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.

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. 

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 38: Carol in the 1990s

A new batch of episodes from Carol's early 1990s period--encompassing the anthology series Carol and Company on NBC and her short-lived 1991 CBS rebooted variety series--have cropped up on YouTube.

Carol and Company (NBC 1990-91)

Season One:

May 12, 1990: Myna and the Messenger
Guest Star: Howie Mandel

Carol and Howie Mandel in
Myna and the Messenger

A neat little morality tale written by playwright Mark St. Germain who had some success Off-Broadway with plays such as Camping with Tom and Henry and Ears on a Beatle. Carol plays Myna, a deeply religious woman who prays for a miracle to save her church which is set for the wrecking ball. In walks Mandel (After St. Elsewhere but before Deal or No Deal) as regular-guy angel Steve. 

Steve persuades Myna to go to Atlantic City and gamble her life savings in order to save the church. Much of the comedy derives from the straight-laced Myna coming up against prostitutes and bikers. But after a few Harvey Wallbangers, she begins rolling sevens at the craps table and forgets her Sunday School morality. The twist ending is unexpected as Myna discovers she was betting on the wrong angel. Dennis Burkley has a nice guest turn as a burly biker who turns out to be more than his scary exterior would indicate.

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 37: Carol Channing, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, and Others

Season Two
Sept. 30, 1968: Carol Channing

(Previously reviewed on Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part Ten: Carol and Carol Q&A, Bored Political Wife sketch, Golddigger sketch)

Carol and Carol

(ShoutFactoryTV.com) I found the complete version of this episode on ShoutFactoryTV's Original Masters series. Amazon was supposed to have it but the thumbnail promising the two Carols show led to an episode with Tim Conway from the first season that was already posted in the same series. Evidently someone at Amazon screwed up. So did someone at TV Guide which listed the original episode in 1968 as starring Mission: Impossible stars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. (The husband and wife team never appeared on Carol's show, but there was a Mission: Impossible spoof a few seasons later.) 

Previously missing material includes Carol Channing recreating "Homesick Blues" from the Broadway production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The song about missing America while in Paris did not make the film version and neither did Carol, as she was replaced by Marilyn Monroe. Channing is delightful in her 1920s garb, warbling about Mutt and Jeff, Texas Guinan, and bathtub gin. 

There's also a Carol and Sis sketch, employing the overused plot point of a misunderstanding leading to an awkward martial situation. Husband Roger (Harvey) finds a wristwatch in the living room with the current date inscribed on it. He assumes it's an anniversary or birthday that he's forgotten and rushes to buy his wife Carol a pearl necklace. Turns out the watch was a present for another couple for whom Carol was holding onto, so she uses Harvey's forgetfulness to leverage the necklace into a matching set of earrings, because all women just care about jewelry, right?

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 34: Carol's 1991 Comeback

Carol with Martin Short on her
short-lived 1991 variety series

After the end of the original Carol Burnett Show, Carol made her third and final attempt at another regular series in the fall of 1991 and it did not go well. Her 1979 four-episode series Carol Burnett and Company did reasonably during its summer run on ABC. She returned to a series with Carol and Company, an anthology series featuring a different playlet each week and the repertory company of players. This was a midseason replacement on NBC which ran from March 1990 until July 1991 with a total of 33 episodes (many of which are available on Youtube. Perhaps I will do a blog on some of those some day soon.) There were occasional guest stars like Betty White, Christopher Reeve, Swoosie Kurtz (who won a Guest Actress Emmy), Robert Urich, and Carol's daughter Carrie Hamilton. When Carol and Company was cancelled, Carol went back to CBS for a revival of her variety-show, but the magic just wasn't there. She had a cast of recurring, young performers including two holdovers from the Carol and Company group--Richard Kind (now on CBS's East New York crime drama and a veteran of the NY stage, I met him at the Drama Desk Awards many times) and Megan Fay. They are joined by Chris Barnes, Roger Kabler, and Jessica Lundy. The reviews were not great. "Making Carol Burnett and Martin Short dull and monotonous is a steep, uphill climb," squawked the Los Angeles Times. "But Friday night’s premiere of “The Carol Burnett Show” on CBS somehow got there, affirming that even the funniest performers rarely overcome unfunny material. Burnett’s is the last of the 1991-92 fall series to debut. And, amazingly, one of the worst."