and Vicki are the lawyers. Hilarious at the time, but dated today. The stereotypical jokes are really old. Craig and Kenneth agree to reconcile but fight over who will cook the quiche for dinner (it was a popular gag in the late 1970s that only gay men ate quiche and real men did not--there was even a book called "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche"). Tim wraps it up by saying, "So we're all straight now, right?" Straight, not gay, get it? Cue audience laughter.

In the next sketch, Craig and Cheryl are little kids playing house and Cheryl insists on a prenup. Carol and Tim follow with a reprise of the Crazy Pigeon Lady bit where nutty Carol tricks innocent old man Tim into giving her money. The whole palimony sequence ends with the ladies reprising the specialty number with the chorus boys dancing ("If you're not fond of wedding bands/Be careful when shaking hands.")

Commercials were included in this video. Sammy Davis, Jr. sells Alka-Seltzer.

Aug. 25, 1979: Alan Arkin

Carol with Alan Arkin in her
1979 summer series

The second segment was not as entertaining as the first. Guest star Alan Arkin is underused, only appearing in a short musical number, a middling sketch and the finale. (Carol and Alan would co-star in a huge movie bomb called Chu Chu and the Philly Flash just a few years later in 1981.) The hour starts with Carol mentioning another cinematic bomb she was then currently starring in--Robert Altman's HEALTH which is a fascinating film to me because I'm an Altman fan, but not to many others. 

The sketches include a rather offensive one where Carol as Queen Elizabeth must cope with "restless natives" in a generic African nation as well as Tim playing the hollow soldier now her pilot refusing to fly her and Craig as Prince Philip out of the country unless she gives him her hat. 

Alan does a creditable job singing Rodgers and Hart's "I Could Write a Book," and makes it comic by eating a sandwich during the song. Carol joins him for a duet of cute tunes that Alan wrote for his kids (Adam and Matthew who grew up to pursue their own acting careers.) A routine burglar sketch follows with Tim breaking into the home of sleeping Carol and Craig. Through a series of mishaps, Tim turns out to be the one who gets screwed over. Vicki sings a pop tune about lying boyfriends while the chorus boys boogie. Alan plays a tyrannical vocal coach and Carol is a tone-deaf movie star auditioning for a Broadway musical. Alan is pretty funny channeling Sid Ceasar as the Germanic, dictatorial singing teacher. Somehow the whole thing ends with both parties getting shot.

For the finale, the cast, dressed in formal wear as if they are grand musicians, playing tiny toy pianos and singing a medley of "They're Playing My Song" and "Sing a Song." 

Sept. 1, 1979: Penny Marshall

Penny Marshall, Carol and Vicki

During the Q&A, Carol reiterates how nice it is to work only four weeks of the year and take off the other 48. An audience member compliments her and Ned Beatty on Friendly Fire, a dramatic ABC TV-movie. Carol then brings Penny out and they banter about looks not being important. The awkward exchange ends with Carol accidentally ripping Penny's dress. The first sketch is Rocko 37, a half-hearted satire of the proliferation of Rocky movies with Tim doing his old-man schtick as an ancient version of Sylvester Stallone and Carol in a fat suit as much older and heavier Talia Shire. The lame punchline comes when Tim as Rocko wins his 37th match by default because Carol as Adrienne sat on his opponent, Apollo Creep (off-camera). 

Penny appears as a novice airline stewardess totally screwing up everything much to the consternation of supervisor Carol. The joke: Penny's dad owns the airline. Carol and Tim then do a musical sketch with Tim as a farmer and Carol as his wife force feeding him dinner while she sings the disco hit "Ring My Bell."

The rest of this episode and the final episode with Sally Field are summarized in Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 32, linked here chronicling a previous visit to the Paley Center last summer. 

Also viewed on this 2023 visit were two episodes of Carol's 1990 anthology series, Carol and Company.

Carol and Company:

April 14, 1990: Mother from Hell: Dorothy Lyman, Burt Reynolds (cameo)

Carol with the cast of her 1990
series. Jeremy Piven (top, center)
 left the show
after a few episodes.

Dorothy Lyman was a regular on Carol's favorite soap All My Children as well as starring as Opal, Ken Berry's wife on Mama's Family. She has a thankless supporting role as the neighbor of Carol, a downtrodden mother whose two grown children (regulars Anita Barone and Jeremy Piven) have been mooching off her for years. Finally, she snaps and sues them for $55,000 for all the expenses, free meals and rent she has provided since they turned 18. Carol is great threatening her kids with a baseball bat if they don't pay up. The trial makes up the bulk of the show which is sorta funny with Richard Kind as Carol's incompetent lawyer, Terry Kiser as the kids' attorney and Meagan Fey as the judge. Carol has a lovely tearful monologue explaining that she still loves her children, but wants them out of her house so she can have her own space. Thought she loses in court, she finally wins by selling the house and taking off for a tropical resort where she meets available hunk Burt Reynolds. In the tag, Carol explains to the audience she asked Burt to do the cameo role just two days before. Carol and Burt appeared in Same Time, Next Year at his dinner theater in Jupiter, Florida.

Nov. 24, 1990: Jingle Belles: Bernadette Peters

I have a vague memory of seeing this one before. Carol and Bernadette Peters, her frequent guest star on all of her series, play a jingle writing team pitching a song for a dogfood commercial. At the meeting, Bernadette gets an offer for a singing contract and Carol must persuade her to split the team and pursue her own path. It's really just an excuse for Bernadette to sing a big ballad which she does beautifully. Richard Kind does score points as the duplicitous but warm-hearted agent and Carol plays the songwriter's conflicted emotions well. 

The Paley had one more Carol and Company, but it was on a separate tape and needed to be specially requested. I might try to see that one at a later date.