Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 9, 1993 TAG: 9301090346
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CAROL BURNETT, PALS HAVE A REUNION IN STUDIO 33
For 11 seasons, from September 1967 to September 1978, "The Carol Burnett Show" aired on CBS. It was television's longest-running comedy-variety show, with more than 300 original telecasts, and it won five Emmy Awards.Sunday night (at 9 p.m. on WDBJ-Channel 7), on "The Carol Burnett Show: A Reunion," Burnett and pals Lyle Waggoner, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence and Tim Conway gather in Studio 33, where they taped the original series, and spend two hours on the same network, looking back at the fun they had.
"We did it in front of an audience in the same little theater where we did the show for 11 years," Burnett said. "We did an opening, we did a finale - it was done as a performance vehicle, as opposed to sitting around on a stoop talking about the good old days."
Burnett was especially pleased to be using Studio 33, which she called "the best stage in Hollywood. It's not like these barns where everybody has to shoot now that's like the Christians and the lions. I guess they're able to roll in bleachers for a big audience.
"But Studio 33, we were there for 11 seasons. Red Skelton was there for 13. Now `The Price Is Right' uses it. I never felt I was doing TV. I always felt I was doing a New York revue every week. Or summer stock. That's why we screwed around like that and goofed off."
Burnett used to open her show by chatting with her audience and answering their random questions.
"At the top of the show, I come out and sing a song about how 25 years ago I stood on this very spot, waiting for the first Q and A. Then we go back into the past and show five or six of our favorite silly Q and As."
Burnett decided that once again, in this retrospective, she'd let the audience's questions steer the show.
"There's one segment where the five of us sit on directors' chairs and throw it open to the audience," she said. "We let the studio audience dictate what we'd show. We knew some of the questions they were going to ask: `How did Tim bust up Harvey so many times?' `What's your most embarrassing moment?' When we went into the editing room, we would find the clip, so the home audience will then see what we're talking about."
With no more comedy-variety shows on prime-time broadcast schedules, Burnett believes hers still holds up well.
"You'll see that some of the takeoffs are quite sophisticated, and they still work," she said. "That's what variety was. In the 11 years only three pies were thrown in people's faces, and not once did anyone step on a banana peel."
Burnett started out on Garry Moore's daytime television show and sang "I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles" on Jack Paar's late-night show. She moved to Moore's evening series for three seasons (1959 to 1962), then started her own show with a particularly funny ensemble that included Korman, Conway, Waggoner and Lawrence. Lawrence was a teen-ager who had sent Burnett a picture of herself. Burnett and her husband, producer Joe Hamilton, were struck by the resemblance between the two women.
Lawrence, who earned one Emmy and five nominations, spun off a "Carol Burnett Show" character, Thelma Harper, into "Mama's Family." The show aired on NBC, then was syndicated. Burnett and Korman often turned up as Thelma's daughter and son-in-law, along with Rue McClanahan and Betty White, who became half of "The Golden Girls."
Burnett went on to make "Fresno," a $12 million comedy mini-series for CBS that spoofed prime-time dramas such as "Dynasty," "Dallas" and "Falcon Crest." She played Charlotte Kensington, head of a raisin dynasty whose rivals were the Canes. The five-night, six-hour production amused critics, but ratings were poor.
"I thought the writing on that was so darn clever," said Burnett. "That was a character I would have considered doing weekly. It was more fun."