Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 23: Oscar-Winning Actresses Step Out

Channel 21's reruns of Carol's show has included several of the episodes starring Dame Maggie Smith. Now best known as the dragon-like Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey and the stern magical schoolmistress of the Harry Potter films, Smith began her career in musical comedy, at least in NY. Her Broadway debut was in the revue New Faces of 1956. After several triumphs in London and an Oscar for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, she returned 20 years later to star in Noel Coward's Private Lives in 1974-5.

Maggie Smith (long before Downton Abbey)
with Carol in a musical finale from Season 9

When Private Lives was in LA before opening on Broadway, she also guest-starred on Carol's show. I hadn't realized Dame Maggie had appeared with Carol a total of three times and seemed to be enjoying a vacation from Shakespeare and the classics to be clowning around, singing and dancing. She won her second Oscar for a comic role in California Suite (1979). Other Oscar-winning actresses making Carol guest shots during this period included Joanne Woodward (The Three Faces of Eve, 1957), Shirley MacLaine (Terms of Endearment, 1984), Rita Moreno (West Side Story, 1961), and Cher (Moonstruck, 1987). Woodward rarely made TV variety appearances while MacLaine did her own specials but did not appear as a guest on variety series. Moreno was a fixture on TV, especially on the children's series The Electric Company. Cher, of course was headlining her own series at this point and had appeared together with Sonny Bono on Carol's show during the first season. In honor of the recent Oscars, here's a look at award-winning ladies on Carol's show:

Tony Eligibility Ruling Reaction

Kristine Nielsen, left, is definitely a leading lady in
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Credit: T. Charles Erickson

Just five days before the Tony nominations are announced, the Tony Administration Committee met and made its final ruling as to who's eligible in which category. To paraphrase Charles Dickens (or the 1950s movie version of A Christmas Carol), the reaction from the theater blogosphere has resembled a chorus of scalded cats. The two biggest causes for brouhaha concern are the four young actresses playing the title role in Matilda and the status of Kristine Nielsen of Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. The talented quartet of little girls who alternate as Roald Dahl's spunky genius were ruled ineligible for Best Actress in a Musical and will be awarded a Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theater. All that is very fine, but it breaks precedence with the Billy Elliot boys. The three young men who alternated in that role were considered eligible as a single, joint nominee for Best Actor in a Musical, and won. What's the difference here? It is because there are four as opposed to three? Or perhaps the Matilda producers did not want to have to give Tony voters free tickets on four separate occasions and lose all that income? This happens with the Tonys all the time. Unlike the Supreme Court, they do not abide by previous cases. There have been plenty of times when actors has been considered leading AND featured for the same role--Zena Walker and Stockard Channing both played the same part in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. But Walker won a Featured Tony and Channing triumphed in the leading category when the play was revived. same with Joel Grey and Alan Cumming in Cabaret.