Carol Burnett 50th Anniversary Special

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by rburly, Dec 2, 2017.

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  1. rburly

    rburly Sitting comfortably with Item 9 Thread Starter

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    The show will be on Sunday, December 3 on CBS.

    CLEVELAND, Ohio - No less an authority than comedy legend Carl Reiner has said that "The Carol Burnett Show" was prime-time television's last great variety show. And who are we to argue with Carl Reiner?

    There is, of course, much else to be said in praise of this beloved series. And much of it is certain to be said in "The Carol Burnett 50th Anniversary Special," airing at 8 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 3, on WOIO Channel 19.

    Although "The Carol Burnett Show" premiered on Sept. 11, 1967, CBS opted to delay the celebrating so this two-hour tribute could air as a holiday-season special. Better late than never, to be sure, and better company will be tough to find.

    Filmed on the show's original Los Angeles home, CBS Television City's Stage 33, this special includes classic clips from comedy sketches, bloopers and a bunch of reminiscing by Burnett. She reunites with original cast members Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner, as well as her costume designer, Bob Mackie.

    Among those showing up to talk about Burnett's impact on television and comedy are Jim Carrey, Kristin Chenoweth, Stephen Colbert, Harry Connick Jr., Bill Hader, Jay Leno, Jane Lynch, Bernadette Peters, Maya Rudolph and Martin Short. Headlines have caught up with the special in two sad ways. A song-and-dance number with Kevin Spacey was edited out after the accusations of sexual misconduct.

    And the special is airing just three days after the death of Burnett's "special buddy," Jim Nabors, at 87. Burnett made sure that Nabors was the guest star on the first episode of each new season. "I knew Jim Nabors even before we worked on 'The Carol Burnett Show' together," Tim Conway wrote Thursday on his Facebook page. "He was always a gentleman and a great talent. We had a lot of good laughs together. I'll miss him and the free room he would give my wife and I when we visited Hawaii."

    Willoughby native Conway, who grew up in Chagrin Falls and got his start at Cleveland television stations, is absent from the announced segments filmed this year for the special, but that's just because he couldn't make the taping. He recently called Burnett "my friend and the best boss I've ever had."

    If the clips made available by CBS are any indication, however, there is no shortage of Conway in either the classic moments or the reminiscing. Four of his five Emmys are for his work on "The Carol Burnett Show," and whether playing the Hollow Man, the doddering Oldest Man, the ever-exasperated Mr. Tudball or bumbling police detectives, he always had the ability to ad-lib Harvey Korman and the other cast members into hysterics.

    For our own 50th-anniversary tribute to the 11-season run of "The Carol Burnett Show," here are 10 observations offered by Burnett, Conway and Korman (who died in 2008) during interviews for The Plain Dealer:

    Carol on being at the right place at the right time: "I really was born at the right time. Today, I'd never get the opportunities I got. And I was always aware of how fortunate I was. It's not like I'm looking back now and saying, 'Gosh, I wish I had appreciated what I had.' I knew while we were doing the show, 'My goodness, I'm a lucky person.' ''

    Carol on adding Tim to the cast as a regular: "Tim was on the show all the time, but we didn't make him a genuine regular until the ninth year. How stupid were we? Finally, it was like, 'Duh! Why don't we have him on every week? What's our problem?' "

    Tim on regularly breaking up Harvey on-air: "I had a terribly unfair advantage. I also was a writer on the show, and I was using the typewriter as a weapon. We'd rehearse it one way, then I'd change it. I wrote the sketches, so they never knew what I was going to say. I would never tell Harvey. I saved it for air. Or once we had shot it one way, I'd ask the director if he had everything he needed. If he did, I'd ask to do it again. And then I'd use a completely different accent or something like that."

    Harvey on plotting revenge on Tim: "I used to lay awake nights trying to figure out ways to get him, and no matter what I tried, he'd always turn it around and I got it."

    Harvey on Carol and Tim: "You know, the wonderful thing about Carol is that not only was she not threatened by having someone as funny as Tim around, she encouraged it. I'm not sure anyone else in the business would have let Tim indulge himself on stage the way Carol did. And she was smart to do it, because Tim is brilliant."

    Carol on Vicki Lawrence: "For years, we hardly used Vicki on the show because she was like 19 when she started on the show and hardly opened her mouth. We saw some raw talent there and we knew it would take a while. She would play my kid sister in the 'Carol & Sis' sketches. But we really didn't know how to use her. And Harvey would work with her on accents, because he's the master, and she was like a sponge, absorbing everything. And around the fifth or sixth year, she started to blossom. And boom, when we started to do Eunice and Mama, there she was - and brilliant!"

    Carol on Eunice and the Family sketches: "They weren't set in any specific part of the country. When we sat down to read the first one, I just started doing that accent, and Harvey and Vicki picked up on it. It reminded me of some of my relatives in Texas. But the writers were stunned, because they were from Chicago and they were writing about their relatives. After we were doing them for a while, I was getting a manicure, and the manicurist was Russian. And she said, 'You know, that family that you do is just like my family in Russia.' So it hits everybody."

    Carol on Cary and Eunice: "Cary Grant was a big fan of our show, but he once told me, 'But I don't watch it when that family is on. It's just too painful.' Cary liked the slapstick humor. He liked it when we got punched in the stomach and fell out the window."

    Carol on pain as a source of comedy: "Maggie Smith was just wonderful in the 'Family' skit. She was the schoolteacher, and she called us all in because Bubba was acting up, and she finally realizes that Bubba is acting up because of his mother, father and grandmother, who spend all their time arguing. So just for an acting exercise, in the rehearsal hall, somebody suggested, 'Let's not do it as the family. Let's just do it as a one-act - no accents and playing it completely straight.' I don't remember who suggested it, but we gave it a try. And it was really heavy. There was not one laugh, and it left you feeling, 'Oh, that poor little boy.' Without trying to be those characters, the screaming and yelling was devastating. It was an incredibly powerful experience. And it drove home just how much pain was behind the comedy."

    Conway on Dick Van Dyke replacing Harvey in 1977: "Dick is hilarious, but, all of sudden, we were four funny people without a straight man.

    Holiday music specials among week's TV choices
     
  2. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dixie
    :yawn::yawn::yawn:
     
  3. rburly

    rburly Sitting comfortably with Item 9 Thread Starter

    Location:
    Orlando
    Too young, eh? Maybe you should see what you missed.
     
  4. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dixie
    I was yawning at the usual current nonentities being trotted out -- the exact opposite of your assumption. (You know what happens when we ASSUME...?)

    My all time fave being a special on ABC around the time Almost Famous came out, and we got to hear about the profound impact the Beatles had on the life of Kate Hudson.
     
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  5. rburly

    rburly Sitting comfortably with Item 9 Thread Starter

    Location:
    Orlando
    What are the "nonentities" of which you speak?
     
  6. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dixie
    Stephen Colbert is non enough for the whole group
     
  7. Benno123

    Benno123 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ohio
    The 25th anniversary special from 1992 was fantastic, I still watch my recording of it every now and then. It introduced me to the wonderful world of the Carol Burnett Show (though I was familiar with Mama and Co.). That special had none of the current trends on “celebration specials” of trotting out people who had nothing to do with what is being celebrated to tell us for the umpteenth time how great something is and how it influenced them. To me that shows how little faith a network has in something that it needs to parade out the current “talent” when the fact we’re celebrating something that is 50 years old and a top seller in dvds and a hit on YouTube should be enough to show that that cast, those people, are what we want, not Jim Carrey. The only person that appears to be missing is Oprah, I am surprised she didn’t have anything to say - unless the network got the hint after the terrible tribute she gave herself ..... oops, I mean Mary Tyler Moore after MTM passed away ....
     
  8. Benno123

    Benno123 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ohio
    The only person I semi-like in that list is Jay Leno. A dial tone has more humor than the rest of them. I hope we get a solid tribute with just short appearances and lots of clips. But if a number with Kevin Spacey was cut then that means there’s more things like that taking away time from classic clips and remembering ....
     
  9. theoxrox

    theoxrox Forum Resident

    Location:
    central Wisconsin
    So many of our SH Forum people are much younger than I and aren't that familiar with her, but I first saw Carol on the old Garry Moore Show back in about 1960 and fell a$$-over-teakettle in love with her! She had a pretty face, a fine figure, a great smile, and she wasn't disinclined to do whatever was funny, even if it wasn't considered dignified back then. She was just an entertainer, and to me she was approximately the female equivalent of Red Skelton in that regard.

    I am going to enjoy the heck out of this show!
     
  10. rburly

    rburly Sitting comfortably with Item 9 Thread Starter

    Location:
    Orlando
    I'll be watching for the funny too. I just wonder how many people who post here remember it was classic tv at the time. It was hilarious, and with a block of excellent comedies.
     
  11. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    That was such a great show for its time. But that last season without Harvey Korman was just painful. Carol was right to end the show when she did. I think you can make a good argument that the TV comedy/musical/variety show ended after the last Carol Burnett Show aired in March of 1978. The whole genre pretty much stopped in terms of being a mass-market success, despite many attempts to revive it.
     
  12. jon9091

    jon9091 Master Of Reality

    Location:
    Midwest
    :yawn:
     
  13. applebonkerz

    applebonkerz Senior Member

    Tim Conway our hometown boy not able to make the taping this year...that's a shame, he is always the best part of the show.
     
  14. Steve...O

    Steve...O Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Tim was having health issues that prevented his participation. Hopefully he's doing better now although he's essentially retired from public performances. At 83 he is more than entitled to take it easy.
     
  15. Benno123

    Benno123 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ohio
    So far kind of disappointed in this special, too much focus on guests and not enough classic clips and the classic cast. It is Carol’s special so she can do what she wants but I would prefer more of the classic stuff and less Maya Rudolph and Colbert. At least Bernette Peters has a reason to be there, she was a guest star on the original show (as well as Steve Lawrence). But Jim Carrey? He’s still as funny as a migraine.
     
  16. No Static

    No Static Gain Rider

    Location:
    Heart of Dixie
    Bernadette Peters.
     
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  17. Glenpwood

    Glenpwood Hyperactive!

    Looks like Colbert was the Christopher Plummer of this special in the last minute replacement of Spacey. They reshot the musical number with him, Burnett, Chenowith, Peters, and Steve Lawrence at the Sullivan Theatre. Carol made mention at the end of segment they were switching from his soundstage back to hers. They also made some odd edits to the finale to ensure we didn't see him. No wide shot of the entire guest cast was shown. Otherwise, it was entertaining but focused too much on the guests lauding the cast - well mostly Carol- rather than focusing on classic clips.
     
  18. rburly

    rburly Sitting comfortably with Item 9 Thread Starter

    Location:
    Orlando
    I agree 100%. I thought it would be Carol & longer full sketches they did. The focus was more on the guests and their relation to the show. I fell asleep before it ended. It just wasn't how I would have preferred, and I think it was a missed opportunity to highlight the talent of all the comedians on the show.

    Oh well, I had hopes of more of the original show than they had. And it seems their thoughts on how to highlight the show was different from many of us expected. To quote Simon Cowell, "It was just ok with me."
     
  19. Splungeworthy

    Splungeworthy Forum Rezidentura

    I didn't watch because I've seen so many CB retrospectives and clip compilations, so I didn't want to go down that road again. Full disclosure: I do own one of the CB box sets, and it is an entirely different experience to watch the complete shows, because then you see things that never show up on the compilations, such as the many many times Carol would sing with the musical guest. She was a great singer.
     
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  20. ky658

    ky658 Senior Member

    Location:
    Ft Myers, Florida
    Did Oprah show up for this? It seems these days she needs to give her "two cents" whether it's warranted or not! :)
     
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  21. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    So Colbert ended up being the replacement for Kevin?
     
  22. Benno123

    Benno123 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ohio
    That is what I had originally, stupid smart phone ..... I didn’t even catch that it changed.
     
  23. GroovyGuy

    GroovyGuy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Halifax, NS Canada
    I'm totally bummed out that I missed this! I didn't see this thread until just now :(. I was actually talking to my mom on the phone last night and she had just finished watching it and said it was sooooo funny! I was young when the show was in it's original run but I seriously love it. It's almost like comedy from another time when things were simpler and cleaner lol. Going to have to see if I can find it online
     
  24. Benno123

    Benno123 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ohio
    I kept expecting her but with the comedic genius of Kaley Cuoco being on the show I don’t think there was anymore room for another giant of TV .... :rolleyes: :sigh: :blah:
     
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  25. Benno123

    Benno123 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ohio
    I wouldn’t be too surprised if it gets a dvd release, though (to be honest) search out the 25th anniversary special. It is more along the lines of what these celebrations should be.

    Lyle Waggoner and Vicki Lawrence were such big parts of the series that I wish they would have been seen and used a lot more than they were last night. Steve Martin appearing was nice, and in context since he was a guest star on the show (he may have appeared in the last actual episode not counting the special finale, or very close to it) as was Steve Lawrence and Bernadette Peters. The tie-in story from Jay Leno’s story about Harvey Korman and Johnny Carson was ok but would have been more appropriate for a special on Harvey or Jay. At least he was “of the era” even though, once again, he had nothing to do with the original series.

    I hope, if anything, this will bring attention to the series and make young folks search it out. The 25th anniversary special did for me in 1992, and it was a lot harder to find these shows back then!!

    Also, the Season’s Greetings from CBS commercials was a classy touch. I hope they break out some of the vintage ones from the vaults, too.
     
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