Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 43

It's been almost a year since we've visited the Carol Burnett Show. Except for one brief musical excerpt found on YouTube, I haven't found any missing material from the "lost" years of the first five seasons. However, I did came across DVD collections of episodes from Seasons 6 through 11. Carol's Favorites was found at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts while This Time Together was hiding at a Salvation Army store for $1. These episodes are available in their entirety. Some of the ones on these collections have been covered in previous blogs. Here are reviews of shows I have not already commented on.

(This Time Together) Season 6: Nov. 1, 1972
Guests: Peggy Lee, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara

The show starts with the the infamous Mary Worthless sketch where everything went wrong. Lines and props were dropped. Harvey tripped while jumping out of a window with a cake in his face. Carol's last line was "Don't be surprised if I show up on your doorstep." She added, "Better yet, be surprised because I'm not doing this again."

Meara and Stiller as Lyle's uncouth parents

Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara were the premiere married comedy duo of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I think there was one other--Mitzi McCall and Charlie Brill, aka The Fun Couple. But Stiller and Meara made more high-profile appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, Mike Douglas, etc. I saw them in Neil Simon's Last of the Red Hot Lovers and The Prisoner of Second Avenue at Philadelphia's Playhouse in the Park while they co-hosted the Mike Douglas Show during the day. Here they perform a sketch imagining the reactions of Mr. and Mrs. Chou En-Lai to Richard Nixon's famous visit to China. The scene is stuffed with Chinese stereotypes which wouldn't play today. ("These foreigners all look alike to me.") Would Stiller and Meara's ethnic humor (he's Jewish, she's Irish-Catholic) still work now? 

Lyle as Hugo Biceps, Carol and Anne Meara
in the Circus episode of
As the Stomach Turns

As the Stomach Turns finally gets out of Marian's living room and shifts to the circus with Anne as a bearded lady and owner of the big top which she suspects is being sabotaged from within. Lyle makes a heart-stopping appearance as Hugo Biceps, the strongman whom Marian salivates over. Lyle is practically barechested in a lionskin outfit which Carol as Marian does her best to remove. Of course, this scene and Lyle's gorgeous exposed muscles have stayed in my mind for 50 years. There was one joke I didn't get when I was 12. Marian is questioning Hugo as to his whereabouts the previous night, trying to ascertain if he is the saboteur. "I was in bed, alone," he answers. "And the night before that?" "Alone." "And the night before that?" "Alone." "You really are the strongest man in the world," Marian tremblingly observes. I didn't get the gag then and my mother failed to explain it adequately. Only now do I realize Marian meant Hugo was strong because he resisted the obvious temptation that everyone in Canuga Falls wanted to sleep with him.

Peggy Lee has a silky solo and duets with Carol on a silly ditty on women gossiping. The finale combines music and comedy as Harvey and Carol as Vicki's patrician parents clash with Jerry and Anne as Lyle's low-class dad and mom when the kids want to get married. The class distinctions provided chuckles and the wedding is conducted by Peggy singing "The Rhythm of Life" from Sweet Charity.

Theater Memories Part 7: Ushering at the Promenade and the Jack Lawrence

The original company of Hurlyburly:
Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel,
William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver,
Jerry Stiller, Judith Ivey
and Cynthia Nixon 

Tales from the House of an Usher, Part II: So in addition to the Lucille Lortel, I ushered for a brief period at the now-gone Promenade and Jack Lawrence and its studio theater, the Audrey Wood. I spent the summer of 1984 at the Promenade ushering for David Rabe's Hurlyburly until its move to Broadway. It was a hot ticket because Mike Nichols was directing and the cast was stuffed with stars: William Hurt, Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel, Jerry Stiller, Sigourney Weaver, Judith Ivey and Cynthia Nixon (who was in college then). Nichols insisted no one be seated once the show started, so there were some difficult moments (particularly when the producer Alexander Cohen came late--we did seat him.)

Because of the cast, we had as many stars in the audience as on stage. On the first night of previews, Candace Bergen and Steve Martin attended. Bergen was so beautiful and glamorous she took my breath away. During the run we had Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Warren Beatty, Meryl Streep, Leonard Bernstein, Gregory Hines, Tom Stoppard (who tipped me $5 when I poured him a Coke at the concession stand), Mary Gross of SNL, Charles Haid of Hill Street Blues (who expressed his anger at the portrayal of TV actors in the play), Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, Jack Weston and Marge Redmond (of the Flying Nun), Bob Dishy and Judy Graubart (of The Electric Company), Sandra Bernhardt, Lauren Bacall, David Cassidy, Charlotte Rae, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Kenneth MacMillan (then he was on Rhoda as her boss), Carroll O'Connor (that's all I can remember). Christopher Walken left to film a James Bond movie and Ron Silver (Rhoda, Speed-the-Plow) took over his part when the show moved to Broadway. I got to see him rehearse with the stage manager. Judith Ivey stopped the show every night and won a well-deserved Tony.

Theatergoing Memories Part 1: Summer Stock

I've recently joined a Facebook group called Broadway Remembered. Members post their memories of theater experiences. I'm still on summer vacation and the Broadway theaters won't re-open until the fall, so I have time to recollect all the shows I've seen in nearly 50 years of theatergoing. I put the shows in different categories and posted them to the Facebook group. I've never gotten more likes or responses from anything I've ever posted on FB. So I will be reposting them here on the David Desk blog.

Summer stock is one of the richest sources of memories. Stars from TV and old Broadway used to tour in recent or old shows for one-week stands. The Valley Forge Music Fair and the Philadelphia Playhouse in the Park were the theaters my parents took me to, starting around 1971 when I was about 12. I've been trying to remember all those shows.

At the Valley Forge Music Fair: Ginger Rogers in Coco, Jan Peerce in Fiddler, Angela Lansbury in Gypsy, Yul Brynner in The King and I, Lauren Bacall in Wonderful Town, Eva Gabor in Applause (she broke her ankle and we got the understudy), Frank Gorshin in Promises, Promises (he broke his ankle too but went on anyway), Robert Alda, Vivian Blane, Jane Kean, Selma Diamond, Hildegarde, Mary Small, Lynn Bari in Follies, Theodore Bikel, Lainie Kazan, Julie Wilson in Jacques Brel, Jack Gilford and Lou Jacobi in The Sunshine Boys. Note on Frank Gorshin: He was playing Promises, Promises a week after Gabor had her accident. He broke his ankle and on a local TV talk show when asked how it happened, he said he was doing an imitation of Eva Gabor at a party. At the performance attended, he limped but got through it. What a trouper, as they used to say.

More on Eva Gabor and Applause: When Gabor broke her ankle, her understudy went on for her at the Saturday matinee I attended with my family. There is a big number "But Alive" which expresses Margo Channing's vibrant, unconventional personality when she goes to a gay bar with her hairdresser-companion and Eve instead of the stuffy opening night party. Bacall brought the house down, dancing and singing. When we saw it w/o Gabor, they cut the entire number, going from Margo singing the intro to the song in her dressing room right to her apartment. I never learned if this number was cut because the understudy didn't know it, or if it was always cut because Gabor was not a dancer. It recently occurred to me they may have cut it because the producer may have thought a scene in an unquestionably gay bar would have been too much for the suburban Philadelphia matinee ladies in 1971 or 2-or whenever it was.

Lauren Bacall, Lee Roy Reams, and (I think)
Sammy Williams in the gay bar scene
from Applause.

At the Playhouse in the Park: Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara in Last of the Red Hot Lovers and The Prisoner of Second Avenue, Tom Poston and Marian Mercer in Lovers and Other Strangers, Lynn Redgrave in The Two of Us (three one-acts by Michael Frayn), Maureen Stapleton in The Glass Menagerie, Sandy Dennis and David Selby in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sandy Dennis and Gale Sondergaard in The Royal Family, Shelley Winters in Cages (two one-acts) and The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Meg Wynn Owen (Upstairs, Downstairs) in Out on a Limb (a revue of James Thurber pieces), Peggy Cass in An Almost Perfect Person, Steve Allen and Marcia Rodd in The Wake (a play by Allen about an Irish-American family), James Whitmore and Audra Lindley in The New Mount Olive Hotel (a lame comedy which was supposed to go to Broadway but never made it), Jan Sterling in The Hot L Baltimore, Paxton Whitehead repeating his Broadway performance as Sherlock Holmes in The Crucifer of Blood, Jean Marsh in Twelfth Night, Tovah Feldshuh in Peter Pan.

Summer stock tours have faded away. Too expensive. The Valley Forge Music Fair was tore down and a Home Depot is in its place. The Playhouse in the Park closed in the early 1980s. Next up will be national tours.

Paxton Whitehead as Sherlock Holmes

More Summer Stock and TV Memories

Peggy Cass

Since my last post, I've remembered more productions seen at the long-ago-demolished Philadelphia Playhouse in the Park: Tom Poston and Marian Mercer in Lovers and Other Strangers, Jean Marsh of Upstairs, Downstairs in Twelfth Night, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Meg Wynn Owen (also of Upstairs, Downstairs) in a musical revue based on the works of James Thurber called Out on a Limb, Peggy Cass in An Almost Perfect Person, and Steve Allen and Marcia Rodd in The Wake, a play by Allen about an Irish family not unlike the actor-playwright's own in early 20th century New York.

Summer Stock Memories

Lauren Bacall's passing reminded me I had seen her starring in a summer stock touring production of Wonderful Town at the Valley Forge Music Fair in about 1977. That type of show is pretty much gone. There are still summer stock productions, but not touring editions with stars from TV, the stage and old movies on their breaks taking out the latest hits from Broadway or old warhorses in one-week stands through the Northeast and New England. My parents used to take me to these at Valley Forge and the Playhouse in the Park in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. There we saw Maureen Stapleton in The Glass Menagerie, Sandy Dennis in The Royal Family and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Jan Sterling in The Hot L Baltimore, Lynn Redgrave in The Two of Us, a collection of one-acts, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara in The Last of the Red Hot Lovers and The Prisoner of Second Avenue, Tovah Feldshuh in Peter Pan, James Whitmore and Audra Lyndley in a play called The New Mount Olive Motel which never made it to New York, and Paxton Whitehead as Sherlock Holmes in The Crucifer of Blood. Vacant for 12 years, the Playhouse was demolished in 1997.