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.

(Carol's Favorites) Season 7: Jan. 19, 1974

Guest: Carl Reiner

Harvey, Carol and Carl Reiner
in the Female Comic sketch

The bulk of this episode is taken up with a Mexican musical take-off on Little Red Riding Hood, La Caparocita Roja. Such a parody would probably be verboten today with all the screaming stereotypical sombrero-wearing chorus kids and Carol trotting out her Charo impersonation. There's also Lyle delivering a swishy gay stereotype as the stunningly handsome, but chicken-hearted matador. But there are funny moments provided by Harvey as an Hispanic version of Mother Marcus playing the Grandmother and Carl as the bull. Harvey has a riotous solo number playing the castanets while swinging around his considerable cleavage. Somehow the grandmother and the bull wind up together in a weird romantic union crossing gender and species lines. "Love is a lot of bull," sings Harvey. Vicki is precise and sarcastic as the narrator.

Carol beautifully sings "Send in the Clowns" from the new Stephen Sondheim musical A Little Night Music. Instead of the sophisticated actress of the show, she is a veteran secretary with an unrequited crush on her boss (Harvey), lamenting his imminent marriage after they've been together for 15 years.

Carl appears in two sorta fun sketches. First he's accident-prone Carol's husband trying to get insurance in a Hungarian restaurant full of dangerous flames and cutlery. Carol is stabbed, burned with a cigar, stomped on, has a fingernail ripped off, and is relieved of her wig by a strolling violinist. In the second sketch, Carl is a psychiatrist attempting to cure stand-up comic Carol (got up to look like Phyllis Diller) of her constant off-stage wisecracking which is wrecking her marriage to Harvey.

(Carol's Favorites) Season 8: Jan. 4, 1975
Guests: Joan Rivers, Vincent Price, Tony Orlando and Dawn (cameo)

Joan Rivers and Vincent Price

The highlight of this show was the parodies of then current TV shows including Police Woman, Chico and the Man (with Carol doing her Charo impersonation again), Rhoda (with Joan as Valerie Harper), Tony Orlando and Dawn (with the actual singers appearing at the end of the sketch) and an extended sketch taking off The Waltons called The Walnuts. Carol plays John-Girl instead of John-Boy. Harvey and Vicki are the grandparents, Joan and Vincent are the parents and four of the chorus kids play John-Girl's siblings. Dick Patterson appears as Rich City Man (no name given) who wishes to buy the Walnut home for $1 million and build an amusement park. The family rejects the offer in order to continue basking in the joys of poverty. As they endlessly say good-night in a giant bed, the adult John-Girl says in a voice-over, "I think back on that day on Walnuts' Mound and I realize what a bunch of dummies we were."

 

Joan is introduced with a production number "Born in Brooklyn" with Carol, Vicki and the chorus dressed as street urchins. Her monologue is dated but still funny. "I have no sex appeal. The only reason I have a kid is because my husband tosses and turns in his sleep." She includes audience members in the front row, asking to see the wives' rings to tell if they are first or second spouses.

Vincent plays a mystery writer victimized by Carol's persistent and blackmailing Girl Scout Alice Portnoy. She was a one-joke character and was abandoned after a while. Vincent and Vicki appear as understudies to Carol and Harvey's ham actors. They kick, bite and bruise the stars in order to get onstage for the final performance.

The finale is a satire of Peter and the Wolf entitled Sarah and the Moose. Once again, bestiality is introduced as Carol's character Aunt Fanny winds up romantically with Harvey as a moose.

(This Time Together) Season 10

Oct. 16, 1976: Madeline Kahn

Carol as Eunice coached by
guest Madeline Kahn

In the abbreviated syndicated half-hour version of this episode, the extended Family sketch is broken up with a commercial to fill in 22 mins. The sketch runs 18 mins. Guest Madeline Kahn plays Mavis Danton, a pompous but low-grade actress whose main claim to fame is a little film called Cat Women on Mars. Eunice has been cast in a small role in the Raytown community theater (the famous Pepper Pot Playhouse) production of Mary, Queen of Scotland with Madeline's character starring and directing. (The Pepper Pot is also named in the Sammy Davis Jr. episode.) Mavis visits the Higgins house to rehearse with Eunice and enlists Mama and Ed to join in by assuming the roles of Queen Elizabeth and a courtier. Kahn is hilarious as the pretentious thespian, giving Eunice bizarre directions and exercises to "improve" her acting. "We are after a kind of numb despair combined with a doomed frivolity," Mavis intones. (This is the exact opposite of what I learned in my acting classes. Never play a generalized feeling, go for a solid objective. What does my character want to accomplish in this scene?) When I saw Mary of Scotland on Broadway with Janet McTeer, I couldn't help but think of Eunice and Mavis.

Kahn was at the height of her fame, having starred in Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon and Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, receiving Oscar nominations for the first two. We were still in an era where an appearance on a TV variety series could help a career. Kahn also appeared to great effect on SNL, then emerging as the major magnet for younger audiences. Here, she also displays her operatic voice in a parody of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald with Harvey as part of the finale, That's Entertainment, Part 86. The retro series had just released Part Two and would later churn out Part Three. The gag is that all the stars are now geriatric versions of their former selves. Vicki taps as Ann Miller, Tim is an inept Fred Astaire, and Carol reprises her Esther Williams from the Ricardo Montalban episode (not clear if it's the same swimming footage.) A friendship duet between Madeline and Carol and a Wiggins-Tudball sketch round out the hour.

(This Time Together): Season 11

Oct. 29, 1977: Ken Berry

Dick Van Dyke was now a regular after Harvey Korman left to star in his own sitcom on ABC, which lasted only a few episodes. Van Dyke did not really fit into the role of second banana to Carol, though he was adept at physical comedy and musical performance. He gets to demonstrate his skill at the former in a sketch wherein Carol tries to injure his hands in order to collect on an insurance policy, but keeps damaging every other part of his body (He's a washed-up concert pianist). This episode featured perennial guest Ken Berry in his usual musical number with the chorus and featuring another dance duet with the same girl he did the Rainmaker number with in a previous episode (though she doesn't get a solo bow with the cast in the good nights like last time.)  Tim and Carol go into other yet another Tudball and Wiggins scene, this time painting their office. Paint is splattered, laughs are gotten depending on your taste level. Physical pain and messes are the humor ingredients for this tired segment.

Ken Berry, Carol, Vicki and Dick Van Dyke in
Stolen Serenade

Fortunately, we do get a two-part movie satire on the Late, Late, Late Show with Stolen Serenade. I could not identify the film upon which this parody is based, but it had elements of Me and My Gal. Dick, Ken and Vicki are a struggling vaudeville trio. Carol is the rotten and narcissistic star Lily du Lane who steals Dick and the group's song. Dick becomes a raging alcoholic while Ken and Vicki become penniless beggars. But all is resolved when Dick leaves Carol to rejoin his pals, Carol starts hitting the booze and they save the show. This production number is kinda cute with the chorus dressed as snowflakes and snowmen. 

In the final scene, the tables have completely turned, the trio is now the top act on Broadway and Lily du Lane is in the gutter. She dies, ascends to heaven in her hospital bed, and transforms into an angel, revealing wings underneath her patient's gown. 

(This Time Together) Nov. 11, 1977: No guests

Once again a movie take-off saves an otherwise lackluster show. The Enchanted Hovel (ripping off 1945's The Enchanted Cottage with Dorothy Maguire and Robert Young) features Carol and Dick as two ugly misfits transformed into beauties by the titular hovel. But they are only gorgeous within its walls. Carol with a unibrown and buck teeth is a visual riot. Vicki does her Maria Ouspenskaya accent as the housekeeper and Tim gets laughs from fumbling as a blind pianist.  

The lame sketches include a mimed dog-training scene for Dick, Vicki and Tim who all pretend to have weird-sized invisible canines and Carol and Tim at a crazy hospital where the doctors pay more attention to making sandwiches than performing surgery. There is one brief moment of charm when Dick and Carol duet as mirror-image clowns on "It All Depends on You." It's cute, sweet and simple as Dick makes himself up with white face paint, fright wig and baggy pants with Carol copying him to perfection.

Bonus Feature on Carol's Favorites:

The Garry Moore Show: March 6, 1962

Carol as Supergirl on
The Garry Moore Show

We get an almost complete segment of the Moore show, a variety series where Carol first came to national prominence as a regular supporting player. The guests are comic Alan King and singer Barbara McNair (who went to college with Carol). The reason they included this episode (which I'm pretty sure is included in another collection), is the Supergirl sketch, where Carol played a female version of the superhero and first uttered her famous Tarzan yell. Supergirl, Superman's cousin, first appeared in Action Comics in 1959. In this version, Carol plays Supergirl and her alter ego Cora Clean, a mild-mannered newspaper reporter with a sinus condition. She is madly in love with her co-worker (Durwood Kirby) and, after rescuing him as Supergirl, punches him out when he fails to respond to her amorous advances. 

Barbara McNair's music numbers are missing, but we do get King's Catskills-style monologue about buying his kids a dog and vacationing with his wife. Both disasters. There's also a sketch spoofing giveaway shows with needy contestants called Strike It Sick and the finale salutes the fabulous year of 1921. 

In an interesting theatrical footnote, Garry singles out a chorus boy who is leaving the show in order to join the company of a new Broadway musical--A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Forum.