November 27 & 28 | 11 Movies
On November 27th and 28th, TCM will be spending the Thanksgiving holiday with a woman we can all be thankful for: Carol Burnett. Beginning at 8pm on Thursday night and continuing Friday, the comedy legend presents some of her favorite films, including many that were spoofed on her legendary series, “The Carol Burnett Show,” which ran from 1967 to 1978, and co-starred Vicki Lawrence, Harvey Korman, Tim Conway and Lyle Waggoner. Among the films airing on Thanksgiving Day is Little Miss Broadway (1938), starring Shirley Temple as an orphan adopted by an old man (Jimmy Durante) and his niece (Phyllis Brooks), who run a New York hotel for performers. The hotel’s crotchety owner (Edna May Oliver) tries to shut down the hotel for nonpayment, but her nephew (George Murphy) thwarts her plans. “The Carol Burnett Show” spoofed Temple–curls, orphanage and all–in the skit “Little Miss Showbiz.”
Top Hat (1935) has all the quintessential elements of a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film: elegant gowns and Art Deco sets; the comedy of errors of Fred and Ginger falling in love until Ginger mistakenly thinks Fred is someone else; classic songs like Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek;” perfectly choreographed dance numbers; and top character actors like Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore, Helen Broderick and Edward Everett Horton. Carol Burnett and Ken Berry would spoof the Fred and Ginger films in the “High Hat” sketch, with Roddy McDowall standing in for Horton and Vicki Lawrence playing Broderick’s role. Show Boat (1951) was the third film version of Edna Ferber’s hit Broadway musical of the same name. Magnolia Hawks (Kathryn Grayson), the daughter of Mississippi showboat Captain Andy Hawks (Joe E. Brown), falls in love with handsome gambler Gaylord Ravenal (Howard Keel), while the showboat’s leading actress, Julie (Ava Gardner), must leave when she is discovered to be part-Black. “The Carol Burnett Show” tackled Show Boat with their musical skit, “Riverboat,” featuring Harvey Korman as Captain Pappy, Lawrence as his daughter, Wisteria, and Hal Linden as the gambler Snaky. Burnett, playing the actress Ruby, sings “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Bum of Mine.”
On the morning of the 28th, TCM will re-air Carol Burnett’s appearance on the network from last year. Director Nicholas Ray’s soap opera Born to Be Bad (1950) stars Joan Leslie as Donna, a woman whose life is upended with the arrival of the beautiful but scheming Christabel (Joan Fontaine), who steals Donna’s wealthy fiancé (Zachary Scott). Burnett took Fontaine’s role in the skit “Raised to be Rotten,” playing the devious Christinabel, with Ruth Buzzi as Darleen and Korman as the stolen fiancé. During the run of her show, Burnett would often do comedic versions of Joan Crawford films like Torch Song (1953). In the MGM Technicolor musical, Crawford plays Broadway star Jenny Stewart, who justifies her bad behavior and fits of anger as artistic temperament. But her life is changed when a blind pianist (Michael Wilding) becomes her new arranger. In the hands of “The Carol Burnett Show” writers, Torch Song became “Torchy Song.” Burnett plays Jenny Driver and Korman, in Coke-bottle glasses, plays the Wilding role. Burnett told TCM that Joan Crawford actually saw the sketch. “I got the word that she was not happy with the spoof. I’m wondering if it’s because the movie wasn’t a hit. I was doing a takeoff of the movie, but maybe she thought it was a little mean, I don’t know.”
Another film Burnett spoofed was Crawford’s Academy Award-winning role of Mildred Pierce (1945). Chronically self-sacrificing mother Mildred (Crawford) tries to take a murder rap for her hopelessly spoiled daughter Veda (Ann Blyth), who has killed Mildred’s husband Monte (Zachary Scott). In “Mildred Fierce,” Burnett dons Crawford’s famous thick eyebrows and black 1940s rolled hairstyle, with Korman playing Monte and Lawrence as the evil Veda. Instead of being offended by the sketch, as she had with “Torchy Song,” Crawford told Burnett how much she loved it. Crawford’s legendary rival, Bette Davis, was also parodied on “The Carol Burnett Show.” Davis’ 1946 film, A Stolen Life, in which she plays identical twins in a romantic triangle with Glenn Ford, got the Burnett treatment as “A Swiped Life.” As the more seductive twin, “Vera,” Burnett does a spot-on Bette Davis imitation, complete with the ever-present cigarette, clipped speech and wide eyes.
Perhaps the most famous of all Carol Burnett parodies is “Went With the Wind,” her send-up of Gone With the Wind (1939). Korman does an uncanny Clark Gable as “Ratt Butler,” Lawrence is the hysterical maid, Sissy (imitating Butterfly McQueen’s portrayal of Prissy) and Tim Conway and Dinah Shore play Brashly and Melody Wilkes (a takeoff of Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland’s Ashley and Melanie Wilkes). The spoofing includes the now impoverished Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh), tearing down her mother’s prized green velvet curtains to make a new dress. Designer Bob Mackie took the imitation to the next level by leaving the curtain rod still attached. Wearing the dress, Burnett, as Starlett O’Hara, says, “I saw it in the window, and I just couldn’t resist it.” The dress now resides in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
The evening will kick off with brand new introductions from Burnett. Sweet Rosie O'Grady (1943) stars Betty Grable as Madge Marlowe, a musical comedy star in London. After becoming engaged to a Duke (Reginald Gardiner), she is outed as a former beer garden singer named Rosie O’Grady by American tabloid writer Sam Magee (Robert Young). Although Burnett did not parody this film on her show, she did have Grable appear as a guest star in 1968. Burnett would later write in her book, “Carrie and Me,” that she and her husband, Joe Hamilton, bought Grable’s former home. “She had been one of my favorite movie stars when I was growing up, so it was a particular thrill to know that she had walked (or tap-danced!) in those very halls. It was a sheer delight for me when, in the very first season of ‘The Carol Burnett Show,’ Betty Grable was a guest!”
Another film that Burnett did not parody on her show is the Fred Astaire film Three Little Words (1950), a fictionalized biography of real-life composers Bert Kalmar (Astaire) and Harry Ruby (Red Skelton), who wrote many Broadway and popular songs, including “I Wanna Be Loved By You” and the title track, “Three Little Words.” The trope of the Broadway understudy “going out a nobody and coming back a star” comes from Lloyd Bacon’s 42nd Street (1933). Bebe Daniels played the unlucky star who is injured just before the performance and Ruby Keeler is the understudy who replaces her. Burnett did her own parody, called “43rd Street,” with Korman as the tough director and Lawrence as the friend who gets the job for Burnett (an out-of-work dancer who keeps fainting from hunger). Nanette Fabray guest starred as the arrogant, ill-fated star and Mel Tormé played her leading man.
Now 92, and with seven Primetime Emmy wins (her first in 1961 and her latest in 2023), Carol Burnett continues to entertain audiences and remains a national treasure that we’re thankful to call our friend.
