In Such Good Company, page 22
I called Harvey’s agent, Tony Fantozzi, from my dressing room.
TONY: “Hey, Carol! What’s up?”
ME: “Harvey’s off the show after tonight.”
TONY: “Whaa…?”
ME: “He wants off the show, so I’m granting his wish.”
TONY: “What’re ya talkin’ about? Does Joe know this?”
ME: “Not yet. He’s in the director’s booth. I’ll tell him after the show, but it won’t matter what anybody says or thinks. Harvey’s off the show.”
TONY: “What about his contract???”
ME: “If he wants off, I want him off. If there’s a problem, I’ll go to the union.”
TONY: “Jeez…what did he do?”
ME: “Tony, I don’t mind when he gets into one of his moods, but when he’s rude to our guests, I’m not gonna put up with it! I mean, how on earth can anybody be mean to Petula Clark and Tim Conway??? It boggles the mind!”
TONY: “Have you told Harvey?”
ME: “After we get through the show tonight.”
TONY: “Jeez…”
I don’t think anyone had the slightest idea about the tension between Harvey and me as we did the show that night. I was a total wreck, but he was his usual professional self.
That night, after the show, still conjuring up Stanwyck and Crawford, I knock on Harvey’s dressing room door.
HARVEY: “Come in.”
He’s sitting at his makeup table, so I sit down and look at him in the mirror.
ME: “Well, you got your wish.”
HARVEY: “What are you talking about?”
He turns around to face me.
ME: “You don’t have to come back anymore if you’re that unhappy. I called your agent and he’s aware of the situation.”
HARVEY: “You called Fantozzi?”
ME: “Yep.”
HARVEY: “Well…I have a contract…”
ME: “That can be taken care of. You were rude to our guests, and because of your behavior I was screwing up all over the place tonight during the show. I can’t work like that, so if you want off, you’re free to go.”
I head for the door. He stops me.
ME: “What?”
HARVEY: “What can I do?”
ME: “Are you asking for a reprieve?”
HARVEY: “Sort of. Well, yes.”
ME: (Pause) “Okay, here’s what we do. This coming Monday, I want to see you cheerful.”
He nods.
ME: “Not only Monday, but the whole week! And you are never, ever to be nasty to one of our guests or anyone on our crew. We all have moods, but we don’t bring them to work. Okay?”
He nods again.
ME: “In fact, it would tickle me pink to see you skipping around and hear you whistling in the hall!”
We shake hands.
HARVEY: “See you Monday.”
In the car on the way home, I told Joe what I had done. He couldn’t stop laughing. He really got a kick out of the fact that I’d had to conjure up Stanwyck and Crawford in order to confront Harvey.
The following Monday morning I was waiting for the gang and our guests to arrive for the first read-through of that week’s script. I decided to run down the hall to the ladies’ room before they all got there. On my way back, the elevator doors opened and there stood Harvey. For a split second neither of us knew what to do. Then he gave me a great big smile and took off, skipping, dancing, and whistling down the hall to my office. I doubled over with laughter.
Later I heard from some of the crew that Harvey had gone across the street to the local watering hole after our little discussion that night. This was a place where many in the crew went for a drink or three after the show. They said he stood on top of the bar and gleefully told everyone what had happened.
Then he lifted his glass and toasted me!
The following week I had a plaque put on his dressing room door:
MR. HAPPY GO LUCKY
For some perverse reason, Harvey always loved telling the story of the night he got fired.
In 2004, he was being interviewed by the Television Academy, and he started off with a great anecdote—of course!
“I’m sure you’ve heard this story. Edmund Gwenn, the old movie actor who was dying, was on his last breath, and someone came to visit him and said, ‘Teddy,’ his nickname was Teddy, ‘Teddy, death must be very hard.’ And Teddy said, ‘Not as hard as comedy.’
“Carol was very, very smart in getting people like me and Tim and Vicki. Because she is the kind of performer, also very theatrically trained, that needs somebody to bounce the ball back fast. If you’re the kind of performer that is holding back, or is hesitant, that doesn’t make them look as good. But there are a lot of performers who don’t like people to be funny around them. They’re threatened by them, because often they have this insecurity thing. You will find in our business, in theater or movies or whatever, that the biggest stars don’t necessarily have the most confidence.
“We loved each other, we had fun, we laughed. And that stuff carries on into the work. I can’t understand how people can make a picture or a television show and not be talking to each other or having jealousies or being competitive, or those ‘diva’ kinds of things. And you know, temperament. There was no time or place for that. Carol would not have it anywhere near.
“I was the only one that was temperamental on our show. I was the troublemaker. One week, I think I insulted one of our guest stars and Carol heard about it. You don’t do that around Carol or on her shows. So after the taping she came into my dressing room and she said, ‘If you don’t like it on this show, if you can’t behave yourself, you don’t have to come back.’ She said, ‘On Monday morning, you better come in with a smile on your face.’ Now, I couldn’t believe that Carol Burnett was doing this to me, ’cause I mean, it’s not like her. But she’s the boss and she wants it the way she wants it. And I came in on Monday morning, ‘Hi, Carol!’ And there was no more temperament from Mr. Korman at that point. And as a joke, she put on my dressing room door, MR. HAPPY GO LUCKY.”
Harvey was asked how he’d like to be remembered: “I would like to be remembered as a good father, and a good husband…and somebody who cared about other people, and tried to help. I never really gave much value to my contribution to the world in terms of what I did on television or in movies. But I realize when I go out [on tour with Tim] and I meet the people and the mail I still get…in fact, I’m getting more mail now than I ever have, that I really have impacted people’s lives, and that I have made people happier, that I have brought families together, and that I have made a difference in their lives. I think that’s maybe the most important.”
The year was 1974, and our show had won the Emmy for Outstanding Music-Variety Series, Writing, and Directing (Dave Powers), and Harvey won as Best Supporting Actor in Comedy-Variety, Variety, or Music. It was a big night for all of us, and after the ceremony, we all went to our favorite restaurant, Chasen’s, in West Hollywood to celebrate. The place was packed with folks who had also been at the telecast, all in gowns and tuxedos.
As we were clinking champagne glasses, I looked across the room, and spotted, sitting in a booth…Barbara Wittlinger! She and I had gone all through Le Conte Junior High and Hollywood High together. She was a year ahead of me, so we were never in the same class. I never really knew her. Our paths crossed only when we were in the halls on our way to our classes. She was the most beautiful girl, ever. In fact, she and her two sisters, Alice and Madelyn, graced the cover of Life magazine one week, billed as the most beautiful teenage sisters in America. My adolescent mind figured Barbara had to be pretty stuck-up. I used to wish my stringy brown hair would shine and fall into silky waves the way hers did. I would suck in my cheeks hoping my bone structure would come close to looking like hers. I wished my two front teeth didn’t stick out so much. I wished my skin was free of zits. For six years, from grades seven through twelve, she was the epitome of physical perfection, and I was…a toad.
Looking at her now—across the restaurant—sitting in a booth, she was, if possible, more gorgeous than ever, and I found myself feeling like I was that fourteen-year-old nerd all over again with stringy brown hair and buck teeth and covered in pimples.
Joe saw the look on my face and said, “What’s the matter?” I gave him the whole scenario. He said, “Why don’t you say hello?” Lord no. I wouldn’t know what to say, “Hi, Barbara, do you remember me?” Fat chance.
I managed to get back into the swing of things with our gang, and as the evening was coming to a close, I knew that upon leaving we would be walking by Barbara’s booth. Gulp. We were almost out the door when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and looked straight into that lovely face.
She said, “I don’t know if you remember me, but we went to school together,” and then congratulated me on our Emmy wins. She couldn’t have been sweeter or more down-to-earth.
Years later our paths crossed again when she and my daughter Carrie lived on the same block in Los Angeles. They struck up quite a friendship and Barbara attended Carrie’s wedding. At the reception, she and I (also) struck up quite a friendship, and she didn’t make me feel like a toad at all.
—
Harvey, Tim, and Vicki were all honored with Emmy awards over the years, and I puffed up with pride every time their names were called.
—
One of THE funniest moments in Emmy history was provided by…you guessed it: Harvey and Tim.
It was 1974, and both Harvey and Tim were up for Best Supporting Actor in Comedy-Variety, Variety, or Music. Before the TV ceremony, they had cooked up a plan that would depend solely on one of them winning. The envelope was opened, and the winner was announced, “Harvey Korman!” Harvey bounded up to the stage, and who was right behind him? Conway.
Harvey, holding the coveted Emmy, faced the audience and began a long and, on purpose, rambling thank-you speech during which Tim, standing directly behind the much taller Harvey, kept peeking around and lovingly staring at Harvey’s prize with a sad and pitiful look on his face, showing everyone how unhappy he was that he didn’t win. Johnny Carson, who was the host, was screaming with laughter, along with the rest of us in the audience, and undoubtedly everyone who was watching at home.
Thirty-seven years later, in 2011, the bit was repeated when Amy Poehler got the idea that when the nominees for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series were announced, each one individually would run up on stage where all six of them would stand side by side and wait for the winner to be announced, à la Miss America. The audience was howling and gave the ladies a standing ovation while Amy, Martha Plimpton, Edie Falco, Melissa McCarthy, Laura Linney, and Tina Fey, playing it for all it was worth, waited breathlessly for the envelope to be opened…and the winner…“Melissa McCarthy!” All the ladies screamed and hugged, and Melissa was presented with a dozen roses and the Emmy, while a tiara was plopped on her head. It was a delicious moment. All awards should be presented this way.
In 1974, I had a conversation with Dick Cavett on his ninety-minute talk show that crystallized a great deal of how I felt about comedy and show business. What follows are excerpts from the program.
DICK: “Do you have theories about comedy?”
ME: “No theories. I think you can ‘theory’ yourself right out of something, you know. I think…now I’m going to theorize…” (Laughter) “…people ask what makes you laugh. I think probably the surprise element, what you might not expect.”
We then talked about doing sketches.
ME: “There are some sketches I really don’t like that we have to go out and do, because I think the hardest job in the world (I meant the show business world) is to be a comedy writer for a variety show, because they have to come up with four or five sketches…different characters [every week]. It’s not like a situation comedy where they know, okay, we’re writing for Agnes and this is what Agnes always says and always does. But every week our writers have to sit down to a blank sheet of paper that says ‘BE FUNNY’ and it’s a whole new sketch! Well, you can’t win them all, and consequently there are times when we have to go out and do something none of us are really in love with, so you just gird yourself and try to fool yourself into thinking you love it a whole lot! When I do love it a whole lot, I never want it to quit! It’s just great fun! But sometimes it’s very difficult and I don’t find my character…occasionally…no, a lot of times, until I get into the costume. I work, really, from the outside in. If I know what I’m going to look like, sometimes it’ll come to me.”
Dick asked me about “playing” or acting out the movies I saw when I was a kid. I talked about how we loved going to the “picture show.” That’s how we described going to the movies.
ME: “My grandmother and I moved out from Texas to Hollywood when I was seven. To beat the prices, we’d go before one o’clock and then I could get in for twelve cents. We’d lie about my age. I was this tall when I was twelve, and I would slouch so they wouldn’t charge us the adult price. We’d see as many as eight movies a week! Double features, four times a week. I was absolutely enamored of the movies, in the late forties. So I’d come home and I’d play Betty Grable or Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, etc. We had this vacant lot about three blocks from where we lived, and all of us [neighborhood kids] would go up there and we’d play Nyoka, Queen of the Jungle, Sheena, and…Tarzan.”
DICK: “I played Tarzan, and years later I met Johnny Weissmuller, one of the greatest thrills of my life.”
ME: “I played Tarzan, too.” (Laughter) “My cousin Janice always played Jane because she was shorter and looked more like Jane, and I looked more like Tarzan.” (Laughter) “And that’s where I learned to do the yell. And we’d mark off [lines in the dirt] on the lot that was quicksand, and if you stepped on that you were dead. I was pretty athletic as a kid.”
DICK: “Can you remember moments back then when you first realized ‘I think I can get a laugh in front of a crowd of people?’ ”
ME: “Well, when we’d [the neighborhood kids] play the movies, we all laughed at each other. But in school I was very quiet. I was interested in journalism. My mother wanted me to be a writer. I never really kidded around that much. A lot of people I went to Hollywood High with were very shocked when a few years later they saw me on The Ed Sullivan Show. ‘That’s not the Carol I went to school with,’ because I wasn’t ‘crazy’ then.”
DICK: (Changing the subject) “There are plenty of miserable people in the business.”
ME: “I think they’d be miserable if they were plumbers. There are just some miserable people and some happy people. Most of the people I know in show business are pretty terrific. Especially some of the ‘biggies.’ James Stewart…he’s like he is. Lucy’s terrific.”
DICK: “Yes, there are some nice people, but there are some true swine in our business. You want to name a few of your favorite swine?”
ME: “Porky Pig.”
Dick asked me if I would like to do any of the classics, e.g., Chekhov, etc. Serious stuff.
ME: (Laughing) “No, I don’t feel the need. Pete ’n’ Tillie was very serious. In fact, it was a little too serious. I felt…I wasn’t pleased with myself in it. I was so worried that in the first part of the film, because it’s Walter Matthau and me meeting on a blind date, that if I so much as” (Subtly making a face) “people would think we’re doing a sketch. So I so underplayed her that I don’t know why the hell he ever asked her out for a second date, because I was so dull. I’d love another crack at it. I learned a lot from the director, Marty Ritt, and of course, Walter.”
DICK: “Can you isolate the source of your ambition, or desire to succeed, or anything other than just liking the business? Does it have to do with any kind of insecurities?”
ME: “I was never really turned on by the idea of being a journalist, although my mother tried it. She wrote a little bit herself, and she’d say, ‘No matter how old you get or what you look like, you can always write!’ So I thought, well that makes sense. Then when I went to UCLA, something drew me into taking an acting course and I got up [to do a scene] and nobody knew me and I heard them laugh, where they were supposed to! And that was the biggest thrill and turn-on for me, and I went home and I said, ‘I’m going to be an actress.’ And my mother said, ‘You’re crazy, what makes you think you can be an actress?’ I said, ‘I know it, I feel it.’ I was so gung ho about it. I wanted to go to New York and…I didn’t know I had a loud voice until it just kind of happened, ’cause I’d always talked softly. A friend of mine at UCLA asked me if I could carry a tune. I said ‘Sure!’ And he put me in the chorus of a scene from South Pacific that the music department was putting on. I was so loud, he took me out and he and I did a scene from Guys and Dolls. I sang ‘Adelaide’s Lament.’ And then I realized that it was musical comedy, I wanted. I wanted to be Ethel Merman and be on Broadway!”
I talked about how, after I got to New York, I made the rounds, auditioned, and had a part-time job checking hats in a ladies’ tearoom. (How many ladies check their hats? That’s how bright I was!) I gave myself a time limit, five years, and if I wasn’t earning a living in show business, I’d give up and do something else. I would have been happy simply being in the chorus of a Broadway show. Dick asked me what happened next.
ME: “I was almost cast in a show, and they didn’t accept me because I can’t read music. And then I got a job as the lead in Once Upon a Mattress! If I could’ve read music, maybe that’s where it would’ve ended for me. I’m not saying don’t learn to read music!”
DICK: “If you’d go back to school now, what would you study?”
ME: “Music. Study piano…DANCE! DANCE! I am the WORST! Anytime I have to do a step on our show, for the whole week, I worry about some dumb step instead of the sketches!”
