Carol Burnett 50th Anniversary Special

I tuned out after about 15 minutes, right after the endless intro of modern day guests that had nothing at all to do with the original show. I really didn't want to sit through all that fawning and the endless platitudes - I'd rather they focused on the original material at length and whatever original cast members they could get.

 

Tim Conway and Harvey Korman had a great chemistry together and no matter who else came in, you weren't going to duplicate that.

Now, this is so weird, but I was 10 when the Carol Burnett show ended. It was appointment viewing in our household and our family watched it every week. But I was talking with a friend about the show years ago and he mentioned Dick Van Dyke replacing Harvey Korman in the final season, and I had no memory of this whatsoever. And I knew who Dick Van Dyke was. I watched his sitcom and even his brief variety show. He didn't even last the whole season, maybe that could be part of the reason I didn't remember him being on there as a regular. Also, I don't think anything from the final season made it into the half-hour syndicated reruns, which would have been what I primarily saw afterwards.

I have always wondered just what happened there. Did Van Dyke jump or was he pushed? Were there any bad feelings, or was it just like Tim Conway said, it didn't work because they needed a straight man and not another funny guy. I also have read things like Van Dyke having been "the star of the show" and not being able to navigate being part of the repertory company. It's too bad it didn't work out.

In the years since, on DVD I have only seen two Burnett shows he was in (one as a regular, and one earlier one where he was a guest star). It seemed okay to me, but losing Korman did hurt the show. I understand he left to do his own variety show. I am thinking maybe Korman felt the writing was on the wall then.

 

I didn't start watching until around 45 minutes into it. After a while of good revisits of old episodes, Carol brought on Bob Mackie which was a good costume segment; but then when she gathered around a piano with a bunch of mostly irrelevant people, and they started singing, I was done (I was also surprised they didn't even mention her musical director Peter Matz).

 

I didn't understand that musical segment at all. That had the least amount to do with celebrating the show. I felt it was super awkward when Kristin Chenaworth started just singing her head off.
I'm just glad that people turn out and watch these specials. Carol is a treasure so she should be celebrated often.

 

No Dave Grohl?

 

After being with my wife for 18 years, I think the autographed Carol Burnett book I gave her for Christmas last year was her favorite present I've ever given her.

 

I missed the last season altogether. I don't remember it being a conscious decision, but I don't remember Dick Van Dyke being on the show or some other things mentioned above. I'm glad to have the memory of the show being one of the funniest shows on at the time.

 

Just ran across this one, thought I'd share.

 

I too was very disappointed with the show. You would be better off watching the infomercials
for the DVD sets, which have non-stop clips from the show and are hilarious. They should have
had way more clips on last night's special, and way fewer celebrity "guests".
Also, what was up with Jim Carrey? He seemed totally out of it with his weird ramblings.
Just my opinion.......

 

My high school girlfriend's parents knew Lyle Waggoner when he was a lifeguard at a pool they went to. He wasn't as funny as Tim Conway or Harvey Korman, but it was interesting they knew him so well. High school for me was 1971-1975.

 

I remember that last season well. Tim Conway's quote was half right. The problem was threefold. One, the writing really suffered after Harvey left. They seemed to not know what to do with Dick which spilled over into even established characters and sketches. I'm not sure why but I think it's related to Number Two: Dick Van Dyke had no chemistry with the cast whatsoever, despite all his brilliance and charisma. He just didn't work, either as a funny man or straight man. He was certainly game, as was Carol and the rest but he just didn't fit in at all. I think that's what shocked everyone. And because of that the show simply stopped being funny. I remember TV Guide talking about Dick's addition to the cast at the start of the season and saying how (paraphrasing from memory) "They will shoot more 7's than 11's with him" and it was just the opposite.

The third reason was everyone just got so tired. When Harvey left, the spark was gone and that in turn underscored how tired and bored everyone was getting with the show.

I think his leaving midseason had to do with the fact everyone realized it just wasn't working out, Dick included. The man was (and is) just too smart and too much of a class act to have not realized it wasn't working. Unfortunately the damage was done and the show never regained it's footing, limping to the finish line instead of having just one more sprint to the tape. The only highlight from that season was something no one ever got to see at the time: an extended outtake from a "Family" sketch that saw Tim Conway riffing on a ridiculous story and Viki's bombshell of a coup de grâce zinger that brought the house down:



I never heard of Dick having any diva moments on the show. He seemed more than happy to be part of an ensemble.

 

After Dick left the ratings improved a bit, and CBS asked for one more season but Carol said no.

From Wiki:
Dick Van Dyke, fresh from headlining his own short-lived Emmy-winning variety series, Van Dyke & Company, was brought in to replace Korman. However, his presence did not help stem the sagging ratings, as the show faced new competition in ABC's The Love Boat. After three months, Van Dyke departed the show, and CBS, in a desperate attempt to save the series, moved The Carol Burnett Show from Saturday nights at 10:00 pm to Sunday nights at the same hour, beginning in December 1977. Regular guest stars Steve Lawrence and Ken Berry were brought in to fill the void left by Korman and Van Dyke. The ratings improved considerably.

CBS wanted to renew the show for another year, but by this time, Burnett had grown tired of the weekly grind and wanted to explore acting roles outside of the comedy genre, despite her success in it. With the changes in cast along with the mediocre ratings, she felt that television was undergoing a transition and that the variety series format was on its way out. Therefore, Burnett decided to end the series on her own rather than be canceled later. Thus, on March 29, 1978, in a special two-hour finale entitled "A Special Evening with Carol Burnett", The Carol Burnett Show left primetime television after 11 years, finishing its last season in 66th place. Reruns were aired during the summer of 1978.

 

I always thought Steve Lawrence should have been a regular on the show, even before Harvey left. He seemed to have so much fun and fit right in. His appearances were always a treat.

 

He sounded good on the special. I forget he's still around.

 

If people thought the loss of Harvey Korman for the final season was rough imagine if Joe Hamilton had gotten his way and spun Vicki Lawrence off into "Mama's Family" like he had arranged with CBS around the same period. This was years before it actually happened at NBC. Vicki refused and Carol was delighted since she didn't want to lose doing the Family sketches on the show. The show was awfully reliant on those and Tudball/Wiggins sketches in that final year. I suppose had Vicki jumped ship then they likely would have offered her slot to Bernadette. There used to be a lot of YouTube clips from that final season posted off of someones old VHS tapes and most of the sketches weren't that bad but a lot of ideas got recycled and the guest stars got a bit lower wattage than the legends from the early years in an effort to skew the viewership younger (Captain & Tennille, Nancy Dussalt, etc.). The Steve Martin/Betty White episode which came near the end of the season was the best of the batch IMO.

 

They apparently can't show an all-clips show, even if Carol introduces them. Disappointing. Who really cares about guest stars that had nothing to do with the show?

Okay, I'll bring this up again: in the early '70s, they had a special on one of the networks celebrating the 25th anniversary of television. I so looked forward to the clips from the then-Golden Age. They started the show with dancers on stage and singing about television! Very few clips. I was dumbfounded.

Maybe it's AFTRA. "Nope. No clips without current performers!"

Sheesh.

 

Those two were absolutely unmatched performing together!

 

Oh I wasn't correcting you.

My Bernadette Peters was "wow...Bernadette Peters".

 

Hahahahaha, it’s ok, I am glad though you said that since I didn’t want her name to appear as Barney of Bernett or whatever it was changed to.

 

I remember seeing the shows as they were broadcast and thinking, "man, this gives off a very weird vibe." Maybe it was because Van Dyke still had the stench of failure from his own 1976 defunct variety show. The ratings didn't do well and I think Van Dyke himself knew the show wasn't working and convinced Burnett to let him leave.

I vaguely remember Ken Berry and Steve Lawrence being brought in to replace Dick Van Dyke, but I think the show was just feeling really tired and old, and I suspect it was a wise idea for Burnett to elect to end the show when she did.

 

As many of the other commenters have said, I was sort of disappointed in the 50th Anniversary show. Too many young performers who were totally unrelated to the show, and not enough clips from the glory days of the show.

But even though she's more than a decade older than I am, I'm still "A$$-over-teakettle" in love with Carol!

 

I recorded it so I could fast-forward through all the fluffing/cringe-worthy parts. Quite enjoyable that way.

John K.

 

I couldn't watch the whole thing because I got tired of nothing but little "Byte" clips.

 

That’s not a bad idea. That should only taken about 15 minutes to watch that way, too!

 

I didn't watch because I wasn't interested in the talking heads, but I have to say that the addition of Jane Lynch made sense--Burnett appeared as her mom in a couple episodes of "Glee" and absolutely killed it. Her performances were funny, biting, and poignant, and in the first, she even did a show tune. Very worth looking up if you have Netflix.

Re the variety show: did they run repeats in the afternoons? I remember seeing it often as a kid in the mid-'70s, but it definitely wasn't at 10 p.m.