Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 13

New York is entering Phase 2 of reopening, but we may as well still be in lockdown. You can't eat indoors at a restaurant, browse in a bookstore, or stroll through a museum. I'm definitely not going to a movie theater anytime soon and Broadway appears to be off limits until at least spring 2021. One museum I definitely will visit once this ends is the Paley Center (formerly the Museum of Broadcasting.) A search of their archives of old TV shows turned up several complete Carol Burnett Show episodes available only piecemeal on MeTV, Amazon or ShoutFactory. Until then, there is still plenty of Burnett bounty to analyze in our continuing series of reconstructing the show. For this blog, I thought I would concentrate on presenting a broad range of episodes from across the entire 11 year run.

Season Three
Sept. 13, 1968: Jim Nabors

Jim Nabors and Carol in Hollywood Canteen

During the Q&A, Harvey accepts his Emmy and delivers a long-winded speech. There is a super-brief commercial take-off with Harvey as a Russian chess champion playing against Jim. Then Carol as the ancient Stella Toddler is assaulted and battered during a dedication of a theater named for her. She eventually winds up under the corner stone. The Stella Toddler character was not as funny as Tim Conway's Old Man, and I never found him that funny. The majority of the episode is devoted to movie send-up of generic WWII homefront films. Hollywood Canteen features Jim and Harvey as GIs attached to USO girls Carol and Vicki. There are five specialty songs, written by Ken and Mitzi Welch, climaxing into a Goodwill-and-Brotherhood number, There Will Never Be Another War, which erupts into violence as stereotype-costumed nationals engage in hand-to-hand combat. My favorite is a geisha attacking a Greek soldier with chopsticks.

Oct. 6, 1968: Steve Lawrence, Edward Villella, Rock Hudson
(MeTV/Amazon/ShoutFactory) The only two sketches in the pared-down edition were quite interesting for different reasons. In the first, a Carol and Sis vignette, Roger (Harvey) is insanely

Carol with Rock Hudson

jealous of Lyle again--a trope to be played dozens of times, but this one was slightly askew from the usual. The scene opens with Carol expecting a visit from an interior decorator and a plumber as Roger is leaving for a golf game. Roger goes on a homophobic rant, imitating a stereotypical swishy decorator and declaring he doesn't want one of "them" in his house. Enter hypermasculine Lyle in a sober business suit as Mr. Bruce, the decorator. Immediately, Roger forgets his golf game and fears Carol may be seduced by this hunk of man. In order to grill Mr. Bruce on his sexuality, he gets Carol out of the room to fix coffee--this act in itself is a fascinating example of male privilege. Roger asks Bruce if he would like some java and then insists Carol go and make it.

With Carol in the kitchen, Roger asks Mr. Bruce highly personal questions. Is he married? Does he live with his parents? Does he have a roommate? Bruce reveals he played pro football and you can tell from Harvey's subtextual acting and Lyle's reactions, the presumably straight decorator thinks this weird husband is coming on to him. (That potentially fascinating angle is not explored.) Eventually, Roger cannot control his envy and tells Mr. Bruce his wife will be doing the decorating herself. Just as he leaves, Lyle asks Carol if the couple have any children. She replies in the negative and Lyle says, "It figures." Does that mean he thought Roger was a closet case?

Roger apologizes profusely to Carol for his behavior and is about to leave for his golf game when the plumber arrives--Rock Hudson! Before Carol can ogle the gorgeous plumber, Roger rushes him off to the dripping sink. End music! Carol proceeds to drool over Hudson in a post-sketch chat while he plugs a war movie he just finished--The Hornet's Nest (1970, a war-movie bomb just like Robert Goulet's Underground, also plugged on Carol's show). Ironically, the closeted gay Hudson was playing a super-manly threat to a hetero hubby.

Semantics Matter: Thoughts on Hashtags and Slogans

Defund the Police.
Black Lives Matter.
Anti-Cop Movement.
Antifa.
Needless Laws.

Street chalk art of George Floyd in Queens, NY.

These are all powerful choices of words and can be misinterpreted--sometimes deliberately. In the age of Twitter Hashtags, pithy statements can lead to misunderstanding, oversimplification and confusion. The slogan Defund the Police began appearing last week after the international protests against police brutality erupted in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands, or knees, of Minneapolis police officers. I'd never heard if before. It means taking money from police budgets and distributing it to communities and social program to prevent the conditions which cry out for police action. It also addresses the fact that police are often called into situations they aren't trained for such as domestic disputes, drug addiction, and homelessness. When I first heard it I thought it literally meant take all the money from the police and eliminate them altogether. And some advocates do take that extreme position (we saw a discussion on this topic on the NewsHour earlier this week.) The Minneapolis city council has voted to dismantle its police department. What does that mean exactly? Camden, New Jersey, passed a similar resolution in 2012, dissolving its corrupt police dept. and replacing it with a new one, instituting reforms and emphasizing its role as a part of the community rather than as an occupying army. Crime has dropped by close to half (Source: This city disbanded its police force seven years ago. Here's what happened next CNN, June 9, 2020)

The Eleventh Annual David Desk Awards, plus Thoughts on B'way Reopening

Today normally would have been one of the best days of the year, Tony Award Day! But because of

the COVID-19 pandemic, Broadway theaters have been shut down since March 12 and are not likely to

reopen until January 2021 at the earliest. In a May 25 interview with Tim Teeman of the Daily Beast, Broadway League president Charlotte St. Martin was cautiously optimistic about the Main Stem lights being relit. But she stressed social distancing and playing to half-empty housing would not fit with the Broadway economic model which requires packing in as many bodies as possible for maximum profit. A few shows such as Plaza Suite, MJ: The Michael Jackson Musical and 1776 have announced opening dates for the spring of 2021, but those may be aspirational like Trump saying he wanted packed churches on Easter.

Without a vaccine or even treatment for the coronavirus, theatergoers will probably be reluctant to return. What would Broadway look like without a vaccine? It might mean closing the entire Times Square area off from cars so that the side streets from 42nd to 50th could be used for long lines of patrons to get their temperatures checked and handed face masks as well having their bags searched. (The latter practice started just a few years ago in the wake of various terrorist threats.) Getting into the theater could become just as time-consuming as going to the airport with patrons making sure to show up two-to-three hours before curtain time.

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part Twelve

As we end week 12 of lockdown and week one of protests and curfew, it's time for the Carol Burnett Show Reconstruction to continue. I was all excited because ShoutFactory! had announced they were going to make all 11 seasons of Carol's variety series available for streaming for the first time on June 1, preceded for a weekend-long marathon of episodes on May 30 and 31. The press release implied that we would be getting different, previously unseen material, stating Carol herself went over the masters of the original episodes with people from Shout Factory! I eagerly awaited the marathon and it turns out all segments they have are exactly the same as those 22-minute, hacked up ones already available on Amazon and MeTV. What a disappointment. Shout Factory! was not being completely truthful. Amazon did have the same episodes as Shout Factory!

This means I may never find every minute of every episode of all 11 years. Oh well. Returning to reviewing segments, the theme for this blog is movie satires. These segments include Carol's parodies of Mrs. Miniver, Love Story, The Seventh Veil, Waterloo Bridge, A Star Is Born, the Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple series.

Season One
March 4, 1968: Imogene Coca, Mel Torme
(Best of DVD) Not one of the better early efforts of the series. Carol and Imogene indulge in cat-fight comedy as rival political wives. Harvey and Mel do movie monster schtick along with Carol and Pat Paulsen makes a cameo as the frightening couple's baby. Paulsen was one of the briefly famous

Carol and Imogene Coca as rival political wives

comics of the late 60s who disappeared after his 15 minutes were up, along with Tiny Tim (who had 30 minutes.) With a deadpan worthy of Buster Keaton, Paulsen ran a mock campaign for the 1968 Presidential election from the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, satirizing the corruption of politics. His gimmick was his lack of charisma, claiming he couldn't possibly do a worse job than those in power. He had a short-lived half-hour comedy show.

The extended finale revolves around the upcoming Olympics with the USA team (Mel, Carol, Lyle) battling it out against the Russians (Harvey, Imogene) with specialty numbers written exclusively for the show. We get to see Lyle in a skimpy track suit.

2020 Drama Desk Award Predictions

Normally at this time of year, I would be making Tony and Drama Desk Award predictions. But the Tonys have been indefinitely postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent shuttering of all 41 Broadway theaters. In all likelihood, Broadway's top honor will not return until 2021 since the Main Stem will probably not be open again until next year at the earliest. If so, they might expand the eligibility window to combine the truncated 2019-20 season with whatever opens next spring. Voters will no doubt be invited back to returning shows such as West Side Story, Girl from the North Country, Moulin Rouge and Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. Shows that have closed such as The Inheritance and Grand Horizons will be out of luck, because they will have to rely on the memories of the voters who saw them. Closed productions are usually shut out of the Tonys even in "normal" times.

But the Drama Desk is still going ahead with their award presentation on NY-1's On Stage show on Sun. May 31 with Tituss Burgess (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), James Corden, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming, Beanie Feldstein (Hello, Dolly!), Santino Fontana, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jane Krakowski, Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, Cynthia Nixon, Ashley Park, Andrew Rannells, Ali Stroker (Oklahoma!), and Susan Stroman. Broadway and Off-Broadway are considered for all categories. Here are my predictions in the major slots along with my preferences (Disclosure: I am a Drama Desk voting member and have already cast my ballot)

Play:
Prediction: The Inheritance
Preference: Heroes of the Fourth Turning

Kyle Soller, Paul Hilton, and John Benjamin Hickey
in The Inheritance
Credit: Marc Brenner

The DD includes both Broadway and Off-Broadway in all of its multiple categories, but they usually go for the Broadway choice. With the shortened season, four of the five nominees in this category are Off-Broadway, but the voters will probably go for the only Broadway entry, The Inheritance, Matthew Lopez's two-part saga of the post-AIDS gay community loosely based on E.M. Forster's classic novel Howard's End. I voted for Heroes of the Fourth Turning, Will Arbery's drama of a reunion of graduates from a conservative Christian university in Wyoming, which had a short run at Playwrights Horizons and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play.

The 2020 Tony Awards Fantasy Clip Show

The 2019 Tony Awards

CBS is breaking my heart as we enter the ninth week of lockdown (NYC is still in quarantine while the rest of the country rushes back to the beaches, malls and nail salons.) The Eye network had announced the 32nd season of The Amazing Race--my favorite TV show as you can tell from past recap-blogs--would premiere on this Wed. May 20. When I tried to DVR it, the listing was absent. It turns out they are pushing back the whole series until sometime later in the year because the network is saving a strong ratings performer like TAR for the fall or winter just in case there are no new shows in production because of the coronavirus.

CBS is also not running the Tony Awards. That's not their fault. The Broadway League and the

Joel Grey in Cabaret

American Theater Wing have opted not to present the awards at all because of the pandemic, unlike the Drama Desks, Outer Critics, Obies, Lortels, New York Drama Critics Circle, and Drama League which are going forward to honor the truncated 2019-20 season on various virtual and TV platforms. So I don't blame CBS, but they could have come up with a better substitute than a sing-along broadcast of the movie version of Grease. Why not a clip show of highlights from previous Tonycasts? I suggested the idea on Twitter and Facebook and the response was a resounding yes. Here are my suggestions and those of some Twitter and FB friends on what we would have included for ALL the previous nationally televised Tony shows. OK, the show would probably run for five hours if everything here were shown, but this is just a fantasy. Note: I tried not to go for the obvious every year and didn't always pick whatever show won Best Musical. Some years, they didn't even include numbers from the nominated shows.

1967--Wilkommen from Cabaret--Joel Grey

1968--Before the Parade Passes By from Hello, Dolly--Pearl Bailey

Jack Crowder, Sherri Peaches Brewer,
Pearl Bailey, and Winston DeWitt Hemsley in Hello, Dolly!

1969--Turkey Lurkey Time from Promises, Promises--Donna McKechnie, Baayork Lee, Margo Sappington

1970--Always Mademoiselle from Coco--Katharine Hepburn, George Rose

1971---(25 years of Tony-winning musicals) Shall We Dance? from The King and I--Yul Brynner, Patricia Morrison; Before the Parade Passes By from Hello, Dolly--Carol Channing; If I Were a Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof--Zero Mostel

1972--You Can Dance With Any Girl At All from No, No, Nanette--Helen Gallagher, Bobby Van

1973--Magic to Do from Pippin--Ben Vereen

1974--Upper Berth sketch from Phoenix 55--Nancy Walker, Harvey Lembeck, JJ Barry, Charles Nelson Reilly

1975--The Story of Lucy and Jessie from Follies--Alexis Smith; Everything's Coming Up Roses from Gypsy--Angela Lansbury

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part Eleven: Salute to Character Actors

More news on the Carol Burnett Show front as we enter week 8 of lockdown. For my birthday, my

husband Jerry got me the 50th Anniversary Best of DVD collection which includes several episodes not on the Lost Episodes collection he got me for Christmas. The 50th Anniversary set was released in 2017, a half-century after Carol's debut in 1967 and includes segments from the entire series. So there are several from seasons 6-11 which have been in syndication for years as well as earlier ones not seen in their entirety since the original broadcast. In addition, the Shout! Factory website has announced they will be making available the entire 11-year run, launching with a marathon run of episodes on May 30-31. The press release states several of the episodes have not been available for decades and that Carol went over all the masters of the shows with Shout! Factory which would indicate that they would be showing complete episodes, not the hacked-up, edited half-hours MeTV and Amazon had been offering. One of the major issues seems to be the copyrighted musical material and that it has always been too expensive to include all the musical numbers. (Even some of the segments in the DVD collections are not the whole shows because some musical stuff is missing.) We'll find out in June if it will be possible to FINALLY watch the entire, unedited series. Here is a rundown of segments offered on my newly-acquired DVD collection and those on Amazon and MeTV. This blog salutes various character actors and performers such as Pat Carroll, Jane Connell, Alice Ghostley, Ronnie Schell, and Rich Little who were staples of TV during the 60s, 70s and into the 80s and 90s.

Season Two
Sept. 23, 1968: Jim Nabors, Alice Ghostley
Jim Nabors returns for the first episode of the second season. In the butchered MeTV/Amazon

Alice Ghostley (r.) with Elizabeth Montgomery on Bewitched

version, Jim and Carol are near-sighted strangers who refuse to wear their glasses on an almost-literal blind date. Good physical comedy with the two crashing into walls and missing each other as they attempt to snuggle. Alice Ghostley who is best remembered as Esmeralda, the clumsy magical nursemaid on Bewitched and the senile Bernice on Designing Women, appears as Roger's disapproving sister Mimi in the Carol and Sis sketch. Mimi would later be played by Kay Medford and Pat Carroll in similar bits. Those are the only two sketches we see. Isabel Sanford shows up in a maid's uniform during the goodbyes.