Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 27: More Original Broadcast Masters

Here are some more reviews of full-length Carol Burnett Show episodes now available on FreeVee via Amazon. 

Season Two:
Dec. 30, 1968: Mickey Rooney, Nancy Wilson
Previously seen on MeTV: (reviewed in Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 14): Pat Nixon and Lady Bird; Kid Town Movie Parody; Nancy Wilson and Carol in awkward audition sketch with Harvey as swishy director.

Both guests have musical solos--Nancy Wilson with "The Man That Got Away" and Mickey Rooney with a sad number about a guy who's been fired and his wife has left him, but he still keeps his chin up, then sings Auld Lang Syne because it's New Year's Eve, you see. Carol does a satiric yuletide number called "The Twelve Days After Christmas." The Carol and Sis sketch is particularly lame with Carol suffering from amnesia after a hit on the head. She can't recall the last four years. She and Roger have been married for three years and only met one year before that. Hilarity ensues as Roger tries to convince Carol he is her husband and they can sleep in the same bed (Oh no!) Fortunately, Crissy bangs Carol on the noggin with a kitchen cabinet door and everything comes back to her. Vicki is featured in the finale with the chorus boys posing as a rock band, delivering "Rhythm Is Our Business."

Feb. 20, 1969: Soupy Sales, Barbara McNair, Harold Gould, Bernie Kopell
Previously seen on MeTV: (reviewed in Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 17): Carol Quits Smoking in Carol and Sis; Carol and Soupy at the perfume counter; Old Folks with Bernie Kopell as Aging Hippie.

Harvey, Lyle, Barbara McNair, Carol,
Soupy Sales and Vicki 
as little kids

Barbara McNair wears her hair natural rather than straightened (as she did in her previous appearance). She and her UCLA classmate Carol do a Las Vegas showgirl duet, both are dolled up by Bob Mackie in Josephine Baker feathers and spangles. At the other end of the glamour spectrum, Carol and Soupy play a vaudeville couple in a fake horse act which leads into "Where Would I Be Without You" from Roar of the Greasepaint, Smell of the Crowd. The finale has the entire cast playing little kids initiating Carol in their secret club. Of course, she turns out to be the toughest of all and takes over. There are original songs and a cute revolving set as well as clever costumes by Bob Mackie.

March 31, 1969: Ronnie Schell, Vicki Carr

I don't think I've seen any part of this episode at all. Ronnie Schell was on another episode with Nancy Wilson and Vicki Carr was on the Mission: Improbable show with Flip Wilson, but this one with them together doesn't ring a bell. Oh wait, now I remember. This was billed on MeTV as a Family show because the salvaged sketches didn't involve either guest. The MeTV sketches were Carol as an amateur lousing up a summer stock production with hammy actor Harvey and then Carol and Harvey as a broke couple dealing with Harvey's gambling addiction. (I have not reviewed that MeTV segment.) 

Ronnie Schell on his short-lived sitcom
Good Morning, World
with Goldie Hawn

In the audience Q&A, Carol recounts meeting President Richard Nixon. I wonder how she felt when he resigned in disgrace. In the rest of the show, Ronnie does a stand-up about his lack of star status after toiling on Gomer Pyle for two seasons, getting his own sitcom (Good Morning, World) which was quickly cancelled, and then returning to his supporting role on Gomer Pyle. He finishes his set by comically lip-synching to Mario Lanza's "Be My Love." Vicki Carr sings "Those Were the Days" and some song about divorce. Then Ronnie does his drunk act as a lawyer drawing up Roger's will in the obligatory Carol and Sis sketch (although Vicki as Sis keeps going to the movies or visiting friends during most of these scenes.) The hour concludes with Carol, Vicki Carr and the chorus dressed as scarecrows warbling about being free or something.

Season Three:

Oct. 13, 1969: Scoey Mitchell, Bobbi Gentry

Previously seen on MeTV: (reviewed in Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 10): Scoey Mitchell monologue, Queen Elizabeth/Royal Family sketches

Carol with Scoey Mitchell
as the first black president.

In a weirdly prescient sketch, Carol plays a newswoman on Face the Press interviewing the first black president (Scoey Mitchell), elected in the far-off date of 1976. I wonder if Carol thought about this sketch in 2008 when Barack Obama became President. Did she muse, "We were only off by 30 years." The jokes are pretty predictable and kinda offensive. "I don't know what wine to serve with hamhocks." "My first act will be to get the Vice-President to stop calling me boy." "I'm making George Wallace ambassador to the Congo."

Bobbi Gentry croons "Fancy," one of her songs about growing up in a rural dump and becoming a high-class "escort." The set is a bizarre mix of elegance and Southern Gothic with swampy-looking trees growing out of a beautiful staircase. After her number, Carol joins Bobbi and informs her she has written her own Bobbi Gentry-type tune called Run Down Shack. Bobbi shows her displeasure by breaking the guitar Carol was playing to accompany herself.

The Tenth Avenue Family becomes a Nielsen ratings family and Vicki sings a solo in an attic bedroom.

Carol singing her own country song for Bobbie Gentry

March 2, 1970: Tim Conway, Jane Connell

Previously seen on MeTV: (reviewed in Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 11): Tim and Harvey Sneaking in Drunk; Elaborate Arabian Nights/Maria Montez movie parody

This is one of the better episodes of the entire series, and not just because we see Lyle bare chested in two different sketches. As noted in the previous blog on this episode, Jane Connell was a familiar face from my childhood TV viewing, appearing in Capt. Kangaroo and Bewitched, and this was before I knew her from the original cast album of Mame as Agnes Gooch. She sings Tom Lehrer's Pollution song with the chorus boys dressed as street cleaners ("Pollution, Pollution/You can try the latest toothpaste/Then rinse your mouth out with industrial waste") and joins Vicki in a thoroughly terrific rendition of Thoroughly Modern Millie with four of the chorus boys Charleston-ing their asses off. 

The latter is part of a salute to Universal Studios (one of the regular features was a salute to a particular movie studio, allowing for comedy sketches and musical numbers). The Millie sequence is followed by a

Lyle and Carol in the Doris Day-
Rock Hudson parody sketch

hilarious take-off on the ultra successful Doris Day-Rock Hudson comedies which included Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back, and Send Me No Flowers. (Ironic because Rock was gay.) Carol is hysterically spot-on in her impersonation of the Doris Day character, Mary Ellen Jamie Sue, giggling and beaming innocence so much that Harvey as the real estate agent asks her to tone it down because he has diabetes. Mary Ellen Jamie Sue has come to the big city for a job interview with the king of advertising HL Smith (hunky playboy Lyle). She rents an apartment which turns out to belong to HL who is supposedly in Europe and through a ridiculous mix-up, the two wind up in bed together. Scandalized Mary Ellen Jamie Sue screams and retreats to the bathroom. HL begs her to come out and promises to marry her if she does so. She emerges a moment later in a full wedding gown. The highlights of the sketch are Lyle's naked torso and Carol's exaggerated virginal act. This sketch was excerpted on a retrospective show (I think the tenth anniversary) and I have been looking for the complete version for years.

In addition to the sketches on the MeTV version, we have yet another Old Folks sketch and Vicki singing "Leavin' on a Jet Plane."

Season Four:

March 22, 1971: David Frost, Eileen Farrell, Marilyn Horne

Previously seen on MeTV: (reviewed in Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 1): Car Salesman sketch with Carol, Harvey, David Frost; Zelda and George in ancient Rome; Italian Cinderella Opera; Marilyn Horne aria.

This filmed-in-NYC episode is one of the few to be spread across two MeTV segments, so we can piece together most of the complete show. But even then, there was still two segments missing, now restored to us in this complete version. Eileen Farrell sings a beautiful aria, followed by a blues number sequing into Gershwin's Swanee (she's lip-synching for this part) with the full chorus smacking some more tambourines. In the second missing segment, Vicki informs the audience the cast has been going to new Broadway shows including Company which was then in its first run. She introduces Carol and guest stars opera divas Horne and Farrell to sing "You Could Drive a Person Crazy." This unlikely trio is a perfect blend of voices and Bob Mackie dresses them in 1940s Andrews Sisters style. For television, they substituted "drag" for "fag" which later became the accepted version.

Eileen Farrell, Carol and Marilyn Horne
doing "You Could Drive a Person Crazy"
from Company