Carol Burnett’s Legacy at 93: Revisiting TV’s Variety Show Golden Age of Sid Caesar, Dean Martin, More
It’s fitting to be writing about variety show comedy during the month Carol Burnett turns 93 on April 26. There’s a reason the Golden Globes named their annual TV Achievement Award after the iconic comedic star (who had plenty of singing and dancing chops as well). And while her place in the television firmament is legendary, it was through comedy that Burnett truly made her name.
During its classic 1967 to ’78 CBS run, The Carol Burnett Show was always hilarious, from the great question-and-answer audience segments that opened the show (Young woman in the audience: “Have you ever taken acting lessons?” Carol: “Yes, I have.” Young woman: “Do you think it did any good?”) to sketches that remain timeless. The Gone With the Wind parody is understandably embraced, but the series always hit a different gear when eventual series regular Tim Conway joined the fun, especially alongside Harvey Korman, with the pair barely able to keep a straight face given all of Conway’s ad-libs. A 1969 sketch with Korman as the patient for Conway’s first-time dentist — featuring Conway clumsily numbing himself with Novocain injections — was so funny, Conway later said Korman wet himself during it.
“Funny is funny. I dare anybody to look at the dentist sketch with Harvey and Tim and not double over with laughter — and it’s [over] 45 years old! What happened, and it wasn’t on purpose, is we were never topical, so what was funny then is holding up now,” Carol Burnett told Forbes.
By the time Burnett began, the formula for laughs on TV was already among the most established features of variety TV, having been a welcome staple of the 1950s. Your Show of Shows (1950-54), and later Caesar’s Hour (1954-57), starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, famously boasted a hall of fame writing team (including Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and Selma Diamond), and included famed parodies of This Is Your Life and From Here to Eternity, along with Caesar as silent film star Rex Handsome who was not going to make the transition to sound.
The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950-55) made a happy home for duos such as Abbott and Costello and Martin and Lewis. Red Skelton‘s Clem Kadiddlehopper and Freddie the Freeloader ruled the tube, and sketches on The Jackie Gleason Show gave birth to The Honeymooners.
By the mid 1960s, things got a little more risqué to match the times
Everett Collection
One need go no further than four all-stars of the era: The Dean Martin Show (1965-74), The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967-69), The Flip Wilson Show (1970-74), and Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In (1968-73). Dean-o played drunk with great aplomb, and when, at the end of its run, the show became the home of Dean’s Celebrity Roast, it lasted 10 more years, elevating Foster Brooks, Nipsey Russell, and Rich Little to greater stardom.
The Smothers Brothers’ show was too hip for CBS, but its political humor pushed the envelope (and included a young Steve Martin among its writers). Wilson’s characters — sassy Geraldine and the Rev. Leroy — were arguably the funniest on television. And Laugh-In was funny and sexy, like the coolest cocktail party around. As series regular Arte Johnson might have said as his German soldier character, “Verrry in-te-res-ting … but top-rated.”
By then, Steve Martin had moved on to bigger things: The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour (1971-74), with its news and vampy sketches. The likes of Hee-Haw (1969-93) and The Muppet Show (1976-81) mined laughs in unique ways. And if most variety comedy was on the wane by then, it stayed up late with fateful words that still ring out today: “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”
This article originally ran in the April 2023 Classic Variety TV Issue of ReMIND Magazine. You can purchase it at the link below.
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