Carol Burnett Show ended 43 years ago. What comes to mind?

I don't think it holds up very well.

So many to choose from. But the "Went with the Wind" sketch featuring Carol in her curtain rod dress is a timeless classic.

"Mildred Fierce"

It holds up very well. Will always wonder why Carol Burnett never hosted SNL. Was she ever invited too?

What comes to mind?

How unfunny it is today. And how overrated Burnett was as an entertainer.

R4 Gosh, I wonder how I found this?

how nice that we could spend this time together!

Carol was great for her time. Now, not so much.

Carol has our hearts.

Carol was in the audience of the SNL episode that Harry Anderson hosted (it was the Billy Crystal season). Harry pulled her on stage at the end where they gave her a huge standing ovation.

Went with the Wind

The Lighthouse - "Hi Paaaaatsy"

Oh, and of course, the gorgeous Lyle Wagonner.

Vicki Lawrence should host SNL.

Mrs. Marcus

There are some classic sketches and characters from the show, but some of it seems stilted and too showbizzy for today.

Mrs. Wiggins...Mr. Tudball's secretary. That ass!

[quote]Will always wonder why Carol Burnett never hosted SNL. Was she ever invited too?

SNL thought she was very uncool. In fact, their expression for anything too broad was "That's Carol Burnett."

And Lorne Michaels *hated* how the CB cast would practice breaking character by laughing in rehearsal and then put it in the real show.

[quote]Vicki Lawrence should host SNL.

Yeah -- that'll bring in the younger viewers.

There was really only a sliver of overlap in the timeline of Carol Burnett's popularity and the white-hot coolness of SNL's first seasons, and the fanbases were miles apart. This is like asking why Phylicia Rashad was never on In Living Color.

R3 "Why do you only have one eyebrow?"

"I used to have two, but I shaved the other one off."

Mama's family.

[quote]SNL thought she was very uncool.

Dan Aykroyd has said that that wasn't true. That was them going along with SNL being perceived as the rebellious, cool kids of TV at the time . But a lot of the writers, and some of the actors, including Aykroyd himself were huge fans of Burnett.

Most of the original SNL cast were fans of the veteran sketch comedians/comedy actors of television. Belushi for one, thought Milton Berle was the greatest.

Belushi though Berle was great? Verificatia needed.

Mother Marcus from As the Stomach Turns

Mary Worthless

Blossom Butterworth, community theater star.

Mainly my long deceased Dad, who was a fan and we watched her every week. I was a little kid then and though Carole was old.

I think the show holds up great. Some skits are better than others certainly but overall I think the writing and performances are still first-rate. I've also said in previous threads that the Family sketches were the jewel in the crown of "The Carol Burnett Show" in my opinion -- those skits were like mini-plays and the characterizations were deep just for a variety show. This is why I never cared much for "Mama's Family" because they had to water down the characters in order to make them work on a weekly basis and the impact was just never the same.

As for the well-lauded movie sketches, in addition to "Went with the Wind," I thought the takeoff on "Mildred Pierce" was every bit as hilarious, even if it's never really gotten its due.

I catch it every so often and I find it enjoyable each time.

I tuned in every week hoping Lyle Waggoner would take his shirt off. Otherwise I found Carol sporadically funny. Never liked Harvey or Tim. Vicki’s Mama crap was overrated.

The one with Lyle Waggoner in a Speedo.

I kind of agree with R1 that it didn’t hold up so well. But, so what? I do not think that SNL does either.

Carol Burnett showed that a woman could host her own sketch show and be funny. For that alone she has earned her spot in TV history.

I hear she held a huge grudge against Vikki Lawerance after Mamas Family made the switch to syndication, but I suppose she felt betrayed and I can see why.

Were it not for the Family sketches, this show would be forgotten. The earlier shows which had been out of syndication are really impossible to watch.

Terri McCann, the wonderful Bea Arthur lookalike in the audience. I hope this wasn't a plant, because she's so perfect. Her granddaughter posted on Youtube; Terri lived to be100 and died 4 years ago.

I caught some some episodes for the first time in years, and was surprised at how much of it did not age well and seemed dated. That said, the stuff that was not dated was still very funny, and I do think the cast and writers were talented. Not everything that is funny at one point in time is funny years later. I guess it is not that different than watching an episode of SNL - some good sketches some not so good - although SNL might be more not so good these days.

I did fall down a Once Upon a Mattress YouTube rabbit hole a little while ago and caught part of the television specials from the early 60s and the early 70s. I did think Carol was more natural and charming in the earlier version and more sketch comedy broad in the second version. I suppose doing the show every week at that time it was harder to slip out of that mode. It also probably did not help that she was probably too old for the part by 1972.

I think Carol and Company is probably the best thing she has ever done. It was a nice, quirky series that aired on Saturday nights on NBC for two seasons. At the time it seemed to be a nice comeback for her, and it was the opposite of what she did on the original Burnett show.

I loved this so much as a kid and looked forward to it every Saturday night. I thought all the characters were hilarious. Now I find it unwatchable. It is amazing how badly it has aged. SNL was iffy from the beginning. Mostly bad stuff with the occasional gem.

Also Burnett has to be one of the worst dramatic actors ever. I remember seeing her in The Front Page and thinking she was beyond awful.

[quote]I thought the takeoff on "Mildred Pierce" was every bit as hilarious, even if it's never really gotten its due.

There were two different "Mildred" takeoffs. The second one, with Mildred's Fatburgers," was the funnier of the two.

What comes to mind is Saturday evening at my grandma's house, the smell of cigarettes and beer after she made her fried chicken and my whole family gathered around to watch the show, including my two aunts, my mom, dad and sister. We'd laugh our butts off at Miss Wiggins and for years I'd imitate Tim Conway as her slow boss. The Carol Burnett show was a family show in that even though some of the jokes went over my head as an 8 year old, I still thought her mannerisms and characters were a hoot. My grandmother adored her and thought she was the funniest woman since Lucy and I remember my aunts mentioning how much Vicki Lawrence resembled Carol.

Then my parents would put my sister and I in the back of the station wagon with blankets and pillows and we'd try to sleep on the way home, the smell of gasoline and exhaust wafting through the car, the faint scent of cigarettes lingering on all our clothing. There was always a strange smell of Jasmine when we were leaving and for whatever reason, it made me think that it was the smell of death and I would get anxiety until I drifted off to sleep, only to wake up in the morning magically in my own bed.

My mom, one of my aunts and I met Carol a few years ago at a book signing in my late 40's. It was such an honor.

I don't think a 90 minute show of Mama sketches will work, r13. That's all she can do.

Vicky could also do the spoiled brat. She is pretty good in Mildred Fierce.

Vicki also did a great airhead.

Eunice, Ed and Mama almost coming to physical blows while playing the board game Sorry. “SORRRYYYYYYYY!”

I don't care if it doesn't hold up today, Carol Burnett was terrific.

Lyle Waggoner was a walking wet dream.

And I loved her impersonation of QEII and Harvey Korman's Prince Philip.

My favorite of the parodies is always "Torchy Song,:" especially with the running gag about the Pose. At the end when she and Harvey Korman sing that hilariously masochistic song (starting at 6:29) about everything she'll be giving up by marrying him, she can relinquish everything about show biz... EXCEPT the Pose. That just killed me then and it still does today.

if you don't find it funny today, well, BIG DEAL. Like I care.

"The Kidnapping," which presaged the famewhoredom of today

All the brilliant film spoofs. "Hey PAAAAATTTSYYY, Hey PAAAATTTSYY" from the "A Swiped Life" Bette Davis-movie satire, especially. :)

I like the segments and think they hold up better on the later, largely 1972-77 longtime syndicated half-hour Burnett Show packages that have been around since they went off-air, I think also because they show a lot of segments variety handpicked well. The downside is the general lack of inclusion of her fabulously done and costumed musical packages, which is probably because they'd take up so much of the half-hours.

Then there are the newer half-hour packages of the show's "forgotten" 1967-71 seasons -- those include some of those years' episodes' musical numbers more. However they otherwise almost always fill those half-hours with the earlier dumb "Carol & Sis" recurring sketches, and on her many episodes that featured creaky guests like Nanette Fabray and Martha Raye. Those earlier seasons' packages and choices shown don't, to me either, seem like they've held up quite as well as the more subtle brilliance of Carol's later-year shows' episode highlights.

She was touring her act “Carol Burnett – An Evening of Laughter and Reflection Where the Audience Asks Questions” here in Canada back in 2017. I wanted to go. It was an hour’s drive away, but the tickets cost a fortune.

That's the one I attended, r48 and it was here in LA. Tim Conway joined her onstage at one point. It was amazing.

Anthony Hopkins was in the Carol Burnett Show audience for its most famous sketch:

The Gone with the Wind sketch will always be listed on top but their Double Indemnity was pretty good too.

The 67-71 sketches are real clunkers. I noticed that Carol must've had plastic surgery between 71 and 72. Her surgeon really did a good job. My dad worked as a ticket agent for Santa Fe Railway in the late 60s and had met her a few times at Dearborn Station and said she was a real plain Jane and didn't understand her star quality.

It’s interesting that everyone talks about what an institution it was, but as it turns out, it was only on for about ten years — about the same amount of time Fred Armisen was on SNL.

Happy 88th birthday, Carol:

Eight things you never knew about "The Carol Burnett Show":

Few sketches outside of the "family" and the movie parodies hold up. But you really expect 40-50 year sketch comedy to do so? Not a reasonable standard to hold it against. The world changes and tastes change.

Most of SNL's 1975-80 sketched no longer hold up, either.

This show never made me laugh but I watched it waiting for SNL to come on while babysitting. Most of the guest stars were CBS sitcom actors.

R32

"Absence of Carol Burnett as the "Eunice" character According to Lawrence's autobiography, Vicki!: The True-Life Adventures of Miss Fireball, Burnett resented Lawrence for accepting the role of Mama for first-run syndication with producer Joe Hamilton. It was during this time that Burnett was involved in an acrimonious divorce from Hamilton, who produced both The Carol Burnett Show and Mama's Family.[13] Burnett felt Lawrence had been disloyal to her and held a grudge against her until Hamilton's death in 1991. By the time of Hamilton's death, Burnett and Lawrence had reconciled. Lawrence's autobiography reads:

A funny thing happened the day I signed with Lorimar. Carol called and said, 'I think I'd like to put together maybe a little syndicated show with the family characters. I'll do Eunice, you do Mama. Doesn't that sound like fun?' I said, 'It does, but I just signed with Lorimar to do Mama's Family for Joe.' It became a very abrupt conversation, and Carol hung up. I then went to Al and asked him what he made of the whole thing. He agreed it was really weird. I wondered if I was about to get caught in the middle of yet another struggle between the two of them . . . During her divorce, Carol and I went through a 'cool' period. She 'divorced' everyone and remained distant for a lot of years. She called the house a few years ago. I was standing at the sink peeling carrots, fifteen feet from the phone, but Garrett got to it first and I only heard his half of the following conversation: 'Hello? Oh hi. Yeah, sure, he's in the other room, on the other line. You want me to tell him you're calling? My mom's here, you want to talk to her? No? Okay. Goodbye.' When he hung up I asked him who it was. 'Carol Burnett.' I was shocked. 'What did she say?' 'She didn't want to talk to you. She only wanted to talk to Dad.' Al called her back later that night, made a point of telling her how much we missed and loved her, and she told him, 'I'll be back. It's just going to take a while longer. Give me another year or so"

All I know is am sick of seeing CB's face and hearing her voice on MeTV... She's tied into seemingly every program doing this or that commercial, this on top of promoting reruns of her own show seen on same station.

She makes her money, have to give Carol Brunett that, MeTV likely is paying her plenty for those commercials and of course to air reruns of her show.

Only later we learned she was never as nice as she seemed.

What comes to my mind is Mama's Family and the Fluffy the rabbit sketch. I can remember my family watching that and I remember my mother laughing. Sigh..... Miss her so much.

The one with Charo is one of my absolute faves!

One of my other fave sketches, r46. Thanks!

R60

CB fired Harvey Korman which showed him who was boss on her show. But then again like Lucille Ball and the other few women in Hollywood then in charge of their own shows/studios sometimes being a high riding bitch is necessary.

Carol Burnett IIRC was very generous and compassionate with the dancers (gay male) who appeared on her show as HIV/AIDs began decimating that population.

I had a thing for Tim Conway.

R63-- I had no idea that she fired HC!

Tim Conway was a comic genius!

[quote]I had a thing for Tim Conway.

I did, too: Turning off the TV every time his very unfunny mug popped onto the screen.

i remember or am i remembering wrong, a episode where Ken Berry appeared in tights and it showed off his nice ass and nice shapely thighs.. always found him sexy..

every sketch of EUNICE was and still is hilarious....real talent, real quality writing..

This sketch (an episode of "As the Stomach Turns" featuring Betty Grable, who's surprisingly good) starts off kind of weak, but from the moment Martha Raye enters at about 4:20, I find it hilarious.

Carol is the queen of wig gags/wig reveals.

R69 God, Lyle Waggoner was hot!

R65 I didn’t either - dumb move, as he was by far the funniest one on the show. Certainly not Tim Conway.

Oh, R59 just change the channel already if you're so bothered. You sound like a cranky old woman in a trailer park.

It has never really done well in syndication. The notable skits aside from Momma can be counted on one hand.

Carol turned 88 this week. Thirty years ago everyone was talking about her terrible plastic surgery.

R73

It's the CB *commercials* on MeTV am sick of you mook. Why would I change channel when program am watching isn't over you idiot.

How much I miss it every Saturday. And my great gift from Harvey Korman- which I am not going to reveal. But I am totally graced by it. Thank you Harvey.

I was unfamiliar with Scandinavian accents as a kid, so assumed the character was called Mrs. Sue Higgins!

[quote]And my great gift from Harvey Korman- which I am not going to reveal.

The AIDS?

There used to be someone who (I think) pretended to be Harvey Korman’s son over on IMDb - back when they had the message boards. He was kind of nuts.

R78, there was a linguist on a talk show with Conway and he identified the accent as Swedish to which Conway said it was news to him, he just made it up. Kathleen Marshall also pronounced it as Mrs. Zoohiggins, not getting the accent at all.

I wasn’t from her era but I would take her show over today’s sketch comedy shows any day.

The greatest skit of all is "The Kidnapping," where Carol plays a wealthy housewife being interviewed fort he TV news about her kidnapped husband. Something keeps going wrong in the recording and so they have to do it over and over again, and each time Carol gets more dramatic.

My favorite of the movie skits is either 'Went with the Wind" or "Torchy Song," with Carol playing Joan Crawford playing a broadway star who finds true love again... or she might, if she only hadn't perfected the most perfect pose in show business....

R69 - that was fun, but the best soap parody was this one with Lucille Ball, Eddie Albert and Nancy Wilson. It's SO dry, so deliberately weird and so surprisingly subversive. It was way ahead of its time. I mean the "credit to your race" line? Hilarious.

The Kids In The Hall cite Carol Burnett as one of their major influences.

Practically every great star of Hollywoods past made an appearance on the Carol Burnett show.

Maggie Smith;'s first appearance on American TV was on the Carol Burnett show.

Bernadette Peters was a guest star so often she could have been one of the ensemble.

You could have ten-minute musical sequences like this.

I know some people criticize the show for the actors breaking up in skits, but to me, it was always one of its charms.

Most of these clips were new to me.

R84, yes, yours is a good one, too! Some sharp writing and performances :)

Interesting clip at R84 - am guessing the Nancy Wilson portion was not that different than what was playing out on the soaps at that time, that were probably pretty lily white at the time. I noticed Lyle was used more in the earlier episodes.

Riot!

r87 them breaking up was the best part of watching CB. They could never get Vicki to crack. So much fun watching her almost crack but nope.

I can't think of another TV "comedy" character with the depth of her Eunice. And to put Eunice on a show geared for getting laughs took guts.

Some of it IS timeless. Some of it is painful to watch now.

My PBS channel plays the intact one hour versions, and it’s a capsule of another time. It holds up for me from a nostalgia perspective, but I could see if you didn’t grow up with it would seem very dated.

I grew up with it and probably 75-80 percent of it holds up pretty well. There's an element of timelessness to it.

A few things are dated in terms of references to current events, and a few are just painfully bad. There was a piece where Sammy Davis Jr. was playing a prisoner - the implication was that he was gay and while it wasn't excessively homophobic, it was just......not good.

And as always, some younger viewers will not be able to cope with old sets and a show not in HD.

[quote]I remember seeing her in The Front Page and thinking she was beyond awful.

Oh, I remember being surprised at how good she was. Haven't seen that movie in 20 years so I might have a completely different opinion these days, but I remember rolling my eyes at the opening credits, then being pleasantly surprised.

[quote]And my great gift from Harvey Korman- which I am not going to reveal.

The spray-on fake hair he used to cover his bald spot?

I'm British and this is before my time, but aren't all variety/stage shows somewhat "dated" automatically? It's just the nature of the genre I would have thought, it doesn't take away from their influence or enjoyment, it's part of the trade-off of live theatre. I think you have to trust people to understand where shows like this are coming from and not be so self-conscious.

I found this one charming:

I remember thinking the commercials were funny, but I expect those have not aged well do the commercials they are mocking themselves being dated.

Carol was a big All My Children fan - but am guessing As The World Turns was a bigger show when she started doing the skits. Lucci actually would have been a good guest for the show - she did well on SNL, but suppose she was not yet a name outside the soap world during most of the show's run.

A lot of her opening questions segments have aged well. She connected well with the audience in those.

[quote] but am guessing As The World Turns was a bigger show when she started doing the skits.

I don't know when the first As The Stomach Turns skit was but AMC didn't even exist until 1970, and Carol's show started in 1967, so there's that.

Another fave...

In the 60s when Carol's show began most soap operas were still being performed live for the eastern and central time zones. The missed sound effect cues and the droning organ music were actual facts of life for the live soap operas, so people watching "As the Stomach Turns" made the connection when the little "errors" were worked into the skits. BTW, the organ music in the soaps was also live and the organ was off to the side in the same studio as the actors. Several soap actors complained they often couldn't hear what the other actors were saying because the organ music was too loud being only a few feet away.

I didn't know Lucille Ball ever appeared on Carol's program. I can't imagine her willingly doing the show, although Carol was on Lucy's show, so CBS must have really pushed her into it.

It's a pity you have to buy those big box sets to see some of the earlier shows. I would love to see her Gilda parody called Golda. For me, Carol is overrated and too broad. She seems to think just wearing a bad wig is funny. I find Harvey much funnier. Hate Tim Conway and find him not funny at all. I have heard that story about confronting Harvey before but I highly doubt she fired him. The version she told was that she threatened to and that was enough to make him to smile more. She really couldn't think that someone like Dick Van Dyke could replace him.

Carol once said they did a read of a Family sketch without the accents and it was so depressing. The accents made it work.

As the Stomach Turns was often very clever as noted above. I wished they had kept it going.

I have been watching on Pluto TV and they show the non syndicated stuff. It is fun to see the old stuff and how subversive some of it was. It was still at the end of the civil rights movement and was interesting some of the things they said using black actors like noted above with Nancy Wilson. That wasn’t a one time thing and Carol must have felt strongly enough to put that sort of thing in.

And a lot of the musical numbers are in it. They duplicated one themed on silent movies down to the staging five years apart.

[R84] Nancy Wilson also came to the door in that sketch and said she’d come to integrate Canoga Falls. Then she said her name was Julia, a reference to Diahann Carroll’s TV show. That episode also had a sketch in which Carol and Nancy Wilson played actresses auditioning for a scene together. The lines were loaded with racial stereotypes, and Carol and Nancy kept switching scripts because the “wrong” person was saying each successive stereotype. At the end, they threw the scripts on the floor and went out to lunch together. That episode had an unusual number of references to racial problems for a Burnett show. Sadly, those sketches are still relevant all these years later.

R103 Perhaps a good time for a bow to Rosa Rio, the organist on As the World Turns and many other shows, radio and television. As the long-time staff organist for NBC, she defined the "soap opera sound."

A favorite of mine.

Dark Shadows was filmed live and it often showed. Tons of errors, flubs, actors missing their marks, crew visible on camera, sets incomplete or falling apart, etc... But that was live television back in the day for you.

It wasn't just soap operas, but early drama television like Studio One were also filmed live. Many actors famous then and or those starting out and would become so did live television drama and nearly all had nothing bad to say about the experience.

Live television isn't same as recorded in front of a studio audience. Latter is like films or movies in that things can be edited or otherwise cleaned up before broadcast. Live television drama, soap opera or whatever is just that, perhaps closest to acting on stage in front of an audience than anything else. You have to know your shit (lines, marks, cues...), and behind scenes people (cameras, sound, etc...) have to be on point as well.

[quote] I didn't know Lucille Ball ever appeared on Carol's program. I can't imagine her willingly doing the show, although Carol was on Lucy's show, so CBS must have really pushed her into it.

I think Lucy was trying to help a young comedienne. Carol appeared 4 times on “The Lucy Show” and 3 times on “Here’s Lucy.” Lucy was enough of a powerhouse that she didn’t have to host Carol that many times. Lucy appeared on Carol’s show once per season in the first four seasons of the show.

I seldom found Conway or Korman funny.

I can still see in my mind's eye to look of shame and sadness on Eunice's face when she got it on the Gong Show skit. It was good acting.

R67- Tim Conway was as UNFUNNY and BORING as the FAT accountant on Cheers.

In October 1977 I was with my parents and brother. We went shopping for winter coats at a Sears Roebuck in White Plains NY.

I was sitting on the floor of the tv section watching Carol Burnett and Friends while my parents and brother browsed the store. I didn't turn around when I heard a woman's voice say ( in a LOW class way)- See, I told YA, Harvey Korman's a FAG!

It was a shocking thing to hear from an adult, especially from a woman.

What comes to mind?- The replacement show for the Carol Burnett Show was DALLAS.

Dallas was originally on Saturday nights?

R107 what a fabulous bit of history. This was hilarious:

"As recounted in Leonard Maltin’s book “The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio’s Golden Age” (Dutton, 1997), she was playing a show at NBC one day when the announcer, Dorian St. George, crept up behind her, undid the buttons down the back of her blouse and unhooked her bra. Miss Rio, performing live before a gallery of visitors, could do nothing but play on.

When the music stopped, Mr. St. George stepped up to the microphone to do a commercial. As he intoned plummily with the gallery looking on, Miss Rio stole up behind him, unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly and neatly dropped his trousers. Then, according to Mr. Maltin’s book, she started on his undershorts.

What happened next is unrecorded."

As others have noted, the early episodes are surprisingly "relevant" (as they said back then) and political, with George Wallace jokes, etc. That ended around 1970, but those early ones are worth seeing just to get an idea of how different and edgy the show was when it began.

[quote]I can still see in my mind's eye to look of shame and sadness on Eunice's face when she got it on the Gong Show skit. It was good acting.

There were a number of soul-crushing moments for Eunice, but even among those, this one stands out. While Thelma was more of a lovable curmudgeon in the syndicated version of Mama's Family, she really was an emotional abusive monster on the Carol Burnett show, and Carol portrayal of Eunice captured the damage of someone who has been belittled all her life.

r112 Tim Conway was never on "Cheers."

Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett were good friends. Carol tells stories about her all the time. The saddest one is about the day Lucy died -- Lucy always sent flowers to Carol on her birthday, and the last ones she received were on the day Lucy died -- which was Carol's birthday.

The Dentist sketch is among those that I still love and LOL watching today.

[quote] Eunice, Ed and Mama almost coming to physical blows while playing the board game Sorry. “SORRRYYYYYYYY!”

IT WAS A SEVEN!!!!!!!!

I did have some extra coupons!

I had 25 cents off on coffee, ten cents off on dog food, and I had two for price of one on toilet paper.. the *double ply*!

Apples don't often fall far from trees, and when you see how Eunice grew up it puts things into context.

It also explains Ellen, the sister who married well and keeps her distance from her family, except when she wants or needs something like that Tiffany lamp.

R117 that reminded me of a sketch after Nixon won in 1968 in which Carol played Lady Bird Johnson welcoming Pat Nixon to the White House. Beyond Carol playing Lady Bird as a loud, crazed Southerner, there were indeed some political jokes, including the fact that Johnson didn’t run for re-election, which may have helped Nixon win.

It's Monopoly not Sorry I remember. "Only losers show mercy."

And it played out just like any game of Monopoly among friends and family: vicious.

My favorite Eunice sketch was when they went to the fancy restaurant.

"With a pepper mill you GRIND it!" Ha ha ha!!!

Carol doing Mae West and Harvey starts the intros he did for Mama's Family. "Every time I turned around, I erased the blackboard", "I sound like WC Fields".

Does anyone have the link for the skit when Carol was an airline stewardess and Lucy threw hot coffee at her?

I don't know why it would be news to TC that Mr. Tudball sounded Swedish. He clearly had an accent..... and one that sounded Swedish, if anything. When I got older I always thought he must be Swedish. I wasn't a huge fan of TC, though I do like the Tudball/Wiggins skits, a skit where he portrays a lion, and some others. Korman, otoh, was brilliant.

r129 Carol and Lucy both played stewardesses on an episode of "The Lucy Show" (Or maybe "Here's Lucy.")