Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 14: Carol's Lost Christmas

It's Christmas again and time for a Carol Burnett Show present and recap. Last year my husband Jerry got me the massive Lost Episodes collection and for my birthday last May he bought me the Best of retrospective. (Episodes and fragments from those collections have appeared in previous posts in this series of Reconstructing the Burnett series, parts 1-13). This bleak yuletide season was made a mite brighter by my 2020 present from Jerry, Carol's Lost Christmas, a single DVD with three episodes from the "lost" years of Carol's variety series. Episodes from Season Six to Eleven had been in syndication as Carol Burnett and Friends for decades, but the first five seasons were controlled by another company and have not been available until recently. This Lost Christmas collection has no bonus material or features, but does include two complete holiday episodes and one nearly complete episode. They are not the best of the series, but they do fill some holes in the Carol canon. 

The previous 13 blog entries in this series have chronicled my reactions to episodes available on the DVD collections, MeTV, YouTube, Amazon and ShoutFactory! The Amazon and ShoutFactory shows are chopped up into 22 minutes. For this entry, I will cover the shows on Lost Christmas (all were watched during Christmas Day) and start to pick up the other episodes not previously mentioned in other posts. Eventually, I'd like to write about every episode available. There are some fragments still missing because of music copyright issues that I would love to find. Once COVID is under control, I plan to visit the Paley Center for Media where there are several complete Burnett episodes which were only partially viewable on Amazon, etc. 

Season One: Dec. 4. 1967: Barbara Eden, Jonathan Winters, Leonard Nimoy

Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman on
I Dream of Jeannie

(Carol's Lost Christmas) Barbara Eden was the star of the NBC fantasy sitcom I Dream of Jeannie (1965-70) where she played a sexy genie whose only wish was to serve her master, Tony Nelson, a dull astronaut played by Larry Hagman. The comedy was supposed to erupt when Tony tried to hide Jeannie from his stuffy commander, Hayden Rourke and his snooty wife. (Perhaps someday I will write a blog comparing Jeannie and Samantha from Bewitched.) Eden did have considerable musical talent which she displayed occasionally on Jeannie. In this Christmas episode from the first Burnett season, Eden does have a fun Greek-inspired number, "Bend It," with the chorus (you can see future Tony nominee Lee Roy Reams among the boys). George Chakiris did a similar number also in Season One. Barbara's only other appearance is a short bit with Carol and Lyle where she uses her alleged magical powers to grant Carol three wishes. Carol's first two wishes are that Lyle flatters and then hugs her, but the last wish is reserved for Barbara herself when Lyle passionately kisses her. ("I gave you two out of three, Carol," Barbara quips.)

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 6

Reconstructing the missing episodes of The Carol Burnett Shows has been difficult of late. MeTV has advanced to the old Carol Burnett and Friends segments from seasons six through 11 which first aired in syndication during the last year of Carol's show. A YouTube user has been posting some of the lost segments from those first five years but some were taken down, probably because of copyright infringement issues. Amazon Prime has posted only ten segments from the Lost Episodes DVD collections. (Apparently they will be posting more but not until Jan. 22, 2020.) But thanks to a marvelous Christmas present from my husband Jerry--The Lost Episodes Ultimate Collection--I am able to continue my all-important quest of putting together as much of Carol's classic series as possible. There are several different DVD packages which Time Life puts out, so it's kinda confusing as to which one to get so you will have the most episodes. I don't understand why they don't just release them season by season. That way you'd know exactly what segments you are getting and in what order, but they probably make more money this way.

With my Christmas present

This Ultimate Collection contains 22 DVDs with 45 episodes as well as over 20 hours of bonus material including the Carol Plus 2 special with Lucille Ball and Zero Mostel as well as the entire Once Upon a Mattress special from 1972 with Carol, Ken Berry, Jack Gilford, Bernadette Peters, Jane White recreating her role as the evil Queen, and Lyle as Sir Studley (be still my heart). The collection comes in a big box containing five DVD collections--The Lost Episodes, Treasures from the Vault, Classic Carol, and two Exclusive Bonus Features sets. Each set has a accompanying booklet detailing each episode. All of the booklets have an introduction explaining why the lost episodes were lost with a funny story about Tim Conway secreting the tapes in question and Carol and Vickie force-feeding him DVDs of his failed series Rango. Several of the individual discs contain feature bonus material. I will go through the episodes not already covered in previous blogs.