Hedley Lamarr dies
Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 9:09 pm
Harvey Korman has died at the age of 81.
The Carol Burnett Show was, I think, one of the underappreciated factors in the creation and sustaining of the movie culture in the 1960s and 1970s. Burnett came to TV from the stage with the desire to recreate classic Hollywood in her own head with herself as Bette, Hedy, Vivien, Veronica; plenty of drag queens in the 60s had the same idea, see Myra Breckinridge for more details, but only Burnett had CBS's backing, which meant, only Burnett could actually find herself playing opposite the objects of her worship on occasion. She was just good-looking enough to pass as a glamour queen, just goony enough to get laughs as it all fell apart, and Korman was her main consort-- tall and vaguely distinguished-looking, but just overripe enough to play all those 30s and 40s smoothies at the same level of deadpan preposterousness.
Her versions were Mad magazine parodies of the real thing-- in fact, some of the same writers worked on both-- but her love for the bigger life being lived on the big screen always came through, even through silliness (as in this dialogue I've carried with me for 35 years, from the sendup of Waterloo Bridge):
BURNETT AS VIVIEN LEIGH: I'm... a member of the world's oldest profession.
KORMAN AS ROBERT TAYLOR: You're a farmer?
And in the process, many of us were introduced to classic films before we even knew what they were-- I remember being quite affected by a tale of two doomed lovers acted out on her show, and only years later discovering that One Way Passage was what they'd been acting out. If all those classics stayed so familiar through those decades, the Carol Burnett Show was a big part of the reason why.
Here's Korman as Rhett Butler in the Gone With the Wind parody:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aRMZ4ePmMM
and as Stroheim in a Sunset Boulevard skit (with John Byner turning up as George Jessel, medals included):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKfBCitChcg
The Carol Burnett Show was, I think, one of the underappreciated factors in the creation and sustaining of the movie culture in the 1960s and 1970s. Burnett came to TV from the stage with the desire to recreate classic Hollywood in her own head with herself as Bette, Hedy, Vivien, Veronica; plenty of drag queens in the 60s had the same idea, see Myra Breckinridge for more details, but only Burnett had CBS's backing, which meant, only Burnett could actually find herself playing opposite the objects of her worship on occasion. She was just good-looking enough to pass as a glamour queen, just goony enough to get laughs as it all fell apart, and Korman was her main consort-- tall and vaguely distinguished-looking, but just overripe enough to play all those 30s and 40s smoothies at the same level of deadpan preposterousness.
Her versions were Mad magazine parodies of the real thing-- in fact, some of the same writers worked on both-- but her love for the bigger life being lived on the big screen always came through, even through silliness (as in this dialogue I've carried with me for 35 years, from the sendup of Waterloo Bridge):
BURNETT AS VIVIEN LEIGH: I'm... a member of the world's oldest profession.
KORMAN AS ROBERT TAYLOR: You're a farmer?
And in the process, many of us were introduced to classic films before we even knew what they were-- I remember being quite affected by a tale of two doomed lovers acted out on her show, and only years later discovering that One Way Passage was what they'd been acting out. If all those classics stayed so familiar through those decades, the Carol Burnett Show was a big part of the reason why.
Here's Korman as Rhett Butler in the Gone With the Wind parody:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aRMZ4ePmMM
and as Stroheim in a Sunset Boulevard skit (with John Byner turning up as George Jessel, medals included):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKfBCitChcg