When I was a little boy I loved Saturday nights because I got to stay up late and at 10 o'clock I got to watch
The Carol Burnett Show with my mom. I liked that show because it I got most of the jokes even though I was only a shade under ten years of age. But mainly I liked Carol Burnett because when my mom watched she laughed like crazy and I loved seeing her laugh. Our life in Detroit was pretty bleak at times, especially so for her what with a husband who was in and out mental hospitals and 5 kids to take care of virtually on her own and the only money we had coming in was the monthly welfare check. So Carol Burnett was an oasis of laughter in our lives and we loved watching it.
I'd watch it each Saturday and I'd wait for Harvey Korman and Tim Conway to crack either up. To me that was the epitome of comedy, making another comic actor beak up while doing the sketch, and later when I did improv and the show was tanking my friend Todd would always grab me and say, "Fuck making the audience laugh, you and I need to concentrate on making each other laugh," and when we did the show invariably picked up.
As I grew up the kind of comedy Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman lost it's appeal to me and I became too hip for their bad jokes and reliance on sight gags. I shunned watching them and I drifted towards
Monty Python and
Saturday Night Live. I thought I was too cool for their old time Borscht Belt bullshit.
However I did continue to enjoy Harvey Korman in most Mel Brooks movies. I loved him
Blazing Saddles, quoting his line, "That's Hedley!" after someone uses the word 'heady' is always funny to me and I'll never stop doing it. The tracking shot where the camera goes through the window and into the staff dinner table in
High Anxiety still makes me laugh every time I see it, and it was so funny the first time I saw it I had to rewind the film and watch it four or five times, Harvey's shocked expression is too damn funny for words. His French aristocrat in
History of the World Part One is a scream as well. Some of his later performances in Mel Brooks films were a bit stale to me but his good stuff more than made up for his mediocre stuff. No one did movie comedy like Mr. Korman.
Harvey passed away late yesterday at the age of 81. I'll miss him and I'll always be grateful for the laughs he gave me and my late mom. So long Harvey, I hope you reincarnated real soon.
"Take this down: I want rustlers, cut-throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperadoes, mugs, pugs, thugs, nit-wits, half-wits, dim-wits, vipers, snipers, con-men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bush-whackers, horn-swagglers, horse-thieves, bull-dykes, train-robbers, bank-robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers, and Methodists!"
