This Time Together Page 7

  The fabulous duo: Tim Conway and Harvey Korman.

  COPYRIGHT © SHELLEY GAZIN/CORBIS

  Danny Kaye’s show went off the air in 1967 and we were premiering that fall. All I could think was, We need a Harvey Korman. We needed a consummate actor with comedy chops to spare. The penny finally dropped, the lightbulb lit up, and I came to the brilliant conclusion to actually ask THE Harvey Korman himself if he would work with us. Now that Danny’s show would no longer be on, could we … would he …?

  I believe we had a call in to his agent when one afternoon I happened to see Harvey himself headed for his car in the CBS parking lot at Television City. He didn’t notice me. I thought about it for a nanosecond and then I shouted, “Harvey!”

  He turned and smiled. We hardly knew each other. I waved, smiled back, and then proceeded to jump him. I may be exaggerating, but I seem to remember leaning him back over a car hood.

  “Please, please be on our show! You’re the very best! PLEASE?”

  It wasn’t exactly the most professional way to offer someone a job, but it worked. Harvey signed on, and I was in heaven.

  As I write this, I’m fairly sure that somewhere there must be someone who is as brilliant a comedic actor as Harvey (who, week after week, created hysterically funny characters with different accents and looks, in only four days of rehearsal), but I don’t think there’s anybody who can top what he could do. I’ve always felt that it’s a wise thing to play tennis with a better player, because it makes your own game that much better. And that’s what Harvey was to me as a fellow actor. He made my game better. He made everyone’s game better.

  And then one Friday night after a show I fired him.

  It went like this.

  Friday A.M. We were working on a rock ’n’ roll finale. It was a large set and because it would take too much time to get it together for our evening audience we would, at times like this, pre-tape the finale and then play it back on the TV monitors for the studio audience later. Our guests that week were Tim Conway and Petula Clark, two of the nicest people in the world. We were all in costume, dancing and lip-syncing to our pre-recorded voices.

  Now, at times Harvey could get into a mood. This morning, in his Elvis getup, he was definitely not a happy camper. I’d always ignore him whenever he got like that, because the next thing you knew he would turn on a dime and go back to being his hysterically funny and loveable self. But not this morning. I could practically see the black cloud hovering over his head. He was actually scowling. As far as I was concerned, he could scowl at me till the cows came home, but this time he scowled at our guests and was short with them.

  After the taping, when everyone was changing for our camera run-through, I went to Harvey’s dressing room and knocked on the door. He was still scowling when he opened it. I asked him what was wrong, but he was in no mood to discuss it, intimating that it was none of my business. I told him it was my business when it affected the show and our guests. He could be rude to me, but not to our guests! Whereupon he told me I couldn’t dictate to him how to feel or act, and as far as he was concerned he’d just as soon go home and never come back after tonight’s show. He closed the door.

  Stunned, I didn’t know what to do. I felt that this was in my lap and I didn’t want anyone else to know just yet what had happened, not even Joe. I had never been confrontational before—it’s just not in my makeup—but in this case I knew I had to be. So what did I do? I conjured up a character to play, a cross between Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford, women who weren’t afraid to speak up and be strong. Acting like them would give me the courage to stand up to Harvey.

  Okay. It was time to take the stage.

  Friday, lunch break. In my dressing room, I called Harvey’s agent, Tony Fantozzi.

  TONY: Hey, Carol! What’s up?

  ME: Harvey’s off the show after tonight.

  TONY: Whaa …?

  ME: He wants off the show, so I’m granting his wish.

  TONY: What’re ya talkin’ about? Does Joe know about this?

  ME: Not yet. He’s in the director’s booth. I’ll tell him after the show, but it won’t matter what anybody says or thinks. Harvey’s off the show.

  TONY: What about his contract?

  ME: If he wants off, I want him off. If there’s a problem, I’ll go to the union.

  TONY: Jeez … what did he do?

  ME: Tony, I don’t mind when he gets into one of his moods, but when he’s rude to our guests, I’m not gonna put up with it! I mean, how on earth can you be mean to Petula Clark and Tim Conway? It boggles the mind!

  TONY: Have you told Harvey?

  ME: After we get through the show tonight.

  TONY: Jeez …

  We got through the show that night. I don’t think anybody sensed the tension between Harvey and me. He was his usual professional self, but I was a total wreck.

  Friday, after the show. I knock on Harvey’s dressing room door.

  HARVEY: Come in.

  He’s sitting at his makeup table. I sit down and look at him in the mirror.

  ME: Well, you’ve got your wish.

  HARVEY: What’re you talking about?

  He turns around to face me.

  ME: You don’t have to come back anymore if you’re that unhappy. I called your agent and he’s aware of the situation.

  HARVEY: You called Fantozzi?

  ME: Yep.

  HARVEY: Well … I have a contract….

  ME: That can be taken care of. You were rude to our guests and because of your behavior I was screwing up all over the place tonight during the show. I can’t work like that, so if you want off, you’re free to go.

  I head for the door. He stops me.

  ME: What?

  HARVEY: What can I do?

  ME: You asking for a reprieve?

  HARVEY: Sort of. Well, yes.

  ME: (pause) Okay, here’s what we do. This coming Monday, I want to see you cheerful.

  He nods.

  ME: Not only Monday, but the whole week! And you’re never, ever to be nasty to one of our guests or anyone on our crew. We all have moods, but we don’t bring them to work. Okay?

  He nods again.

  ME: In fact, it would tickle me pink to hear you whistling in the hall!

  We shake hands.

  HARVEY: See you Monday.

  On the way home in the car, I told Joe what I’d done. He couldn’t stop laughing. He was proud of me, but he got a special kick out of how I willed myself to be a combination of Stanwyck and Crawford in order to face Harvey.

  Monday morning I was in my office, waiting for the gang and our guests to show up for the first reading of the week’s script. Vicki and Lyle got there first. I decided to go down the hall to the ladies’ room before everyone else arrived. As I was on the way back to my office, the elevator door opened and Harvey stepped out. We both froze for a split second. Then he started skipping, dancing, and whistling his way down the hall to my office! I doubled over with laughter.

  Later that day, I heard from some of the crew that after our little chat Friday night, Harvey went across the street to the local watering hole, where a lot of the gang went to have a drink or two (or three) after the show, and proceeded to stand on top of the bar and tell everyone what had happened.

  He then lifted his glass and toasted me!

  The following week we had a plaque put on his dressing room door:

  For some perverse reason, Harvey always got a kick out of telling the story about the night he got fired.

  After our show went off the air, Harvey and I were never parted for long. Joe and I enjoyed countless dinners with Harvey and his wife, Debby, and Tim Conway and his wife, Sharkey, at our favorite restaurants. I used to kid that it was dangerous to eat with that group; we would laugh so hard that someone needed to be ready to perform the Heimlich maneuver!

  Harvey took ill just before Christmas of 2007. He fought long and hard through several operations, and often we thought he would pull throu
gh. The doctors were amazed at his resilience. But he finally succumbed in May 2008, with Debby and his family at his side.

  I will love Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky and hold him in my heart forever.

  Lyle Waggoner

  In the mid-sixties I was still relying on the goofy, zany, loudmouthed, ugly-duckling caricature that had worked so well for me during the Garry Moore years and as the man-hungry princess in Once upon a Mattress. So it made sense to cast an unbelievably handsome announcer for me to fawn and make goo-goo eyes over. I remembered Jack Benny with his announcer, Don Wilson. This was different, but it had the same premise: Have fun with the announcer. Make him a character in the show, not just a commercial-pusher.

  We held auditions. I have never seen so many gorgeous men in one room in my life. In walked Lyle Waggoner. Gorgeous? Yes. But so much more. He was incredibly funny. He had a sly, tongue-in-cheek delivery that told you he was putting himself on and not taking himself seriously. No question, he was the one. Later, during our long run with the show, we started giving Lyle roles in the sketches because we trusted his comedic instincts. We weren’t wrong. He was very funny doing various characters and wound up playing a much bigger role in the show than just the announcer. After a while, we squelched the idea of my fawning and making goo-goo eyes at him. Lyle had become much more than a foil for me. He had become a true rep player.

  Lyle also had other talents. After we first went on the air, he was getting piles of fan mail from swooning girls all over the country. He acquired a card table and a chair, which he set up in the reception area outside the writers’ rooms as his “office.” When we were on a break he would head for his card table and answer his mail. About a month or two later, I walked by and he was opening several envelopes, taking out the cash inside, and stacking it neatly on the card table. I asked him what was going on and he showed me a very professional brochure with his photograph on the cover, entitled How to Audition and Get the Job. He had put together advice for would-be actors and performers—for a dollar a pop!

  I read the brochure, which turned out to be very well written and, in my view, a great value at a dollar. But it gave me new insight into my multi-talented colleague: Lyle was quite the entrepreneur!

  Lyle was also a talented carpenter. One week Tim and I were doing a sketch about a nerdy couple that meets on a cruise ship. The ship, built by our set designer Paul Barnes, took up the entire stage. It was designed to rock back and forth, enabling Tim and me to slide up and down the deck, hanging on for dear life.

  During rehearsals Lyle asked Paul what he was going to do with the set after the show was over. Paul told him it was too big to store, so it would be cut up and burned. Lyle asked if he could take it home. No problem. After the show, the crew took the set apart and Lyle hauled it home in a huge pickup truck.

  A few weeks later, a bunch of us went to a party at the Waggoners’ house. Lyle and his beautiful wife, Sharon, were showing us around, and took us into a small, cozy, nicely furnished room. Lyle smiled. “Recognize anything?”

  Lyle: a guy to swoon over!

  COPYRIGHT © MPTVIMAGES.COM

  I didn’t.

  “It’s the cruise ship set. I used the wood and built another room!”

  Today, Lyle has a hugely successful business furnishing movie studios with his “Star Waggons” (motor homes), which house actors working on films and/or television shoots. I’ve been in a few of his motor homes and they’re definitely the best.

  No question about it. He’s a man of all trades.

  Smart, funny, and as gorgeous as ever, silver hair and all.

  Tim Conway

  Because he was so essential to our show, people assume that Tim Conway was in on it from the get-go. Not so. He was a regular guest (one or two times a month) until the ninth year, when (DUH! How stupid were we?) we finally asked him to be on every single week. Tim was a true original, with a comedic mind so brilliant that it’s downright scary. His sketches with Harvey Korman deserve a spot in whatever cultural time capsule we’re setting aside for future generations.

  We always taped two shows on Fridays with two different audiences. The early show was a dress rehearsal that we taped as a backup. Tim would do the first show as written, “to the ink.” Then, as we were getting ready for the next show, he would check in with our director, Dave Powers: “You get all the shots?”

  Dave would respond, “Yes.” (He always got all the shots.)

  Tim would then ask Dave to change some things for the second show. For instance: “Instead of shooting a close-up of me when I go to the window, could you make it a head-to-toe shot?”

  This meant that Tim had come up with some outrageous bit of business that we hadn’t seen or planned for. Now the fun would begin. Whatever Tim had been secretly cooking up all week blossomed into sheer hysterics in the second show, with Dave and the camera crew winging it right alongside him. Ninety-nine percent of the time we aired the second taping with all of Tim’s ad-libs and improvisations because they were so much funnier than the “ink” that we’d planned.

  Tim and poor, helpless Harvey in the dentist sketch.

  COURTESY OF CAROL BURNETT

  Tim’s dentist sketch with Harvey has to go down in television history as one of the funniest bits ever. Tim played the dentist, fresh out of school, and Harvey was his very first patient. The meat of the sketch was that Tim kept accidentally shooting himself with novocaine, first in his hand, then in his leg, and finally winding up with the needle between his eyebrows. As usual, he came up with most of these bits himself, and we all saw them for the first time in the second show.

  I was screaming with laughter watching the monitor in my dressing room, so I ran out to the backstage area and watched from the wings. The entire audience was exploding. Our cameramen couldn’t contain themselves, either. There wasn’t a dry eye (or seat) in the house. And then I looked at Harvey. He couldn’t move from his chair. Utterly helpless with laughter. He tried his best to keep it together, but it was no use. Tears were spurting out of his eyes. Tim was relentless.

  Tim didn’t just improvise; he also wrote a lot of the sketches we did. Mr. Tudball and Mrs. Wiggins were his creations, for instance. We trusted his instincts, and we were never wrong.

  Tim Conway is fearless in his comedy. If the audience doesn’t get it at first, he keeps on keeping on until they do. Unfortunately, our show has been accused of showing actors cracking up at times, breaking character. Guilty as charged. But it was never unwarranted. I dare anyone to be on camera and to keep it together when Conway gets on a roll. We really tried very hard not to break up, but when we did, it was honest.

  People often ask me what Tim is like in “real life.” First of all, he’s one of the sweetest and most thoughtful people I’ve ever known. That said, he’s also nuts.

  One night Joe and I went to a party in the Valley given by our voice-over announcer, Ernie Anderson, and his wife, Edwinna. The whole gang was there: a bunch of our writers, some of the dancers, and of course Tim and Harvey. When we arrived, there was Tim, sitting on the couch holding a conversation with somebody, his entire head wrapped in toilet paper but for two eyeholes and an opening for his mouth. No, he wasn’t drunk. His head was simply swathed in toilet paper. I don’t know how or why the bit got started, but there he was, looking like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man.

  He stayed that way the entire evening. After a while, nobody seemed to notice. Our host took a Polaroid of Tim’s face, and it came out the size of a driver’s license picture. Tim trimmed the photo, took out his wallet, and inserted the Polaroid over his regular driver’s license picture. (No laminated licenses in those days.) The party ended, and as Joe and I were driving away, we saw Tim get in his car, still looking like the Invisible Man.

  What happened next? There are some nice quiet streets in the San Fernando Valley, and Tim, after leaving the party, drove home on one particular street where he knew there was always a cop car lying in wait at a four-way stop sign. Tim purposely didn
’t come to a complete stop at the sign. He heard the siren and saw the red light in his rearview mirror. Pulling over to the side of the road, he stopped, rolled down his window, and waited for the policeman, his face still wrapped in the toilet paper.

  The policeman looked at Tim and asked for his license. Tim handed it over.

  The comedy gods were smiling that night. The cop had a sense of humor.

  Conway’s Cancellation

  Tim had had several shows of his own before he came to us. They never lasted more than thirteen weeks, which was why his vanity license plates read “13 WKS.” He liked to tell us about the time he was cancelled by ABC when he was the star of Rango, a sitcom about an inept cowboy in the Old West. While Tim was always hysterically funny, the Rango scripts left a lot to be desired, plus the show wasn’t shot before an audience. It was filmed like a movie—a big mistake because Tim shines before an audience, ad-libbing and improvising. The show had been on the air a few short weeks when there was a knock on Tim’s dressing room door.

  TIM: (changing his boots for the upcoming scene) Come in.

  (Enter a nervous-looking young man in a suit and tie, representing the network. He reminded Tim of Don Knotts.)

  THE SUIT: Mr. C-C-Conway?

  TIM: (mid-boot) Hi.

  THE SUIT: M-Mr. Conway … hi … er … um … I’m Albert Tart from ABC.

  TIM: (friendly, sensing that this suit was somewhat of an underling at the network) Well, hi there, Albert, come on in. Make yourself comfortable. What can I do for you?

  What came out of poor, nervous Albert’s mouth next is probably the oddest (and funniest) cancellation speech of all time.