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On September 11, 1967, The Carol Burnett Show debuted with guest Jim Nabors ('Gomer Pyle'), joining CBS's winning Monday Night schedule that included Gunsmoke, The Lucy Show, The Andy Griffith Show and Family Affair, the series proved a perfect fit.
In one of those great (true) Hollywood discoveries, Vicki Lawrence actually got hired as a regular on a network prime-time variety series by writing to a star. That could never happen now, stars are instructed today not to read or respond to their fan mail because of stalkers.
One of the funniest Family sketches:
Writers on the staff included veterans of television and Mad magazine. Until 'Saturday Night Live' debuted, 'The Carol Burnett Show' was virtually the only topical satire on television, tame as it was. From You Tube - the first Eunice sketch:
After Van Dyke left, Steve Lawrence and Ken Berry made frequent appearances to provide a male lead, but this was to be the last season for the series. Burnett decided to end the series in 1978 (before the show could be canceled).
During the mid-seventies, Carol Burnett also had a second career as a film actress - she got excellent reviews in a remake of 'Front Page' and in Robert Altman's comedy/drama classic 'The Wedding'.
The four episode series featured Vicki Lawrence and Tim Conway with new regulars Craig Richard Nelson and Kenneth Mars. But the variety show format was burnt out, ratings were light and the series wasn't picked up for fall.
In 1980, 'The Tim Conway Show' debuted on CBS from producer Joe Hamilton. Harvey Korman, Carol Burnett and Vicki Lawrence all made several guest appearances on this enjoyable variety hour, even reprising characters and skits from 'The Carol Burnett Show'. Harvey Korman joined the regular cast during the second season when the show was trimmed to a half-hour. 'The Tim Conway Show' ran from March 1980 until August, 1981, a long run for a variety show in the Eighties.
Carol Burnett |
CAROL BURNETT SHOW Carol Burnett / The Carol Burnett Show
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Carol Burnett's Best Special? Carol Burnett is as famous for her award-winning specials as she is for her series work. Four years after 'The Carol Burnett Show' left the air, the Burnett team put together a wonderful special featuring one of the show's most popular characters - 'Eunice' (Monday, March 15, 1982). The four-act, ninety-minute filmed theatrical production followed the outrageous characters from the Burnett show's 'Family' skits as they age through the years.
'Eunice' features Vicki Lawrence as Mama, Carol Burnett as Eunice, Harvey Korman as Ed and Ken Berry as brother Phillip. In this version, Phillip is a brilliant writer who goes off to New York and eventually wins a Nobel Prize. Of course, all of this is completely lost on his family. Building like a Tennessee Williams' play, events only alluded to in earlier acts come crashing down around the characters by the fourth act, when the family congregates after Mother Harper's funeral.
Act one finds teenager Eunice cheating on her dopey boyfriend Ed. Meanwhile, brother Phillip is headed to New York and no one can get dad out of the toilet long enough to tell him what a terrible mistake he's making.
In act four, Ellen, Phillip and Eunice come back to the home after the funeral service for their departed 'Mama' Harper. Delicious family secrets are revealed by devious sister Ellen when she and Eunice mix it up. The special was written by Dick Clair and Jenna McMahon, the creators of the original 'Carol Burnett Show' skits.
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Because
of the show's initial success, Burnett had Jim Nabors as her guest for
every season opener thereafter as a good luck charm.
'The
Carol Burnett Show' featured TV bit player Harvey Korman, Lyle Waggoner
and a young high school girl who contacted Burnett because of her remarkable
resemblance to the star.
Characters
and skits made famous over the run of the series include Eunice and her
bickering family, the queen of England, Mr.
Tudball and his secretary Mrs. Wiggins, aged-out movie
star Nora Desmond and broad satires of classic movies and TV shows.
There
were very few changes during the 11 year run of the program. In 1974,
Lyle Waggoner quit the series.
Soon after, he starred in 'Wonder Woman', a move he later regretted. It
never occurred to him that he would be upstaged by Linda Carter's breasts
- that's not exactly career progress.
Frequent
guest Tim Conway officially joined the regular cast in 1975. His improvs
and attempts to break up the cast led to some of 'The Carol Burnett Show's
best outings. Burnett wanted Tim Conway to replace Lyle Wagoner right
away instead of waiting a year - but Conway had so many recent flops he
was considered (by some) to be a jinx. 
Harvey
Korman signed an exclusive deal with ABC and left in Spring, 1977 (his
sitcom failed in 1978), so Dick
Van Dyke was brought in as a regular to bolster ratings in the
fall of 1977.
Van
Dyke had just lost his own brilliant, Emmy-winning (but short-lived) variety
series on NBC, and it seemed like a perfect match - but he became dissatisfied
with his second banana status and abruptly quit the show in December 1977.
An excellent two-hour special was aired as a series finale, with highlights
from past years mixed with new material.
CBS
signed Carol to do specials and made for TV movies, but she was restless
to do a series again, so she put together 'Carol Burnett and Company'
during the summer of 1979 for ABC (after CBS passed on it).
That
Carol Burnett found any success at all in the Eighties is a testament
to her good taste and abilities. Burnett's dramatic TV-movies of the late-seventies
were very popular, tackling a number of controversial issues. For instance,
'Friendly Fire' (1979) told the story of a couple that lost their child
due to military accident, another told of a family's anguish over having
a gay son.
NEXT:
PART THREE
Based
on the best scripts from the run of the CBS variety series, this production
built the contentious Harper family into three dimensional people without
removing the way-out farcical nature that made them work in the first
place. The result was perhaps Carol Burnett's finest television work.
Eunice
(1982)
An interesting sidenote:
Dick Clair had himself cryogenically frozen moments before his death,
so that he could be resuscitated and made well when a cure was found
for his illness. Listen to this 
