On Thursday I might have gotten a call from the model coordinator at The Ontario College of Art offering me some September bookings. Then maybe I went downtown and busked.
Saturday, 22 August 2026
Friday, 21 August 2026
Billy Barnes
I worked on memorizing the fourth verse of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian and the last verse of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have at least the latter nailed down on Wednesday.
I weighed 91.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since August 10.
I played my Martin during song practice and it went out of tune all the time.
Around midday I pulled out the dressers from the east side of my bedroom and steamed the baseboards and the floor.
I weighed 92.15 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 92 kilos at 18:35.
I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up.
I had a potato with margarine and my last piece of roast pork while watching an interview with Ken Berry about Carol Burnett.
He once had a summer replacement comedy variety show in 1972 called Wow. He found out that he couldn’t carry a show. He already had the utmost respect for Carol but when he discovered how difficult it is to star in a variety show that admiration soared even higher.
When he starred in F-Troop he improvised with prat falls and things like that and it was written into the script that he would do so. Buster Keaton was a friend of Ken’s who he met through his ex-wife Jackie. Buster was not one to offer compliments but one time after watching F-Troop he called Ken up and told him, “That was a good gag last night.” There was no reason for F-Troop to be canceled.
Ken and his wife became good friends with Carol and her husband. She handled her fame gracefully and never was a diva. She was kind to all of her guests and it was hard to be mean to her. She was the star but couldn’t wait to see somebody else get a laugh.
They hired Harvey Korman to direct Mama’s Family because the show had a sketch type feel and Harvey understood sketch comedy.
Lucille Ball had been a beautiful starlet at MGM but when she became a comedian on TV she blew the roof off the business. But Carol took it a step beyond. She was also a great theatrical singer who could fill a theatre with her voice sans microphone. Nobody was more versatile than Carol.
When Ken had been in the army for a year he found out at the last minute about a talent contest on the base and the winner would get to travel to New York and be on the Arlene Francis Soldier Parade Show. He grabbed his ukulele and his tap shoes and went down to the latrine to work out a number with a trick at the end to get applause. He won the contest and went to New York. After the show he got an invitation to join the Third Army Special Services outfit in Atlanta, Georgia. The sergeant who ran the outfit was Leonard Nimoy. Then the All Army Talent Contest came around and Ken won third place and was among the winners who got to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. Leonard sent wires about the upcoming event to casting agents for the big studios. As a result Ken got contacted by both Fox and Universal. Leonard was in on the decision for Ken to go to Universal. They were looking for a replacement for Donald O’Connor in the Francis The Talking Mule series of films. But then Mickey Rooney got the part and so Ken didn’t get a Universal contract after all.
Ken was in The Billy Barnes Revue in 1958 when Lucille Ball came to ask if he’d like to be part of her talent department. At the time she was in charge of Desilu. There were about thirty performers in the stock company and one of them was Majel Barrett, the wife of Gene Rodenberry. Ken met Carol around that time as well when she came to see the show. She was already friends with Billy Barnes and some of the other performers. Carol went back to New York and suggested to her future husband Joe Hamilton that he invite Ken to be a guest on The Garry Moore Show. After that he was one of the co-stars of a TV special called Carol Burnett and Company.
Ken became good friends with his former Sergeant Leonard Nimoy. Leonard starred in the boxing film Kid Monk Baroni in 1952.
Ken guest starred on Dr. Kildare. Richard Chamberlain was a nice guy who used to skateboard around the studio. He got more fan mail than anyone in the history of MGM.
When Ken was between shows he went on the road because he couldn’t afford to stay in town. He did tours, summer stock and dinner theatre. Community theatre paid very well. Just from his guest spots on network TV shows Ken was recognized by someone everywhere he went.
Because his character Captain Parmenter was very clumsy and yet well loved by his men, Ken got a letter of appreciation from a father who told him he’d boosted the confidence of his uncoordinated son.
On the set of The Dick Van Dyke Show there was a sign that read “Nothin Beats Fun!”
Ken says Carl Reiner looked like he imagined god would look as a person. He says Carl told him a story about a guy who dies and goes to Heaven where he meets God. But God is surprised to see him and says, “I don’t remember creating you. What are you?” “I’m a man.” “Man? I don’t remember that creature. I remember the birds but not man. What is it that you do.” So the man starts singing and doing a soft shoe dance and God gets very excited. He asks, “Can you show me how to do that?” He says the moral is that you might do something inconsequential but it could mean everything to some people.
Sometimes Ken would do his own steps for his dance number on The Carol Burnett Show and Earnie Flatt would build the choreography around it. Ken says Toni Kaye from the Ernie Flatt Dancers was as good a dancer as Ann Miller. Ernie had also been the choreographer for Your Hit Parade.
The last time Ken danced professionally was in a show called From the Top that he did with Carol when he was 60.
Fred Astaire was dancing and winning Emmy Awards into his mid-60s. They only dancer who was better was the young Fred Astaire.
Ken says you can’t find a better person than Carol Burnett. She’s the closest thing to an angel anybody ever saw.
Ken played the prince in two TV productions of Once Upon a Mattress.
Ken always wanted to be in motion picture musicals but then the genre died.
The Carol Burnett Show and The Garry Moore Show were run like clockwork. By comparison The Glen Campbell Show was very sloppy.
If you were nasty to any member of Carol’s crew you wouldn’t be invited back.
Ken never worked in any of the Mama’s Family sketches when he was on the show. But he was hired to be Philip the TV movie of Eunice and then he was cast in the Mama’s Family sitcom.
Ken doesn’t like rock and roll.
Billy Barnes was known as the revue master of Hollywood. His revues included Billy Barnes People, Billy Barnes Hollywood, Billy Barnes Party, and Billy Barnes L.A. Barnes wrote the songs “Have I Stayed Too Long at the Fair?” and “Something Cool” that were introduced in the original Billy Barnes Revue. He was the music coordinator for Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. He wrote special material for Carol Burnett, Sonny and Cher, Danny Kaye, Lucille Ball, and The Academy Awards. He wrote the songs for the TV musical adaptation of Pinocchio. He guest starred on three episodes of Mad About You.
August 21, 1996: The Art Bar reading series disapproved of my bending the rules but enjoyed it
On Wednesday night I went to the Csarda Hungarian restaurant on Elm Street for the Art Bar reading series open stage. I talked with the host Pierre Labbé about my feature performance last week. He seemed to enjoy it while at the same time disapproved of my bending of the rules.
Thursday, 20 August 2026
Beatrice Lillie
After yoga I memorized the third verse of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian and the fifth verse of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. The Vian song has two verses left and the Gainsbourg song has only one.
I weighed 90.85 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Kramer during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune.
I weighed 92.05 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 91.95 kilos at 18:00.
I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up.
I had a potato with margarine and a piece of roast pork while watching three interviews of Jerry Lewis, Jim Nabors, and Julie Andrews on the topic of Carol Burnett.
Jerry met Carol when she was in the cast of The Garry Moore Show. He did a sketch with her and was stunned by her rhythm. She was unique in that she gave pieces of herself to everyone she worked with. Carol is the essence of the great Beatrice Lillie. Beatrice has been forgotten and Jerry had just heard some things about her when he first got into the business at 12. She was the greatest female physical comedian 30 years before Carol was born.
Carol never left her femininity in the dressing room. There’s never been a female genius comedian like Carol. She was stronger and prettier than Anna Magnani. “When she sang a ballad my skin crawled.” Carol was a clown and clowns come from a very unique place that has no name. Those of us that come from there recognize others who come from there.
The country hasn’t had a good lesson in judgement, taste and class. That’s what’s coming down the pipe now to make up for all the garbage that we’ve been put through since 1948.
Jim Nabors says he was a fan of Carol’s before he met her. Her show preceded Gomer Pyle USMC and she wrote him a fan letter (I think when he says “her” show he means Garry Moore’s show since Nabors already knew Carol and was her first guest on her own show). Nabors went to a taping of the show and when Carol saw he was there she ran up and embraced him. It was instant love for Jim.
Carol and Jim did an act together in Las Vegas and it was a big success.
When he was on The Andy Griffith Show he had to try very hard to not laugh when doing a scene with Don Knots.
Near the end of Carol’s series the new writers were presenting her with ideas for sketches but she frequently had to tell them that they’d already done that. He says variety shows don’t work any more because both the comedy and singing are gimmicky. He says he heard someone singing the other day and it was all electronic but he couldn’t find a melody.
Jim says when he first went to the Indianapolis 500 he was invited to sing the song but he thought they meant “The Star Spangled Banner”. He didn’t find out until five minutes before start time that it was the Indy theme song “Back Home Again In Indiana” written in 1917 by James F. Hanley and Ballard MacDonald. His singing of the song was such a success that he continued to sing it there every year until he was 84.
When Carol was looking at buying property in Hawaii next door to Jim she climbed a coconut tree and did her Tarzan yell.
Julie says when she and Carol did their first special at Carnegie Hall they were emulating with tongue in cheek a special that had been done years before by Mary Martin and Ethel Merman.
Carol is hugely generous to work with.
Kenny and Mitzi Welch wrote the songs for their special and Kenny asked Julie if there’s something she always wanted to do. She told him she’d never played a cowboy. They came up with “Big D” which even stopped the show in rehearsal.
Carol thought that rain was a good omen and it poured during the two days of rehearsing and shooting the special.
Carol breaks Julie out of her primness.
They parodied The Sound of Music musical long before Julie ever starred in The Sound of Music movie.
They did three specials together, each one ten years apart. They got to be more and more expensive. “Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie” became a very successful closing number.
Carol is her chum. Her very very very good friend. When she first met Carol when she was doing Once Upon a Mattress they bonded instantly. Not long after that Julie guested on Garry Moore and then they did Carnegie Hall. But Julie never appeared on The Carol Burnett Show. Maybe they felt it was best to save it for the specials.
Julie and Carol were asked to do one of their medleys for the inauguration of Lyndon Johnson. They were at their hotel in Washington when Mike Nichols called and asked if they wanted to get together for tea. They waited for him but he didn’t show and so they got into their pajamas and were going to go to bed when Mike called and asked if it was too late. They said it wasn’t. They went down the hall in their dressing gowns to sit on the couch in front of the elevator and wait for Mike. They decided to prank him by kissing so Mike would see it when the elevator opened. When the elevator arrived Julie bent Carol in her arms and pretended to give her a passionate kiss. But when the door opened the elevator was full of Secret Service agents. The elevator door closed and went away and then another came, which had to be Mike. But it was the First Lady of the United States Lady Bird Johnson. She took one look at them kissing and then walked down the hall but stopped, turned around and came back. Carol had crawled behind the sofa and was laughing until she was crying. Lady Bird leaned over the couch and asked, “Are you Carol Burnett?” Carol said, “Yes and this is my friend Mary Poppins!” Lady Bird went to her room. The elevator came and Julie started kissing Carol again. This time it was Mike Nichols. He saw them kissing, said, “Hi girls!” and walked down the hall.
Julie thinks Carol felt free to be outrageous on her show because her husband was the producer.
Carol once scared away a mugger by doing her Tarzan yell.
Canadian comedian Beatrice Lillie was born in 1894 Toronto. She sang with her mother accompanied by her sister on piano in an act called The Lillie Trio. Her mother took their act to England. She made her professional stage debut at the Chatham Music Hall in 1914. She made her London West End debut the same year in The Daring of Diane. Her first revue was André Charlot’s Not Likely, also in 1914. She starred in six more of Charlot’s revues over the rest of that decade. She skillfully interwove sketches, songs, and monologues with parody and satire. In the 1920s when her husband became a lord, she became Lady Peel. She starred in The Nine O’Clock Revue in 1922 for which her sister Muriel wrote the music and which ran for a year. When she returned to North America in 1924 she was an instant success on Broadway in The Charlot Revue, which took New York by storm. She came to be called the funniest woman in the world. Noël Coward and Cole Porter wrote entire shows just as vehicles for her. She premiered Coward’s song “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” at The Third Little Show in 1931 on Broadway. In his Set To Music revue in 1939 she debuted his and “I Went to a Marvellous Party”. She made her film debut when she starred in Exit Smiling in 1927. She co-starred in Doctor Rhythm and Thoroughly Modern Millie. Her 1972 autobiography was Every Inch a Lady.
August 20, 1996: I featured at my own open stage
Thirty years ago today
On Tuesday night as always I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage. But we started something new in hopes of increasing attendance, which was to have one featured poet every week. I decided that anyone could be invited to be a feature as long as they’d read at the Orgy on two occasions. I kicked things off by making myself the first feature and Brian Haddon accompanied me on recorder. As I recall we had a fairly good turn-out that night.
Wednesday, 19 August 2026
Dave Garroway
I worked on memorizing the third verse of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian and the fifth verse of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg.
I weighed 91.45 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Kramer for the first of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time.
Around midday I pulled out the dressers on the east side of my bedroom and vacuumed the floor and the baseboards. I found at least one bedbug on the back of the dresser at the south east corner. On Tuesday I’ll steam the area.
I weighed 92.15 kilos at 14:00.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 91.2 kilos at 18:05, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since July 28.
I was back to being three days behind in my journal. I haven’t been caught up for about a month. I guess eventually I will be.
I made pizza on a slice of Rudolph’s sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, a sliced hot Italian sausage, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching an interview with Harvey Korman.
The interviewer Jenna asks if he had any nicknames growing up. He says his grandmother used to call him Vontz, which is Yiddish for bedbug. He says he was a loner and so there were probably names for him he never heard. Harvey had a tendency in this interview to go off on tangents and forget the original question. He says a lot of entertainers are loners and less than popular. Comedians in particular tend to be shy and withdrawn but also tend to be very bright.
He studied drama when he was 10 and started working on stage in Chicago at 12. He doesn’t think that he ever really grew up and he thinks that’s another thing entertainers have in common.
They sat around in front of their big Philco radio console and listened to Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, The Shadow, boxing matches, baseball games, and political events. He was a Chicago White Sox fan. He was entranced by Benny, Cantor and Orson Wells. As a kid he used to go downtown where a theatre would have a movie, then a vaudeville stage show, followed by another movie. He would stay there all day and work his way up until he was in the front. He was much more interested in the live performers. When they got a television it was one of those little ones with a huge magnifying glass. He watched Kukla, Fran and Ollie, which he adored. In those days Chicago was at the vanguard of television with The Dave Garroway Show, The Studs Turkle Show, and Ed Sullivan.
It was going to the movies though that really got him and the stars were gigantic gods. Later when he became a TV star and he met these gods he was astounded and jolted when they told him that they were fans of Harvey Korman.
He played baseball and touch football and also loved music crossword puzzles.
After high school he went to the Goodman School of Drama. He performed in the classics and discovered that he was a very good actor. He left Goodman in 1950 and his goal was Broadway. He had been an honour student and the top of his class but when he went to New York he was instantly driven to his knees. He worked for ten years in restaurants so he could be around food. He lived in cold water flats and had to boil water on the stove to transfer to the tub for two hours so he could have a hot bath. But he always managed to go to the opera, the ballet, and the New York Philharmonic. The tickets were only $3 in those days.
He studied acting with Uta Hagen, who he worshipped. She was not a diva. She would teach her classes, raise her daughter, and do her own grocery shopping during the day, and then star on Broadway at night.
He failed in New York and went back to Chicago to do dinner theatre and summer stock. Summer stock was really how he learned his craft because there was a different show every week. One learns where the laughs are, one learns character, reality, and conflict. That’s why the Carol Burnett Show was so successful because they prepared it like summer stock.
The producers of The Red Skelton Show were doing a play in Chicago called Mr. and Mrs. starring Jackie Coogan and they used Chicago actors like himself for the secondary roles.
He got married and the choice was to either go back to New York or to move to LA. He decided if they were going to starve they might as well do it where it was warm.
In LA he got work first for The Donna Reed Show on which me played a maître d’ and had about three lines but made the most of them. If you get a shot you’d better do something with it. He made $125 in three days. They liked him at Screen Gems so he started to get work on Hazel and Route 66. Jenna reminds him that he was on The Untouchables and he’s surprised to hear that. He says he’s been told he was on Perry Mason but doesn’t remember that either. On Dr. Kildare he played a young doctor for three or four episodes. Michelle Lee’s father was the makeup man.
He was on Red Skelton who was somewhat disturbed but cute about it. Harvey used to see him on vaudeville and couldn’t believe he got to work with him. Through Red Skelton Harvey became a second banana on The Danny Kaye Show. He did that show from 1963 to 1967.
Danny Kaye was a very complicated man. Harvey remembers seeing him in Up In Arms at The Brooklyn Paramount and there was never a performer like him. To work with him was extraordinary. He was inclined to be depressed and very moody. He was a perfectionist and as this was Harvey’s first job he was a wreck. Carol was the opposite of Danny Kaye in that the most important thing was to have fun rather than being perfect. Danny could be so charming and loving and then sometimes a wall would come down.
Harvey worked a bit with Lucille Ball. He says, “I love Lucy!” Lucy will be able to make people laugh until the end of time. She was very perfectionistic and when she was a guest on Carol’s show she tried to tell Harvey what to do but he put her in her place, which she accepted.
In the mid 60s he became a voice performer on The Flintstones. He was the voice of The Great Gazoo for only about 13 episodes but now the cells with The Great Gazoo on them are worth lots of money. He just made him superior and elite but says he’s not a very good voice over actor. He also doesn’t think he’s a very good movie actor either because he’s very intimidated by the camera.
In order to be a star one has to have a persona and a rapport with the audience and Carol Burnett had that. When she started with questions and answers on the first show the audience was already in her pockets. Carol was the kind of performer that needs to have someone who can bounce the ball back quickly.
He tells his friend George Siegel not to be happy with four laughs because you’ve got to get six or eight.
When he does his live shows with Tim Conway the back and forth they have with the audience is like communion, like a religious experience.
He loves doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. It takes him hours but he nearly always finishes it.
That was the end of the Korman interview but the video still had another twenty minutes of general interviews about the show with clips I’d already seen.
Dave Garroway had a degree in Abnormal Psychology. He began working as a page at NBC in 1938. He graduated from NBC’s School for Announcers and got a job at a Pittsburgh radio station. he gained a reputation for going to great lengths to get a story. After two years he moved to Chicago. After WWII he became a DJ, He was the host of The Dave Garroway (radio) Show from 1947 to 1955. He hosted the experimental radio show Garroway at Large from 1949 to 1951. He was the first host of The Today Show from 1952 to 1961. His easygoing presence attracted a large audience. He hosted The Dave Garroway Show from 1953 to 1954. He would tell the audience to respond to music by snapping their fingers rather than by applauding. He created a jazz circuit of local clubs and organized concerts. he was voted the best DJ in the US by other disc jockeys in 1948, 1949, and 1951. He was the first host of the NBC radio show Monitor in 1955. From 1955 to 1958 he hosted the weekly documentary series Wide Wide World. He co-starred in The World Through the Eyes of Children. He would sign off by holding up his palm and saying, “Peace!” In 1960 there was a board game called Dave Garroway’s Today Game. In 1961 he began to suffer from depression and would sometimes disappear in the middle of a Today broadcast. He quit the show in June of that year. He returned to work as a DJ. He began reading law books and on a bet took the bar exam, which he passed. He moved to LA in the 70s and began taking acting lessons. His acting debut was on an episode of Alias Smith and Jones. He collected and restored vintage cars and sometimes raced his SS Jaguar 100. He appeared in the first commercial for the Chevrolet Corvette in 1953 and the Ford Falcon in 1964.
August 19, 1996: I rehearsed with Brian for our feature
Thirty years ago today
On Monday I rehearsed with Brian Haddon for our feature at my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy open stage on Tuesday at the Gladstone Hotel.
Tuesday, 18 August 2026
Pat Carroll
On Saturday after midnight I put fresh two-sided carpet tape around the edge of my mattress. I didn’t get to bed until 2:45 because I was working on my journal and wanted to stay only three days behind rather than going back to four. I didn’t sleep very well but only felt one bedbug on me overnight. After yoga I checked the tape and about ten bedbugs had been caught.
I memorized the second verse of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian and the fourth verse of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. For the latter there are only two verses left to learn.
I weighed 90.75 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio for the last of two sessions and it went out of tune about half the time.
Around midday I rode to No Frills where I bought five bags of Canadian cherries, a pack of Canadian blueberries, a pack of Mexican raspberries that went moldy before I could eat them, some bananas, a basket of Canadian peaches, a basket of Canadian nectarines, a bag of red grapes, a pack of Canadian chicken drumsticks, a pack of interdental brushes, three bags of 1% skim milk, two containers of skyr, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips.
I weighed 92.2 kilos at 14:30.
I woke up from my siesta too late to take a bike ride.
David was supposed to come over tonight so I could make a Lost Python poster for him but he called to tell me they found his snake at the hospital. He was there a couple of days ago and hadn’t realized that his python had crawled into his backpack before he went there and crawled out while he was there. They figured out it was his snake because it had a tattoo with his initials.
I weighed 92.5 kilos at 17:30, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since February 16.
I was two days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up.
I made pizza on a slice of Rudolph’s sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, a sliced hot Italian sausage, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching an interview with Harvey Korman and Tim Conway.
On The Carol Burnett Show Dave Powers was not a bossy director. Harvey says there was not hierarchy and they were all working together to make a good show. Even the cameramen and the cue card guys might suggest something for a sketch.
Harvey says no other show would have sometimes taken up half the episode with a film parody.
When they did the parody of Gone With the Wind Harvey didn’t know how to do an impression of Clark Gable until he was in costume and then he suddenly felt like him.
Tim says his favourite was probably The Little Foxes parody. Near the end most of the cast were laughing corpses on the floor.
Harvey doesn’t think Tim really liked parody. He preferred to come up with totally original characters doing ridiculous things.
Tim’s favourite sketch was the dentist and Harvey says he liked it too.
The first five years of The Carol Burnett Show were never re-broadcast.
Tim says there were over 1300 sketches in 11 years.
Harvey left at the end of season 10 because he had an offer to do his own show. He had about three or four different shots but couldn’t make it as the star of a show because he isn’t a star. He points to Tim and says, “He ain’t a star” and Tim agrees. The audience goes nuts when Tim is introduced but when he comes out on stage as himself he looks awkward. People don’t like to see their favourites moved into a different context.
The interviewer asks Tim how Harvey’s departure affected the show and Tim says it was a couple of weeks before they realized he was gone. He says Dick Van Dyke was a tremendous asset to the show but it was out of balance. Harvey says it was out of balance because Harvey was the glue that set up everybody else. With Dick and Carol there were too many stars on the show.
Harvey says when Tim had his own variety show his ratings were incredible but the show failed. Today the show would have been a hit with those numbers.
Tim says the best shows were the last ones before time off and everybody would just go out and explode.
Harvey says he started crying during the final show when Carol sang her theme song.
Their first reunion special was number 1 that week and the fourth highest that year. They showed clips of old sketches but also did new sketches. Harvey says the new sketches were just not as good and so they didn’t air them. They just kept their introductions of the old clips and their repartee in between.
Trying to recreate the Carol Burnett Show just wouldn’t work.
Harvey says he’s heard from people who said the only time they got along with their families was while watching Carol Burnett on Saturday night.
Harvey directed the TV movie Eunice starring Carol and co-starring Harvey, Vicki Lawrence, Betty White and Ken Berry. Harvey says he was never comfortable playing the character of Ed but he enjoyed directing it.
It was Carol’s idea for Vicki to do Mama’s Family as a series. She didn’t want to do it at first but it was a hit. Harvey co-directed the first 24 episodes and he softened Mama’s character up a bit making her less harsh and caustic.
Tim says all of his shows only went 13 weeks. Early in his career he did Steve Allen three times and that was his favourite show and so he thought he’d already reached his peak and so he almost turned down McHale’s Navy.
Tim has a character named Dorf who is very short and is always an athlete involved with a different sport in each direct to video episode. There is also a direct to video movie that Tim and Harvey did called Tim and Harvey in The Great Outdoors.
Harvey doesn’t want to do movies or sitcoms anymore because they are too time consuming.
Harvey does the live shows with Tim because Tim needs the money. The reason they are successful is because they are both brilliant. It took him years to be able to accept that but he’s always known Tim was brilliant. “He ribs me relentlessly and I love it. I don’t dare do that to him because he’s too sensitive.
When they were each nominated for an Emmy and Red Fox the host began to list the nominees, they both walked onto the stage and just stood there waiting to win but Chevy Chase won. One time when Tim won an Emmy he thanked everybody at the Tarzana Pitch and Putt. He listed their hours of operation and mentioned that they had baby sitters there. He announced that they had a new Mark Twain hole and that soft drinks were only a quarter. One time when Tim won he had Harvey accept it for him while Tim was right there.
Harvey says Tim has 6 Emmys while he only has 4. Tim corrects him that he only has 5.5 Emmys because one of them is for daytime and they’re smaller.
Tim says Harvey is neurotic, hypochondriac, obsessive compulsive, panicky, and anxious and so he’s an easy target. There are so many times Tim has taken advantage of that and attacked him on a daily basis. Harvey adds, “Many of which he can’t tell you about”. Tim compares their relationship to Jack Benny and George Burns. There’s one time Jack had just bought a new Bentley and George was directing him as he backed into a parking space. He kept saying “A little more!” until Jack hit a pole and then George said, “That’s good!” Tim says that’s essentially what he does to Harvey all the time. He says Harvey can do the New York Times crossword puzzle in five minutes but he can’t tie his own shoes. Harvey got new luggage with a new combination lock and so Tim locked it. He knew that a new lock’s combination would be 000 but Harvey didn’t so he pretended to crack it by listening to it and opened it. Then he reset the lock and locked it again. Harvey ripped open the suitcase.
Harvey says Tim got him to invest in a racehorse named Hail Columbus with him and two other guys for $30,000 a piece. He told him that his $30,000 would probably turn to $3 million. The horse never won a race. Then the horse couldn’t run because it was depressed and so they had to pay for a horse psychiatrist. After that and other treatments including a spa it had already cost Harvey $60,000. Then they found an Australian guy who was willing to buy it for $120,000 but the buyer’s granddaughter suddenly says she doesn’t want the horse because it’s not brown. Harvey was getting mad until he found out this was set up by TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes. It wasn’t even their horse he thought they were selling.
Harvey says he and Tim met on The Danny Kaye Show but Tim remembers that they met on The Carol Burnett Show. He says in their first skit he gave Harvey a boost to his career. Harvey asks if The Carol Burnett Show was the high point of Tim’s career and he says it was. He asks if it would have been the high point if Harvey hadn’t been there and Tim says it would have been higher.
Tim says a Harvey Korman type is a straight man who is taller than the other’s in his skit so he can look down on them. Someone who can do voices, characters, who can be very physical, but most importantly who knows when to shut up, not to jump in but to just let something play. Harvey says that was very well put “and you didn’t have those tremors that you usually have”. He says a good straight man knows how to make the star shine and how to return the ball without stealing the show.
Carol established from the start that she wanted everybody to love each other and have fun and that was the atmosphere until the end. She let Tim go on and on while she just stood there. No other star would have allowed that.
Tim says as the years passed the rapport between the cast members was such that there came to be a flow and so they needed less rehearsal time. Sometimes the whole script might be changed in the middle of a rehearsal but it was no problem. If you did that to people nowadays they’d die. Harvey says that too much rehearsal can just squeeze the joy out.
One time Joe Hamilton came on in the middle of a skit in front of a live audience and told everybody to stop because it wasn’t working. That was the week Alan King was the guest star and he was astounded at what had just happened.
Tim says there were about a dozen audience members who came to almost every show.
Tim was also a writer on the show and he wrote things like the Tudball-Wiggins sketches. He says the prop men loved his suggestions like on the As The Stomach Turns set there was a painting of a barn on the wall. Tim asked the prop man to put a real door in the painting so he could crawl inside. The prop man added a lot of other stuff like hay, little animals and the barn catching fire. So everybody contributed.
Harvey says when they did the skit as two German sailors in a submarine, that morning Tim had a vasectomy. Tim adds, “Which I did myself.” Harvey says, “You took out your own prostate too. He saved a lot of money.” When Tim slid down the periscope and hit the floor he was in such pain after the operation.
Tim talks about the time Carol was singing in front of a horse and it started pissing. The handler came with a bucket and saluted Carol while she was cracking up.
Harvey says you can’t do sketches and look at cue cards.
They went through about 40 writers. The original head writer was Arnie Rosen who was brilliant. Artie Malvin and Ken and Mitzi Welch wrote the special songs.
A few guests were intimidated and who looked for the cards because they couldn’t improvise. But Carol always made them feel comfortable.
When Pat Carol was a guest she wet her pants during a sketch. She said after the first taping, “This is the most unprofessional thing I’ve ever seen in my life! What is this laughing business in the middle of a show? We have to have some discipline and pride in our work!” But during the second taping she reacted to Tim acting like a dog and started laughing so hard she peed her pants and had to leave the stage. Harvey says, “Talk about unprofessional? She still had dialogue left!”
Harvey had never thought of himself and Tim as a team but they were inducted into the Television Hall of Fame as a comedy team. He wonders if they would have been inducted individually. Maybe Tim would have been and Tim says, “Absolutely!”
Harvey says Tim is a very good writer and comedy innovator. Carol has said that more people steal from Tim than anybody else.
Tim says a wonderful thing about Joe and Carol is if there was something they wanted to take out but if you said, “Let’s give it a shot” they’d let you. During the dentist sketch Tim arranged with the sound man to have the sound of a fly buzzing around. When Tim swatted it while his hands were limp from the novocaine Harvey lost it. They show that sketch in dental schools. Tim says it came from a real situation when one dental student was applying a needle to someone’s cheek and it went through the cheek to the student’s thumb.
Harvey didn’t like playing Roger in the Carol and Sis sketches because he was a real person.
Tim is the only person who ever fell upstairs.
Pat Carroll earned a BA in Acting from Catholic University. After college she began performing in nightclubs, at Tamiment resort, and in over 200 stock and regional productions. She made her stage debut in The Goose and the Gander in 1947. She made her film debut in Hometown Girl in 1948. She made her television debut when she became a cast member of The Red Buttons Show. She made her Broadway debut in Catch a Star in 1955 and was nominated for a Tony. She starred in The Saturday Night Revue. She was in 46 episodes of Caesar’s Hour for which she won an Emmy Award. She played Bunny Halper on 40 episodes of The Danny Thomas Show. She played Mrs. Hope Stinson on 21 episodes of Too Close For Comfort. She played Gussie Holt on all 45 episodes of She’s the Sheriff. She played Pearl Markowitz on Busting Loose. She played Katrina Stoneheart on Pound Puppies. She co-starred in With Six You Get Eggroll, The Brothers O’Toole, . She starred in the one-woman show Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein and won a grammy for the recorded version.
August 18, 1996: Action figures
Thirty years ago today
On Sunday my daughter and I played with her action figures on the back roof.
Monday, 17 August 2026
Milt Kamen
After yoga I memorized the third verse of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. That’s half the song.
I weighed 90.85 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the first of two sessions and it went out of tune on almost every song. It’s weird how sometimes it stays in tune and sometimes it doesn’t.
I got a call from my upstairs neighbour David telling me that his snake has gone missing. He told me a couple of years ago that he’d given away all of his snakes. He explained that he’d recently been cleaning out a closet when he discovered another python that had been hibernating. David wanted me to make and print a “Lost Snake” poster for him. I told him I could do it that night if he came over and described what he wants.
I went to the hardware store to buy two more rings of carpet tape. I put fresh tape around the edge of my mattress.
I weighed 92.45 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 91.5 kilos at 18:10.
I was still three days behind in my journal.
I had a potato with margarine and a piece of roast pork while watching three interviews on Carol Burnett with Carl Reiner, Carol Channing and Don Rickles.
Carl heard about Carol from his friend Milt Kamen who worked as a stand-by for Sid Caesar. He would take Sid’s place in a sketch so Sid could sit in the control room to see and hear how it worked. Usually he’d also come up with two or three good lines that Sid would use later. Milt arranged to let Carol come in and watch three of the weekly rehearsals. She had tickets to a big Broadway show but didn’t use them so she could view how Sid and his crew worked. That’s how dedicated she was to learning her craft. Now she’s the single most talented person on Earth. She does everything at the highest level.
Carl says the only thing he added was to tell her producer that Carol’s got to have her own Rock Hudson on the show. She needed some eye candy to play against and that turned out to be Lyle Waggoner.
Carl says he was a real actor for years and also a very good sketch actor. He wanted to be an opera singer and an Irish tenor. When he was a kid he would listen to an Irish tenor named John Calvin who was really John Calvus. Calvin would talk and sing in an Irish accent songs “me mother taught me” but he was actually Jewish. Carl told his father he wanted to be an Irish tenor too but his father explained that he could sing Irish songs but couldn’t be an Irish tenor because he was Jewish. Carl wanted to be an opera singer and had almost a three octave range but was out of rhythm and off pitch.
Sid Caesar was only on for 9 years compared to Carol’s 11.
Your brain works better with the excitement of a live audience.
Carl says he doesn’t know what they’re singing on American Idol but it doesn’t interest him. His father listened to Franz Lehár and couldn’t understand what anybody heard in Bing Crosby.
Sid was a master and only ad-libbed when things went wrong but when he did it was genius. Sid and Carl were playing two English barristers playing pool and Sid’s cue stick broke. He ended up using it like a polo mallet and knocked the ball off the table while Carl exclaimed, “Jolly good shot!”
At 90 Carl is just finishing a memoir called I Remember Me. The first chapter is Chapter 59.
Lucille Ball was pretty and funny but she didn’t have as many talents as Carol.
Every good writer wanted to work with Sid Caesar and the same was true of Carol because of what she could do with the material and the costumes.
Carol Channing’s mother loved Carol Burnett.
Carol Burnett is a friend when she’s a friend.
Carol Channing was on stage in high school doing imitations of the faculty. She was vice president of the student body and when she ran for the position her father worked out the slogans “If Carol’s your vice it’s a virtue”.
Carol Channing’s first job was a revue called Lend an Ear.
In the theatre there are three balconies and the third one is way up there so you have to wear eyelashes that make you look the same from up there as you do from the first row.
Carol Burnett is unusually eager to push other performers forward.
Don Rickles says he and his wife went for dinner with Carol and she eats with her hands. “We don’t see Carol cause she lives in a shack in the desert.” Harvey Korman and Tim Conway are amazing comedians “But they know I’m the best and so they come over to my house every day to give me a hot bath”. Harvey’s dead and resting someplace nice while Tim is walking around town trying to be recognized. When Don was on her show Carol was so kind to him when she shouted, “Get over here and read your lines!”
Milt Kamen won a scholarship to The Juilliard School of Music. He began his career as a french horn player for The Metropolitan Opera. He was a writer and performer for Caesar’s Hour starting in 1954. His comedy album “Here’s Milt Kamen” was produced by Mel Brooks with liner notes by Groucho Marx. He discovered Woody Allen in the Catskills and got him his first writing job on Caesar’s Hour.
August 17, 1996: Nancy brought our daughter to my place.
Thirty years ago today
On Saturday Nancy brought our daughter to my place so we could spend the weekend together. The weather was nice so we played outside.
Sunday, 16 August 2026
Bill Hader
On Thursday I killed more bedbugs while trying to sleep than I have for a while but I found fewer on the floor and wall around my bed.
I worked on memorizing the second verse of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian and the third verse of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have them both nailed down tomorrow.
I weighed 91.2 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Martin during song practice for the last of two sessions and it went out of tune all the time.
I weighed 92.5 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back I stopped at Freshco where I bought five bags of cherries, a pint of blueberries, some bananas, a pack of hot Italian sausages, marinara sauce, salsa, and a lint roller. I did a price match on the cherries with the No Frills price of $8.80 a kilo.
I tried to show my Scene card but it disappeared again. When I first got the Scene card it was right there in my email and it was easy to access, but then it got buried by emails. AI told me I could put it in Wallet and so I downloaded that and it worked but sometimes Wallet would disappear from my apps. Then I learned I could type “wallet” in a search and it would show up. But recently all this stuff started filling up Wallet when the only thing I wanted in there was my Scene card but then I figured out that I just needed to click on my own picture and then on “Your data in Wallet” and then “Scene” again to find the card.
I weighed 91.5 kilos at 18:40.
I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up.
I had a potato with margarine and a piece of roast pork while watching two interviews about Carol Burnett with Bill Hader and Burt Reynolds.
The Carol Burnett Show ended just before Bill Hader was born but he saw it in re-runs. His mother and grandmother were big fans. When Bill saw the movie Annie, his mother told him “That’s Carol Burnett! She’s one of the funniest women who ever lived!”
He’d already seen Harvey Korman in Blazing Saddles and Tim Conway in other movies.
Bill had a big crush on Carol Burnett and thought she’d be the perfect person to live with. From a very young age he found funny women very attractive.
He talks about the difference between performing and acting. Performing is projecting outward to a live audience while acting is very interior. Carol could do both. She made everyone feel like they were in on the joke. She was like the bass in a rock band holding all the crazy stuff together.
He loves Monty Python and Black Adder but Carol’s show was very US in that aside from the talent one got to watch people have a good time.
In Second City in Los Angeles he learned that you have to make the people and situations real.
On SNL Kristen Wiig and Amy Poehler were more like Carol Burnett. Fred Armisen and Will Forte were more like Tim Conway and they could make Bill laugh during a skit. John Malaney would change the script to make him laugh. Bill says he gets very nervous before a show. If you’re a performer with tension then someone who’s more calm will take advantage of that. Fred Armisen was the king of that. On the skit The Californians he would stretch out a line and then Bill would lose it. Then Fred would give Bill a puzzled look.
The best way to make someone laugh is to get in their space and Tim would do that to Harvey.
When Bill does Vincent Price on SNL he’s really doing Harvey Korman.
For a long time until he was in his late 20s Bill thought Carol and Vicki were sisters.
He loved old movies and watched them with his family. When Carol and her cast did takeoffs of vintage films he felt like it was for him.
Burt Reynolds appears a bit drunk in his interview.
He talks about one of his own TV series that was on opposite Dean Martin, and Martin blew it out of the water. Dean sent Burt a note saying, “I told you not to take out your laundry.”
Burt had a good time with The Smothers Brothers and admired them but nobody could compare with Carol Burnett. She made her guests comfortable. If a guest didn’t like a joke her writers would change it.
Burt started the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre in Jupiter, Florida in 1979 and invited his celebrity friends to come down and do plays. In 1980 Burt co-starred with Carol there in a production of Same Time Next Year, directed by Dom DeLuise. When Burt kissed her she acted like she used to act around Lyle Waggoner on her show as if she was about to swoon. Burt told her to stop but she said she really meant it. They played jokes on each other onstage. She nailed his loafers to the stage floor so when he slipped them on in a scene and tried to walk he fell on his face. When they were in bed in a scene he put a frog there. Burt got Carol to warm up the audience the way she did on her show. She would pretend she forgot her lines just to get Burt to ad lib. He says it was the most fun he’d ever had on stage.
Burt talks about how much he loved Dom DeLuise and his whole family.
He says Dean Martin also cracked up in the middle of skits. Dom DeLuise could make him fall apart.
Burt talks about his beginnings as a stuntman. All stunt people have to have an athletic background. His two best friends are stuntmen and there is no one in the movie business he loves more than stunt people.
He says he had a mad crush on Carol Burnett but she didn’t believe it. If he had to go to a desert island and could take one person he’d take Carol. He kept saying that in interviews until she sent him a picture of herself in a bathing suit with the caption, “When?”
She loved anything that made her crazy.
He’s scared to death to sing in public but he wasn’t when he did “Time Goes By” on Carol’s show. She kept on insisting that he could sing until he believed it. When he told her he wanted to fall down the stairs during his number she was horrified that he would break something. He did it twice to make sure they got it right.
It was fun to watch Harvey and Tim because it was clear that they loved each other.
Vicki’s timing was good from the start and she had the goods right away.
Lyle Waggoner was taller and Burt said if he worked with him he wanted him to be sitting down. Lyle took him seriously and tried to accommodate him until Burt told him he was joking.
Nanette Fabray was the perfect guest for Carol and she was very easy to work with.
Carol came to Burt’s dressing room ten times to make sure if everything was all right and to ask if he wanted anything. He wanted to see how far she’d go so he asked for some vodka. She brought him three bottles and afterward he pretended he was drunk.
Bill Hader studied at the New York Academy College of Film. He originally wanted to be a director and had no thoughts about being a comedian or an actor. he worked as a production assistant on several movies and shows. he started taking improv classes at Second City. He co-formed a sketch troupe called Animals from the Future and one of the members was Matt Offerman the brother of Nick Offerman. Nick’s wife Megan Mullaly recommended Bill to Lorne Michaels and so he was invited to fly to New York to audition for SNL. For his Saturday Night Live audition he did impressions of Al Pacino, James Mason, and Peter Falk. He was in the cast of Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2013. On the show he did impressions of Vincent Price, Harvey Fierstein, John Malkovitch, James Carville, Julian Assange, Alan Alda, Clint Eastwood, and Charlie Sheen. He was the first male castmember to be nominated for an Emmy since Eddie Murphy. One of his most famous characters was Stefon. He co-created, co-produced, directed and starred in the HBO show Barry from 2018 to 2023, for which he won two Emmy Awards. He co-created, co-produced and starred in Documentary Now from 2015 to 2022. He was a producer for season 13 of South Park for which he co-won an Emmy. He made his film debut in You Me and Dupree in 2006. He co-starred in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Adventureland, Paul, BFG, Trainwreck, Inside Out, Sausage Party, Maggie’s Plan, Nelle, The To Do List, . He starred in The Skeleton Twins, When he saw that his girlfriend had Star Wars curtains, he knew he was going to marry her. He played Mr. Peanut in Planter’s commercials even though he’s allergic to peanuts. He hosted SNL in 2018. He discovered on Finding Your Roots that he is descended from Edward I of England and Charlemagne.
August 16, 1996: We busked enough to buy food and beer
Thirty years ago today
On Friday Brian Haddon and I busked on Bloor Street. We made enough to go for food and beer and then busked some more before going to perform on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron.
Saturday, 15 August 2026
George Tibbles
On Wednesday while in bed I killed one bedbug that had gotten across the two sided tape to get to my body. After yoga I found at least one that was stuck to the tape but there were quite a few more than usual crawling on the old exit door above the head of my futon. I still don’t know exactly where they emerge from at night. The most logical place would be under my baseboards but I’ve put so much diatomaceous earth down there it’s hard to believe they can get through.
I memorized the first verse of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian.
I memorized the first two verses of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. I thought that I’d nailed down just a very long first verse but then I realized it was really two. There are four more verses and no choruses left to learn.
I weighed 90.2 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since July 29.
I played my Martin during song practice and as usual it went out of tune on every song.
I used up the last of my two sided carpet tape. I put some on the old exit door at the head of my bed and some on the floor beside the mattress. I vacuumed under my desk.
I weighed 92.25 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade.
I woke up from my siesta too late to take a bike ride.
I weighed 92.2 kilos at 17:25.
I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up.
I made pizza on a slice of Rudolph’s sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, wedge fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching an interview with Bernadette Petters and another with Betty White about Carol Burnett.
Bernadette says her and her family used to watch Carol on The Garry Moore Show and she was the main reason they tuned in because she was the new Imogene Coca. She says The Garry Moore Show and Sid Caesar were the glory days of television. Bernadette was already performing when she was three and a half. Gary Moore’s show was very well written. On Carol’s show the old expression “The fish stinks from the head” applies because she was the head and inspired everybody else. Comedy has to be open, trusting and giving. Bernadette had appeared on The Tonight Show where Carol first saw her and went to see her off Broadway in Babes In Arms. Carol was friends with Bernadette’s manager Louis. Carol hired Bernadette more than anyone did at the time. The production numbers were theirs but they chose the ballads together. When she sang The Wiz she didn’t even know that she knew that song. And then when she sang with a French accent she hadn’t known she could do that.
Monday they’d do a read through, then rewrite it. You block on Tuesday. By Wednesday you’re doing a run-through of the whole musical number. Thursday you’re camera blocking and then on Friday you shoot.
Betty says she couldn’t keep from laughing during sketches. The only one who could keep straight most of the time was Carol. Even when Tim guest starred on Hot in Cleveland they had to take extra time because he cracked everybody up.
Betty first fell in love with Harvey Korman when he was on The Danny Kaye Show. He had intelligence on top of talent and there was nothing he couldn’t do.
On the Mama’s Family sketches when Betty played Ellen she only wore beige, which Betty never wears.
In 1949 Betty was Al Jarvis’s girl Friday five and a half hours a day, six days a week for four years. That was like television college. In 1952 Jarvis left the show Hollywood on Television and Betty inherited it. There was no script and so she had to be interested.
Her first sitcom Life With Elizabeth she produced and co-wrote with George Tibbles. Nobody ever said she couldn’t be the producer because she was a woman.
Everything was new for TV audiences in those days. Now it’s harder to surprise them.
The third week that Password was on the air they flew Betty in to New York from LA. After the show was over Bob Stewart told her that when the host Alan Ludden came off stage he said, “I’m gonna marry that woman!” Betty resisted for a year but Alan was a good salesman.
Betty had a great time hosting Saturday Night Live. They brought back a lot of the women who had been stars of the show to support her. The difference between SNL and The Carol Burnett Show was that they use cue cards on SNL while on Carol’s show there was a script to learn. Betty doesn’t know how to use cue cards.
They shot Hot in Cleveland with a live audience.
When Betty was 90 she hosted Betty White’s Off Their Rockers based on the Belgian show Benidorn Bastards.
Betty says Carol is the most accessible star in the business.
Comedy is a rhythm like poetry. If you put a couple of extra syllables in you could ruin it.
Steve Martin was a very pleasant person to work with. One doesn’t expect a performer to be that smart. She says she’s crazy about him but he’s never looked at her twice.
Carol’s rendition of “Funny But Here’s That Rainy Day” can put Betty away every time.
Carol’s down to earth genuine sense of fun inspired the people around her. She was concerned about making herself more available to her audience.
George Tibbles played piano for Eddie Cantor. He co-wrote “The Woody Woodpecker Song” for the movie Wet Blanket Policy. It was nominated for a Best Song Oscar in 1948 and made it to #3 on the hit parade. He wrote 81 and produced 35 episodes of My Three Sons. He also wrote several scripts for Leave it to Beaver, and One Day at a Time. He co-created, co-produced, and co-wrote Life With Elizabeth.
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