The Carol Burnett Show

If my siblings and I were good, my mother would allow us to stay up until 11pm to watch 'The Carol Burnett Show' each Saturday night in the 1970s.

To say Carol, along with her co-stars Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, and Vicki Lawrence, were talented and funny would be an understatement. Each Saturday at 10pm, Carol and the aforementioned regulars, along with some 'special guest stars' (such as Steve Lawrence, Betty White, Roddy McDowall, and Julie Andrews, to mention a few) would sing, dance, and perform the absolute funniest skits ever seen on American television.

Who could forget Carol's "Eunice" constantly being belittled and nagged by Vicki's "Momma"? Carol's "Mrs. Wh-Whiggins" was a riot, along with Tim's "Mr. Tudball", and perhaps the funniest segments were those with both Tim and Harvey. The audience never seemed to mind it when Harvey lost control and laughed out of character.

Today's Hollywood elitist performers could learn a lot from this classic TV show: Carol Burnett and her co-stars entertained us for ten years without foul language, tasteless humor, sexual innuendo, or inserting politics. On the contrary, Tim, Harvey, Vicki, and Carol conducted themselves as professionals.

This show is classic American comedy for all ages. I highly recommend this outstanding program.

This was definitely the finest variety show of the 1970's. The thing that made it great besides the cast were the various recurring sketches that were very expertly created. Sketches like Tudball and Wiggins, the Old Folks, As the Stomach Turns, the kid sister and, of course, Eunice, which was the inspiration for the series "Mama's Family", helped to make this variety hour a classic. Besides "Mama and Eunice" any one of these shows could have become a series on its own. The only thing that caused the show to go downhill though was when Harvey Korman left. He was probably the best player among the supporting cast and when he left the show declined from there. Still, Saturday nights for me would always climax with this classic show.

The Carol Burnett Show was one of the most fabulous shows ever on TV, and certainly the best of its type, the variety show, which is gone now. Carol, her delightful ensemble cast of Vicki Lawrence, Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, and her many guest stars always delivered a great show.

What stands out for me is her film takeoffs, and on this board, I'm sure that's what stands out for most of us. I had the misfortune of seeing "Mildred Fierce" before I saw the real "Mildred Pierce." So I laughed all the way through Mildred Pierce. Torchy Song and her marvelous Joan Crawford - when I saw Mommie Dearest, all I could think of was Carol Burnett. Sunset Boulevard - when I saw the movie after seeing her takeoff, she was all I could think of.

But there was one movie takeoff that beat them all - Gone with the Wind. An absolute classic. If Carol Burnett had in her entire career only walked down those stairs wearing the rods still in the drapes and said, "Thank you. I saw it in the window and I just couldn't resist it," it would have been enough to make her a superstar. The skit was so brilliant that I can still remember watching it at home when friends came by to pick me up. They started watching it and laughing, too. When a commercial break came, one of my friends said, "Okay, let's go." Everyone moaned that they wanted to see the rest of it. My friend objected, saying, "It's going to be hours - they haven't burned Atlanta yet." The skit was so complete, he was sure he was watching a takeoff of the entire film.

I don't know why there isn't a place on television now for this kind of show, but I can hazard one guess. Burnett did takeoffs on the film The Heiress, Til We Meet Again, Mildred Pierce, Torch Song, Sunset Boulevard - if she was on TV today, no one would laugh because they wouldn't know what she was doing. I'm sure most people have never seen most of those films - certainly not enough to keep her on the air. It's an amazing thing to think about how the world has changed. I'm glad I was in the world before it did.

I loved the Carol Burnett show when I was a child. It was in half-hour reruns. After spending the last weekend watching TV Land marathon, I just learned why. It was one of the most entertaining experiences in television history. This was a great cast of highly talented people not just the beloved star, Carol Burnett. Her former husband Joe Hamilton produced the show. Her friends like Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, Vicki Lawrence, and Lyle Waggoner were all uniquely talented and gifted. We can see why this show thrived. Most of the cast were there from beginning to end. After 11 years of superb Emmy winning and golden globe episodes, the show is available on DVD and can be seen on TV Land where it belongs with some of television's classics. It is still a classic. Sometimes Saturday Night Live and MAD TV can embrace the wholesome comedy as a risk in itself.

Half of the fun of watching Carol Burnett and Friends was watching the actors and actresses try to maintain straight faces during their skits, even when on the inside they were dying to burst out laughing. What made this series funny is that the actors and actresses ad-libbed most of their lines. This way, even the other actors didn't know what would be said next. I've seen many episodes of this show and each one of them keeps me laughing. This is comedy at it highest, at a time when humor was based on slapstick humor and the totally unexpected instead of sexual one-liners. If you ever get a chance to see this show, watch it. You won't be disappointed--especially if you're fortunate to see the episode where Lyle Waggoner is a prisoner of war in WWII interrogated by German officers Harvey Korman and Tim Conway.