Carol Burnett show Q&A sessions

"You Made Me Love You" in the key of G!

I love the question (and Carol's reaction) about cleaning the floor at the Carol Burnett Show.

Audience member: How old are you?

Carol: none of your business, asshole!

Loved the show in the '70s. Just now viewing the 1st season on MeTV. Other than serving as a great time capsule, the early stages of this classic is utterly unwatchable. No wonder we never see evidence of this period in best-of-show clips.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Who is the smartest man you know?

CAROL: Tommi DiDario.

The Carol Burnett Show humor has not aged well. I used to love it so much when I was a kid and teen and now I cannot get through it at all. It's so cringey for the most part.

R6, I'm reserving judgment until I see the show from the '70s, the era I, as a teen, first became familiar with it. But the first season is indeed horrid.

I agree that the humor hasn't aged well, for the most part, but there are a few skits that still hold up. "The Kidnapping" (at the link) is probably one of the best. And people still seem to enjoy "Went With the Wind."

The was also a pretty good skit - and eerily prescient - about mistreating airline passengers in economy class. Of course, that's unlikely to remain funny when it's so damned true.

Ack! THERE was also . . .

"The Family" sketches still resonate today because they were so complex and dark and utterly different in tone from the rest of the show.

R8, that skit was from well into the show's long run. It bears so little resemblance to the show in its infancy.

From the 1st season. To get a sense of how bad that first season was, this piece of dreck from 1968 is one of its "standouts."

R12 That's kinda funny, it was making fun of things soaps did really badly at the time (e.g. everyone playing to the camera Merman style).

R13, "As the Stomach Turns" became a staple throughout the series. This first edition was, I think, the best skit of season one, but it's so inferior to later iterations.

In the 1970s the family used to gather around the TV on Saturday nights to watch the best shows of the week on CBS: All In The Family, Mash, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, The Carol Burnett Show. It was a pleasure to end the evening's viewing with Carole Burnett.

[quote] It was a pleasure to end the evening's viewing with Carole Burnett.

MARY!

No, Mary was in the middle.

I much prefer the first three seasons. Especially the first. Entire first year episodes were on YouTube but are now gone. The show went downhill with the arrival of Tim Conway. The energy during the first season is young and fresh, with later seasons they started to play everything as if they thought they were hilarious. It ruined the comedy.

Seemingly every episode in the first season which included the skit of Vicki Lawrence playing Carol's overeating (!) sister (did she have any other role then?) ends with Harvey Korman as Carol's husband Roger rendered unconscious after being hit by the swinging kitchen door. Seriously.

Least favorite guest- Jim Nabors

Favorite guest(s)- Steve & Eydie

The show was very traditional in the beginning and kept trying to evolve to be "with it" in the 70s, to varying results.

That being said, The Family sketches were the best thing they ever did.

OP=Teresa Renteria

Why did Carol always look so dyke-like?

[quote] Why did Carol always look so dyke-like?

I haven't the foggiest!

[quote]Why did Carol always look so dyke-like?

I haven't the faggiest!

R10 R11 True and true.

What is ironic is that she tried to hard to make the Charwoman her trademark character. It was even used on the beginning of the show and in ads. But it never connected because it wasn't funny, touching or really anything. It seemed an obvious attempt. But the second we saw Eunice, we knew this was something special and it kept building. Eunice is absolutely her trademark character and without her, the Carol Burnett Show would likely be completely forgotten.

R27 Mama more so than Eunice.

Well, I'll always love the old movie parodies, Carol tickles me so... And when I say "always", I damn well fucking mean it.

R28 Mama might be the show's iconic character, however Eunice is Carol's iconic character. But, the charwoman has become associated with Carol enough that one time when she appeared on All My Children as her AMC character Verla Grubbs, Elizabeth Taylor made a cameo and surprised her dressed as the Charwoman.

Lyle Waggoner was hot AF. Like R6, I used to love it when I was a kid, but I can’t get through it today. It hasn’t aged well at all.

hilarious

Love her rendition of "Mildred Fierce". They did a great job of boiling down the movie to 20 minutes.

R19

Vicki was hired specificly to play Carol's sister.

Just like Lyle was hired to do handsome straight men parts.

Vicki was able to break out, Lyle was not, so he left and no one cared.

Vicki was great playing high voiced dumb (or drunk) bimbos

R34, I always remembered Vicki playing the dumb beach bimbo in the parody of the Frankie and Annette movies, very funny.

I used to masturbate to Lyle Waggoner

I used to masturbate on Lyle Waggoner

I used to masturbate Lyle Waggoner.

I used to masturbate with Lyle Waggoner

RE: the charwoman - I remember hearing as a kid that that was how Carol was discovered; she was a cleaning lady in a theatre and some producer heard her singing when she thought everyone had left. Urban legend? If so, WTF is up with the charwoman??

RE: The Family skits - it was in another thread on here, but when Maggie Smith was a guest, she had them all do a read on that episode’s Family skit as a drama. Apparently no one had picked up before Maggie just how dark those skits were.

Didn't Lyle Waggoner present his 'goods' in Playgirl and they were........disappointing?

He wore a speedo.

R32 funny up to the point where Eunice has to go out in front of the judges. Then it becomes awful and traumatic.

[quote]What is ironic is that she tried to hard to make the Charwoman her trademark character.

She has said that others tried hard to push the character. She said that she felt the Charwoman was rather one-note, and wasn't her favorite, even though she liked playing her.

[quote]OP=Teresa Renteria

Or Priscilla Celery

R45 or Lavica Trickleson

I used to lust after Lyle Waggoner also, but unhappily learned in an article somewhere about celebrities who were and were not circumcised that he has a stank sleeve, and now that's all I can think about. Well, I guess I could always buttfuck him. I mean, if he was the age now that he was then.

Watching these first season episodes (which I agree are inferior to the rest of the series), it's interesting to note that Lyle Waggoner actually seemed to have more to do than Harvey Korman did, but as the show went on, that changed and Lyle was pushed further into the background until he eventually left (eventually landing on "Wonder Woman").

Well, R48, it’s hard to make that call when all we’re seeing is 30-minute versions of hour shows.

[quote]eventually landing on "Wonder Woman".

Ouch!

[quote]it's interesting to note that Lyle Waggoner actually seemed to have more to do than Harvey Korman

I was thinking in that As the Stomach Turns skit, that was the most I had seen him used in a skit.

Harvey Korman is the only person on this show who still makes me laugh. His line readings are still kind of worth the occasional revisit.

[quote]RE: the charwoman - I remember hearing as a kid that that was how Carol was discovered; she was a cleaning lady in a theatre and some producer heard her singing when she thought everyone had left. Urban legend? If so, WTF is up with the charwoman??

I know it's easy to do, but are you mistaking Carol for Miss Evelyn "Champagne" King?

Why was announcer Ernie Anderson in the audience so often and always singled out by Carol?

I watched Carol Burnett in the late 80s when I was a kid, it was shown in Spain when I was supposed to be sleeping but my parents usually taped it for me, along with The Golden Girls. The sort of thing that should have warned them their son was gay.

R39, I would have loved to have been there when Don Crichton and Lyle Waggoner were masturbating together. They were both hot!

I continue to watch the early shows now airing on MeTV & am finding that by the latter part of the 2nd season (seasons were very long back in the day, btw) the show is beginning to look more like the one I fell in love with in the early '70s when I first start watching.

People often judge fledgling seasons of classic shows harshly, which isn't really fair, since that first season is so often about a show trying to find its footing, and trying to strike the right tone.

That her show went on to be renewed for a second season says more about the quality of Season 1 than its detractors here have to say.

Or, R58, the standards of the day may have been very different.

It's likely that Season One was the result of execs wanting to play it safe, to follow a conventional, tried and true template for what they thought a variety show should be.

Playgirl Lyle

Dreamy dreamboat.

I have recently watched a few of the shows and am somehow shocked at how casually the audience is dressed, when we see them with the lights up for Carol's question time.

Regardless of what our opinion of the quality of the show is today, I will remember with fondness the hours of joy and laughter it brought me and my family when i was growing up....😄

Is Lyle a homosexual?

I really never thought Carol Burnett would be such a product of its time but I agree it has just not aged well at all. The Family sketches still jump out at you for their brilliance. Very ironic that Mama's Family has had a longer and more successful afterlife than Carol's Variety Show.

Lyle is very straight and very wealthy. He started Star Waggons in the late 70's, dressing room trailers for rent by studios, still going strong. I would dare to guess that, aside from Carol herself, he is the wealthiest person from the cast of her show

I think the show holds up well as a period piece.

I just watched the Family skit with guest Madeline Kahn. You know it's bad when not even Kahn can make it funny.

The hell it was. Mavis Danton, Catwoman from Mars, was fucking hilarious.

The very first time I smoked pot -- I was dropped off home by my friends, the family was gathered around to watch Carol and joined them Shortly afterwards Lyle came on dressed as Tarzan and I about passed out. I loved the show as a kid but cannot watch it today. Although the old movies and soaps take offs still holds up pretty well. That whole Tim Conway/Harvey Korman breaking up shit was annoying then and is absolutely intolerable now.

It's worth remembering that the Seinfeld show evolved over time. It was not nearly as good in its initial season. The early Burnett show does not represent the classic show it ultimately is remembered for.

Is it sacrilege to think that Harvey was funnier than Carol?

Damn, Lyle was hot!

Did the show have any good musical guests, like Ed Sullivan did?

Yes it did.

It's unfortunate that the MeTV version doesn't include any of the musical performances.

One of the more well known Q&A segments from the 70s had a young teen boy asking Carol if he could come onstage to get a kiss on the cheek from her. Years later during the reunion special (early 90s I believe) they began with a Q&A segment and a handsome guy in his twenties stood up claiming to be the teen boy who asked for the kiss 15 years earlier. I remember watching it on TV and being certain that the grown man was 80s gay porn star Jim Steele, who costarred in “Below The Belt” with Chad Douglas. I wish I could find that segment on YouTube!

Odd and sad that some people can't find the humor in these shows.

people have different senses of humor. Some find Carol's mugging too broad.

R66 I am sure that pisses Carol off to no end.

[quote]Some find Carol's mugging too broad.

Those people have no sense of fun.

They're boring, and their opinions don't matter.

I Dig Rock and Roll Music...

I get that some posters here prefer Mama's Family to Carol's show, but I don't think most people in the industry would agree that MF has the more successful afterlife, R66. Having reruns play on a small cable channel doesn't compare to the respect and reverence that the CB show and its performers continue to receive. There was just a big to-do about the shows 50th anniversary, and Burnett herself was celebrated at The Golden Globes this year.

And no, I'm not Carol.

If Carol had agreed to do a Family spinoff, it would have been much more successful and more fondly remembered than MF. MF was a better-than-nothing cash grab that's only remembered now for it's kitsch factor.

[italic]Mama's Family[/italic] was payback for the Rural Purge of 1971.

It's very unfair to claim the early shows weren't as good as the later ones.

A lot of shows had low ratings and "played it safe", on a certain level, initially.

Seinfeld and Cheers come to mind. Cheers was not successful at all in its first year, but is now considered one of the best of its genre.

And, on Seinfeld, Kramer wasn't anywhere near as "wacky" as he was in the later seasons.

CBS turned it down for the show Tim Conway turned it down for: [italic]Ace Crawford, Private Eye[/italic]. Tim also turned down [italic]Gun Shy[/italic], the TV version of [italic]The Apple Dumpling Gang[/italic], for it. In that case, every other original movie cast member had prior commitments, too.

Both flopped after one season while [italic]Mama[/italic] got another chance from NBC, who was still wanting for hit sitcoms in the post-Silverman, pre-[italic]Cosby Show[/italic] 1980s. They pushed back the premiere four months so they could take [italic]Taxi[/italic], which won Emmy after Emmy but still couldn't cut it in the ratings after they moved it off Tuesday nights, off ABC's hands. It premiered after [italic]Silver Spoons[/italic] in the Saturday night time slot that would end up going to [italic]Golden Girls[/italic] two and a half years later. They tried putting it on Thursday between [italic]Gimme A Break![/italic] and [italic]Cheers[/italic], but it collapsed up against [italic]Magnum, P.I.[/italic] on CBS.

CBS actually gave Harvey Korman a sitcom in early 1986 called [italic]Leo and Liz in Beverly Hills[/italic], but it flopped just as [italic]Mama[/italic] came back in syndication with a pared-down cast.

Cheers wasn't a ratings success in its first season, but getting 13 Emmy nominations in its first season like the show did can still be considered as success.

The audience is always so white.

R94, R95, who cares about what the industry thinks because the public has made MF a hit in syndication reruns. If it's remember for its kitsch factor, at least it's remembered.

In an ideal world: -- Carol and Joe would have remained married -- Mama's family would have always had Vint, Naomi, and Iola (and never had Buzz, Sonya, and Aunt Fran) -- Carol and Harvey would have made regular appearances (once or twice per season) on Mama's Family -- Mama's Family would have had better writers that would have created more compelling character arcs

But all in all, I like Mama's Family and we take what we can get.

My best friend from high school went to college w Harvey Korman's daughter and he fucked her. A lot.

Other than in the "Rashomama" episode, I don't think Eunice translated well from the sketches to the series. I guess it was because they had made Mama less hateful and more likable, whereas Eunice seemed even MORE hateful and unlikable. Of course, Carol's plastic surgery didn't help matters. Eunice LOOKED hard and mean in the series.

Anyone remember The Carol Burnett Show reboot in 1991, which lasted all of two months? Some of the episodes used to be on YouTube, but they appear to have been yanked. Most of the sketches seemed as if they would have been rejected from her 70s show! It's puzzling why CBS gave her a series right after her other series (Carol & Company) had just bombed on NBC.

Wait, R94, your best friend or Harvey?

^ my best friend fucked his daughter.

I was in a Sears store in White Plains, NY, October 1977 with my parents and my brother. My mother was shopping for winter coats for my brother and I. At one point I disappeared into the tv section. I sat on the floor and watched Carol Burnett and Friends which was the syndicated version of repeat episodes of her show. I sitting there and I here behind me a female voice say: SEE I TOLD YA. HARVEY KORMAN'S A FAG! (In a heavy NY accent).It was such a nasty shocking thing for my 12 year old self to hear-especially from a woman.

That was common talk back in the day, R98.

Variety just doesn't exist anymore as a television genre, but it was such a big deal in the first few decades of the medium, and this show (and the Jackie Gleason show before it) were in some ways the high points of the genre. Variety really had its roots in vaudeville, so the humor was always really corny and obvious, and it was carried best by performers like Burnett, Korman, and Gleason, all of whom could sing and dance and mug like crazy. It doesn't translate very well today because the humor seems so obvious, but it was hilarious in its time., and the corniness was part of its appeal.

R100, in the old-style variety show’s place we now have The Voice, Idol, Dancing with the Stars, etc.

R19 included the skit of Vicki Lawrence playing Carol's overeating (!) sister (did she have any other role then?)

I don’t think so. They gradually gave her more to do , but she was initially brought in as an unknown because she resembled Burnett ... just for those soap spoofs.

I loved Carol's show and the way it capped off the amazing 70's-era CBS Saturday line-up. Three hours of non-stop bliss. For this junior high schooler, the Q & A portion was a favorite, and when she'd answer only three—and sometimes only two—questions, it was over way too soon. At one point I heard an insider tip that the questions askers where pre-selected, meaning it was a bit rehearsed and not as off-the-cuff as it seemed. Was I devastated to learn this? That would be a huge understatement.

Watching MeTV, the show, at least in the early years we're now seeing, featured a lot of stereotypical of the day, prancing gay men, played by Harvey Korman.

^^^^ I noticed that, too.

Carol's Ethel Merman parody.

This episode was from 1973. Not exactly cutting edge humor. Merman's last movie musical had been nearly two decades earlier

For all those who believe that Rock Hudson & Jim Nabors were secretly married - in Canada - in the 1970s, we may finally (?) have something that links them together. On last night's MeTV's airing of the Carol Burnett Show, the first episode of season 3 (September 1969), Carol brought Jim out at the start of the show & he took questions from the audience. One question, "Is it true you sing off-key?" came from ... Rock Hudson!!!

At r61, Lyle is showing a dainty amount of bush.

Carol Burnett wasn't shown in the UK , at least I never saw it, whereas I recall Lucy, Andy Williams and Laugh-in. It does seem dated but no more than other shows of the time, am surprised at the camp of it all, so many hollywood parodies and it's great to see the remnants of old showbiz turn up as guests. R106 is right, a lot of the spoofs were pretty obscure/dated when done, Crawford's Torch song spoofed in the 70s, 20 years after it flopped! There must have been a big old queen quota on the show's staff.

Lyle was so hot back then.

I've seen recent photos of him and while geriatrics are not a turn on, I will say that for an 85 year old man, he still is somewhat handsome.

That whole Rock/Jim thing was such a joke, it was two known gays being said together in the same sentence.

Rock liked his men super butch and a lot younger and Jim was with the same guy forever and a day and it wasn't Rock.

[quote] a lot of the spoofs were pretty obscure/dated when done

You're seeing it through contemporary eyes. The films they spoofed were all late show ( and late, late show) staples, shown regularly by network affiliates coast to coast. They were known to tv audiences of the time.

I guess that makes sense R112, nostalgia was all the rage then, it's not what it used to be but the past is another country after all!

This was also the age of the variety show, so many of the sketches were written for very different audiences.

Very little of the show was designed for younger audiences. In their beginning, SNL was largely designed to be the "anti-Carol Burnett show"

Oh my god, R83! I'm not ever sure where to start with that! The costumes were fascinating. And Vicki was so, so, so proud of her dancing. Just wow.

Our standards for entertainment have continuously evolved.

A hundred and twenty five years ago, your fat Aunt Bessie might have played piano and sang in her best Florence Foster Jenkins voice, followed by a game of cards or the occasional night of live theater.

Now we have concerts where people don't sing and, in some cases, aren't even alive.

Carol's show was very much an adult version of Hey Kids Let's Put On A Show, which was fitting since that was Carol's influence. It's also what made it work, and why almost all of her attempts at comedy shows since have not. Same with the Muppet Show. A very specific balance was needed to make it work.

All entertainers only get a few years in the big audience spotlight.

Yes, they can still have a lesser career decades later, but by then, the audience has largely seen all their tricks and moved on or are sticking around for nostalgia.

[quote] Rock liked his men super butch and a lot younger and Jim was with the same guy forever and a day and it wasn't Rock.

I’ll bet Jim offered hole but was politely turned down by Rock.

Rock was in the audience with a younger blonde man.

Rock had many, many alternatives and didn't want to take the chance of getting a Gaahleee! from Gomer Pyle mid-bang