by Tim Conway
What, you might ask, had I been doing between the time that McHale’s Navy ended and my entry into the Burnett show? Actually, I kept pretty busy appearing on all those variety and sitcom shows, several of which I’ve mentioned, plus I had shows of my own. It’s a sore subject, but I’ve got to get them out of the way before I further describe my heaven on earth. For the sake of full disclosure, here are some of the miss-terpieces I was involved in.
It was either Socrates or Milton Berle who said, “know thyself.” And I knew myself. At least I knew my professional self. I was never deluded about where I stood in the entertainment world. I wasn’t a star of the first magnitude. For that you have to look to someone like Carol. I didn’t really aspire to superstardom. As long as I was working and doing what I liked I felt okay. What got me into trouble were all those producers who thought they knew me better than I knew myself. For a long time they kept coming up with projects that had me in the leading role. Look, I’d have to have my head examined to turn down opportunities like that when really I should have had my head examined for accepting them. It all started in 1967 with Rango.
You would think that the role of an incompetent Texas Ranger posted at a ranger station in the middle of nowhere would be a perfect fit for me. You’d think it, but you’d be dead wrong. Want proof? TV Guide rated Rango number 47 in the list of the fifty worst shows of all time. It just dawned on me that there were forty-six worse shows ahead of me. I was a mere three shows away from not being on the list at all. (In case you’re wondering, The Jerry Springer Show topped the list.) Some of the stuff in Rango was okay, but basically the show didn’t work. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that it was filmed without an audience. It was like making a movie, and I didn’t have much chance to do any improvising or ad-libbing, which are my strong points. And, unlike McHale’s Navy, I didn’t have an Ernie Borgnine or a Joe Flynn to play off of, although as Rango, I did have an Indian sidekick named Pink Cloud. Guy Marks, the guy who played my Kimosabe, got some laughs by playing against type. Pinkie spoke in a highfalutin manner, more Noel Coward than Tonto. Guy was a good actor but occasionally unreliable. We were shooting one day and after lunch discovered that Pink Cloud had gone missing. We waited an hour for him to show. Now Guy was known to take puffs on his peace pipe from time to time and follow his inhalations with a catnap, which is exactly what had happened. Unbeknownst to us, he’d left the studio, gone to a nearby park, taken some puffs, and fallen asleep on a bench. Nothing unusual about that except that Guy was in full wardrobe, a headband with a pink feather, a hemp shirt, deerskin pants, moccasins, and a bag of wampum dangling from his snakeskin belt. Meanwhile, back at the set, more time passed and we got worried. Someone put in a few calls to local hospitals without success. They couldn’t find anyone under the name Guy Marks. I suggested that they call back and see if an Indian had wandered in. We found him. Guy had gone to an emergency room where he’d tried to buy some medication to cure his headache. He wanted to pay with the wampum in his pouch. They hospitalized him. We asked them to keep him there and told them we’d be right over. I drove to the hospital with one of the producers and we picked up Guy, literally. He was in no condition to walk or work so we all took the day off.
Rango got pretty good reviews, yet the series only lasted for seventeen episodes. And the funniest moment didn’t come in front of the camera; it happened in my dressing room as I was getting ready to go on the set. I didn’t know that the decision had been made to cancel the show. None of the hotshots at the network wanted to be the one to tell me, so they got this kid who may have been working in the mailroom, put a suit on him, and sent him to me with the good news. I was pulling on my boots when I heard a knock at the door and told the knocker to come in. In walks this kid who introduces himself as someone from the ABC office. I could tell by his nervousness that he wasn’t exactly from ABC’s highest echelon so I tried to make him comfortable.
“Take a seat,” I told him motioning toward a chair. “I’m just putting on my boots to go on the set.”
“Um, um,” muttered the kid. His face was red and sweat dotted his forehead.
“Look,” I said, “is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes,” he blurted out, “stop putting on those boots.”
That was his version of “your show is cancelled.” I stood there with my boot half on and my mouth hanging open as the poor kid turned and raced out the door. The funny thing is, it was a Monday and not a Friday. I guess the network didn’t follow the old fire-them-on-Friday convention.
Next up at the plate in my leading role series is Turn-On (1969), a show that has gone down in television history for all the wrong reasons. To this day Turn-On remains the shortest-lived television series on record. The producer was George Schlatter. George is forever saying that he loves me, but I think he hangs around with me because I’m the only one who’s been cancelled more often than he has. He also likes to tell stories about me, some of which are true and others which are even truer.
George and his partner, Ed Friendly, along with NBC and Romart, Inc., produced Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, a wildly popular show in the late 1960s. Inspired by Laugh-In’s success, George and Ed came up with a new concept originally called Cockamamie. A natural successor to the Rowan and Martin juggernaut, Cockamamie was an electronically inspired, multimedia show, with cartoon sets and a moog synthesizer as the audience. Cockamamie was so outrageous and so hard-edged it made Laugh-In look like The Waltons. We did a pilot, and George brought it to the ABC network. (Okay, he brought it to them after NBC and CBS turned it down.) ABC, in its infinite wisdom, thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen and sold thirteen episodes to Bristol-Myers. The total was upped to eighteen when the company’s top brass saw the pilot. By that time, the show had been rechristened to Turn-On. To give you an idea of what Turn-On was like, in one sketch I was arrested and brought to a police station where I was allowed to make one phone call. I picked up the receiver and made an obscene call. In another, I was doing a commercial for a man’s deodorant. I was working out with weights and ended by saying, “When I’m all through, I smell like a lady.” Then a shot of me in drag flashed on the screen. And, in another scene, I was a spokesman for the “Citizens Action Committee of America,” the acronym for the group was, of course, CACA. Basically, Turn-On was caca.
Turn-On premiered on February 5, 1969, with me as the guest host, and was on the air from February 5, 1969, to February 5, 1969. You heard me; the show was pulled midway through the first and only episode and replaced by some affiliates with organ music. It was never seen in many West Coast cities. Picture this, while Turn-On was being turned off, the cast and crew were gathered in a New York hotel enjoying a premiere cast party for a show that didn’t even make it through the first episode. It’s the only television program that had a combined premiere and cancellation party. Very economical don’t you think?
I recovered from my Turn-On experience and by January of 1970 I had another show of my own, a half-hour comedy sitcom with the very original title, The Tim Conway Show. The best thing about the show was that it reunited me with Joe Flynn. We played a pair of owner-pilots of an airline, an airline with only one plane, a Beechcraft 18. One episode was entitled “All of Our Aircraft Is Missing,” which is amusing if you’re old enough to remember the British World War II movie One of Our Aircraft Is Missing. The show was funny, but it’s hard to come off a highly popular series and create another character who can make viewers forget the first one. Viewers looked at me and saw Ensign Parker. We managed to squeak out twelve episodes from the basic premise. But again, the show was filmed, which made even bantering with Joe a bit too confining for my taste. Although we had our fans, there weren’t enough of them for the show to be renewed. My memories of The Tim Conway Show are bittersweet; it was the last opportunity I had to work with Joe. Tragically, he drowned in his swimming pool in 1974. He was fifty years old and apparently had suffered a heart attack. All I can say is it was a pr
ivilege to work with a master of subtle humor who died way too young.
Regarding my starring vehicles, any way you slice it I’d had three big strikeouts. Did the producers who thought I was the greatest thing since Wonder Bread give up on me? Nope. The next thing I knew I was sitting across the desk from the president of CBS. He loved my work on the Burnett show and offered me an hour variety show of my own. I’d been burned so many times I was wary of jumping into the flames again, but who was I to argue with the president of CBS? I said okay. So, what should we call it? Why not The Tim Conway Comedy Hour? Here was I, a humble permanent guest on The Carol Burnett Show about to star in his second eponymous vehicle. Ron Clark and Sam Bobrick, established comedy writers, were the producers. Any way you looked at it, my comedy hour would appear to have been a natural. There was that little, itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny hitch, though. I never was comfortable doing a show where I was the head honcho. Give me a chicken outfit and a sketch and I’d be glad to do a guest spot, but being the captain of the ship was not in my DNA. Despite my misgivings we taped our first episode in September, which happened to be a Christmas show. When friends asked why I was doing a Christmas show in September, I told them that I was sure the show would be cancelled by Christmas and I wanted to get my kids on before it went off.
On September 20, 1970, The Tim Conway Comedy Hour premiered. It wasn’t exactly an extravagant production. We didn’t have an orchestra, just Art Metrano humming his signature tune, “Fine and Dandy.” And we only had one dancer, Sally Struthers, who did all the moves the June Taylor Dancers used to do, only she did them solo. If you need further proof that it was impossible for me to have my own show, cast your eyes on the following guest stars who were willing to appear with me: Steve Allen, Dan Blocker, Walter Brennan, Imogene Coca, Joan Crawford, Barbara Feldon, John Forsythe, Eydie Gormé, Merv Griffin, Dorothy Lamour, Steve Lawrence, Janet Leigh, Audrey Meadows, David Janssen, Dick Martin, Tony Randall, Carl Reiner, Mickey Rooney, Dan Rowan, Connie Stevens, Lana Turner, and Shelley Winters. Let me see, did I mention everybody? Oh, I almost forgot, that kind lady, Carol Burnett, volunteered to try to save my sinking ship. I think it was a very funny show if I must say so myself, and I must. It could have gone on for years if it hadn’t been cancelled.
In 1983, the old Punching Bag was again wooed by CBS for a series called Ace Crawford, Private Eye. This, too, looked good on paper; it was a parody of the hard-nosed detective stories that were so popular. I got to wear a trench coat and a Stetson hat; trouble is I only got to wear them for one season of five episodes. Like its predecessors, Ace Crawford bit the dust. Have I told you that the minimum commitment of episodes pledged by a network is thirteen? As you can see by my record, I never quite got there. For a while I had a license plate that read 13WEEKS. Truer words were never embossed. My experiences were pretty embarrassing, or would have been if I had invested much ego in them. But I don’t hold grudges or harbor bad feelings; I had my chances and I had fun with them. Like I said, I’m not superstar material. Come to think of it, I probably should have gotten a license plate that read 2BANANA. Okay, that’s enough of this. Dry your tears and let’s move on.
Heaven
This is the chapter where I’m going to go behind the scenes and blow the lid off the myth of Carol Burnett. Did that statement grab you? I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. The truth is Carol Burnett is even better than the myth surrounding her. The myth is that she’s simply the best at what she does and who she is. (Does that sentence make sense? According to spell-check it’s okay, but I don’t understand it myself.) Let’s put it this way, there’s no more talented entertainer in the world and there isn’t a better friend in the universe than my dear, dear Carol. Did you notice that she wrote the foreword to this book? It was a Friday when I called and asked if she’d do it. I told her there was no big rush; she had months in which to write it. It arrived the following week. I didn’t even have a book written and I already had a foreword. That’s Carol Burnett. Look, she’s been the other woman in my life for nearly half a century and it’s not a problem because I think my wife likes her better than she likes me.
It all began in 1962 when, as you might recall, Joe Hamilton, a producer on The Garry Moore Show and Carol’s future husband, requested me as a guest. At that first meeting, Carol was a delightful, kind, brilliant comedian, and nothing’s changed. Even though we didn’t actually appear together, she took a shine to me, and filed “short, funny man” somewhere in the back of her head. Then when The Carol Burnett Show began broadcasting from CBS in Hollywood in September of 1967, she remembered that short, funny man. She also knew that I had relocated to Los Angeles and also knew about my work on McHale’s Navy.
Since my honorable discharge from the Navy, I had won the Tour de France and the Nobel Peace Prize and was kicking around the variety show circuit when, out of the blue, Carol and Joe called.
“Why don’t you come over to our show on Stage 33,” she said. “You can try it on and see if it fits.”
So I dropped into Television City and tried on the show. It was a 34 short, a perfect fit, and I was booked for a guest appearance. At the same time, Carol asked me if I knew a guy named Harvey Korman. I told her that I’d never met him but that I’d seen him many times on The Danny Kaye Show.
“Well, I’d like you to meet him,” Carol said, “because you’re going to be doing a sketch with him. I have a feeling that you two might work well together. Let’s go see him.”
We hopped on an elevator and went down to the subbasement. Carol led me into the furnace room, and there, handcuffed to a water pipe, was Harvey Korman.
“Don’t get too close to him,” she cautioned, “he can be dangerous.”
Despite Carol’s warning, Harvey was as nice as pie and even offered me some moldy apple crumble from a tin plate that was on the floor next to him. I took a bite, and we chatted about comedy and the interwoven dialectics of what we thought was funny. I thought it was funny to put on a white wig and pretend to be an addled old man. He thought it was funny to dress up as a meddling old Jewish woman. We were made for each other.
I did my first sketch with Carol and Harvey that week and immediately was asked back as a guest star. And that’s how it went for seven years until they broke down and asked me to be a regular. By then they were doing twenty-three shows a year.
“Well I don’t know,” I said playing it cool. “I don’t want to be a regular because that doesn’t leave me open to do other things. I tell you what, I’ll do twenty-two shows and be a guest on the twenty-third.”
I still haven’t figured out their thinking. It must have had something to do with paying me health benefits. Why didn’t they make me a regular from the beginning? I mean I did everything they asked of me—well, almost everything. I balked when they wanted me to sing in one of the big musical numbers Carol loved to do. You’ve heard of a tin ear? I have no ear. I said I couldn’t sing. They wouldn’t believe me. I was brought over to a rehearsal piano, and Peter Matz, the musical director, sat down at the keyboard.
“Look, Tim,” Pete said, “let’s make it easy. You know ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat,’ don’t you?”
“No, no, no I don’t,” I protested.
Pete wouldn’t take no, no, no for an answer. He started playing and I started (trying) to sing. It was torture . . . for everybody. At last, Pete took his hands off the keys and looked over at me.
“You really don’t know it, do you?”
“No, I don’t. I can’t sing.”
Pete stood up, closed the lid over the keyboard, shook his head, and walked off.
So don’t look for me singing in any musical numbers in Carol’s show. I only agreed to try it because I would do anything for her.
From the beginning, I realized that there was something special about this Burnett girl. When Harvey and I ran through our routines for that week’s show, those watching would laugh, and that included Carol. Let me tell you, most stars would have been surveying the sc
enes to see how they could appropriate the big laughs for themselves. Carol, the PhD graduate of the Garry Moore University of Good Clean Fun, never did that. Like her mentor Moore, she always put the show and the other performers first. In the eleven years I was with her, I never heard a guest express any dissatisfaction with the way they were treated. That’s a record.
The routine for doing The Carol Burnett Show was pretty simple. We had a sit-down reading on Monday, we’d rehearse on Tuesday, we’d learn the lines, and on Wednesday we had a run-through for the network and the staff. Thursday was for blocking, so we couldn’t do much rehearsing, and Friday night was the show. When you think of it, the whole thing was so quick. We had cue cards but we didn’t use them in the sketches. Actually, I was on the show for years before I realized that the cards they held up were the script. Even though the show was filmed, Carol wanted it to have the feeling of a live performance. That’s why viewers saw so many instances of the cast breaking up on camera. I know that there are viewers out there who still believe that many of those moments weren’t really spontaneous. I assure you they were never staged. What I’d sometimes do was go to the director and ask him to keep the camera rolling even if I departed from the script. My pals never knew what hit them. We had a real audience, two of them, since the show was taped twice, and I had the freedom to do what came naturally. I never got the feeling that I was overstepping my bounds when I took advantage of situations that were ripe for improvising. I give you my word, I could not, and would not have done it, if Carol and Joe hadn’t let me.
By the way, Carol is no slouch when it comes to ad-libbing, either. She’s quick, really quick. When we get together and talk about those days, certain moments in the show always resurface. We’ve given most of them code names. All you have to say is “The Curtain Rod,” “The Dentist,” “Nora Desmond,” “The Elephant,” or “The Horse” and everyone knows exactly what sketch we’re talking about. “The Horse” provides the perfect example of Carol’s ability to take charge of any situation, no matter how off-the-wall. The sketch was a take-off on the old-fashioned Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney musicals that were set into motion by the immortal line, “I know a barn where we can put on a musical.” In the sketch, Carol was singing a song in front of the barn while outside a real horse stood behind the fence. As Carol warbled, the horse felt the call of nature and answered it. When a horse makes a decision like that, it doesn’t go unnoticed; he began to pee, big time. The wrangler in charge of the gallant steed rushed out and put a pail underneath him. Meanwhile, unaware of what was happening behind her, Carol kept singing as the horse kept peeing. She wondered why the audience was laughing hysterically and glanced over her shoulder to see what was going on. She saw the horse (still going), the pail, and the wrangler. Carol sized up the situation and, instantly, worked out everything in her head. After the audience calmed down, she turned to the wrangler and asked, “Is he through?”