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.
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