This is a man who could make me laugh til I cried (along with Tim Conway, of course).
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/05/29/korman.obit.ap/index.htm
Susan
I just heard about that today. Too bad.
I heard but did not verify that Dick Martin died this week as well as the guy who wrote the Andy Griffith Show theme.
Yes, Dick Martin died last week, I believe.
The famous dental sketch:
http://testpattern.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/05/29/1078986.aspx
Susan
The dentist sketch has to be one of the funniest moments ever on TV. Tim Conway ad-libbed quite a bit of it, which is why Harvey couldn’t keep a straight face through it. Evidently that was the origin of all the times Korman cracked up on the show.
The time of Carol Burnett and Laugh In were definitely different from now. There was a purity to the comedy that very few have preserved.
Link isn’t working for me. I’ll see if I can find the story elsewhere.
Always sad when a comedian dies. Why couldn’t it have been a politician?
What about HK’s hilarious role in “Blazing Saddles”?
Larry
I took my mom to see Tim Conway and Harvey Korman do a live show a few years ago, one of the funniest shows I’ve seen. They did the dentist sketch as their final bit.
Korman’s monologue about getting old and having to pee in the middle of the night was funny then, but not so much now that I’m older.
“de Monet! de Monet!”
“That’s Hedley!”
Ahh, time for a Mel Brooks film festival me thinks.
That’s weird. The story has dropped off the CNN.com page.
Susan
I think one of the best things about the Carol Burnett Show was that it was only on once a week. We weren’t inundated with this brand of humour everywhere we looked. The quantity was just right, as was the quality. That helps keep the memories fondest, I think.
djm
This is a different CNN.com link:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/05/29/korman.obit.ap/index.html?iref=24hours
Hopefully that one will work.
I liked this comment from the writer on the page where the dental sketch can be seen:
"That’s how Korman, Conway, Lawrence and Burnett always came off…they were professionals, but they weren’t on any kind of “Actors’ Studio” pedestal. They reminded you of your friends, or your parents’ friends, or your funny uncle and aunt…who lived to laugh and were determined to get you cracking up right along with them.
It was comedy you could watch with the kids and with the grandparents, but it never felt dumbed down in order to reach such a broad audience. Korman’s death reminds me how much I miss that kind of comedy. He, too, will be missed."
Susan
I watched the Carol Burnett show every week. I confess, Tim Conway usually drove me absolutely nuts though.
I could kind of stand the “Mrs. Ah-Whiggins” sketches.
Yep. They were funny without having to resort to one line insults and “shocking” comments. Alas those days are gone.
I still vividly remember watching that dentist-novacaine sketch with my parents and brother and all of us crying with laughter. Korman’s complete inability to play the straight man in the sketch made it all the funnier, somehow.
I always liked the Gone With the Wind sketch where he was Rhett and Carol came sailing down the stairs with the curtain rods still in the dress and he said “nice dress” and she said “I saw it in the window and I just couldn’t resist.”
She said in an interview I saw a couple of years ago that it was actually Bob Mackie’s idea to leave the curtain rod in the dress (he was the designer for the show). It took the sketch from funny to hilarious.
Susan
There was a time when TV comedians shied steeply
away from political and social content–you
remember the barriers that All In The Family
had to break.
Laugh IN was the replacement for Smothers Bros,
which was dropped for being political.
But the older comedy was indeed ‘purer,’
it was very physical (as in the dentist’s sketch)
and the funny thing involved was
the human condition.
You are right. It was purer for not being political, and all the funnier for it. Damn shame that H.K. is gone. Very few good ones left anymore.
I too was a Carol Burnett watcher. I loved the show and all the actors were so good together. I did like Mrs. a-Wiggins. In fact one of my daughter’s can still do “the walk” just like her. My favorite was always Eunice and Momma. ( I named a cow Eunice because her topknot curled just like Eunice’s.) But Korman and Conway together were wonderful. Korman crackin’ up or vice versa… perhaps it was that they worked so well together…whatever it was, I’m sorry to see it go. Hedley, I laugh just thinking about that portrayal…
I found Harvey Korman funny, not just in the Carol Burnett Show, but even in his appearances in silly TV movies. I miss him.