Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 19: More Movie Spoofs

As 2021 comes to an end and I am recovering from being in an auto accident (I was struck by a car while crossing a street while I had the light), here is a new installment in our series on the Carol Burnett Show. This time we focus on the series' brilliant movie parodies.

Season Seven
Dec. 15, 1973: Ruth Buzzi, Richard Crenna

Harvey and Carol in 
Raised to be Rotten

(Full episode found on YouTube) The high point of this segment is a salute to Bad Girls of the Movies. Ruth plays Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate and then Richard comes in as Benjamin, the much younger object of her seduction--dressed in a boy scout outfit. Then Carol does her over-the-top Bette Davis impersonation while Vicki plays Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington from All About Eve. After Vicki smears Carol with make-up and smacks her with a powder puff to make her look bad, Vicki then takes Carol-Bette's dress and imagines replacing the great star. Carol throws Vicki out of the dressing room. Then Harvey as Gary Merrill comes to comfort Carol, but tries on the dress himself. (More condescending gay/trans/cross-dressing humor).

2014-15 Broadway/Off-B'way Season Update

Glenn Close will star in
Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance this fall

Theater awards for 2013-14 are pouring in and so are announcements of new shows for 2014-15. In addition to This Is Our Youth with Michael Cera and Kieran Culken, there are several revivals of plays of which I have strong memories. It's Only a Play is Terrence McNally's inside-baseball comedy set on the opening night of a huge flop. Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick will reunite as a bitter actor and nervous playwright. I saw an earlier version of it called Broadway, Broadway during its out-of-town try-out in Philadelphia just before I went away to college in 1977. It starred James Coco and Geraldine Page, and closed out of town. I do remember one joke about Beatrice Straight doing a cabaret act. It resurfaced as It's Only a Play Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club in 1986, again with Coco and Christine Baranski, Joanna Gleason and Mark Blum.

Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance is also coming back, this time with Glenn Close, John Lithgow, Lindsay Duncan and Martha Plimpton, directed by Pam McKinnon who staged Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf for Steppenwolf and on Broadway. When I was in college in Pittsburgh, there were two simultaneous productions by different groups. I must be getting old because the 1996 revival seems like only a few months ago to me.