Men of Comedy
Tim Conway-Harvey Korman

Kurt L Moore

Normally I would shoot at least 200 to 300 photos during a show. During the Tim Conway-Harvey Korman appearance at the Grand Palace, I shot less than 100. It is difficult to focus and shoot photos when your sides are aching, your stomach cramping and your eyes are watering with laughter.

In reality, it is hard to write about these two great comedians because there is so much to say and so little space to say it in. Books could be written about this duo and the joy they have brought millions upon millions of people around the globe. I will nibble around the edges and let you, the reader, connect the dots and fill in the blanks.

The first one to appear onstage, at the Grand Palace, was Harvey Korman, following a brief announcement over the PA system by Tim Conway, telling the audience that flash photography was strictly prohibited but, what the heck, what are they going to do to you. It is always stunning to see someone for the first time, in real-time 3-D, bigger than a breadbox, and in living color, after watching them on a small TV screen for a lifetime. Korman was no exception. You could hear a collective gasp from the audience as he made his first appearance, then thunderous applause.

You know, I watched them for years on TV and thought they were funny but to see their skits and hear their monologues and dialogues in person, puts funny in a whole different light. It gives funny a completely different meaning. It takes funny to heights never before attained. Let me put it this way. The medical gurus say that laughter is a tonic for longevity. After seeing their show, I should be living well into the next millennium. I would say roughly that I should live about another 142 years, give or take a decade or two.

Tim Conway and Harvey Korman are truly masters of the comedic line and timing. Tim is, after decades in show business, the master of the unspoken line, the silent laughter that takes you by surprise. He, with a simple motion, a blink of the eye, a twist of his head or a chosen practiced stance, can take the most mundane situation and turn it into hilarity beyond sanity.
Their props are few, a table, a flower sprinkler or perhaps a dentist’s chair. They are able to take the simplest of everyday things and use them to provoke entire audiences into spasms that nearly wreck one’s body. But their laughter as a medicine is good. It purges the ills of the day and gives one a sense of goodness, a high on laughter, perhaps even a high on life.
I always thought of Harvey Korman as simply the straight man for Tim. I could not have been more wrong. Harvey is a world-class comedian in his own right. His opening monologue was the proving ground that radically changed my mind. Immediately! Harvey started the ball rolling as he told of the ravages of getting older. He just turned 77 and was, as far as I could tell, in great shape. His monologue was one that everyone in the audience could relate to. Everyone is getting older. Truth hurts, doesn’t it? In Korman’s case, the truth, as he saw it, was witty, endearing and highly entertaining.

Tim Conway becomes on stage, the antithesis of everything one would believe to be rational or of conventional nature. Yet, he takes the most secular and profane of situations and, in a simple, yet creatively deranged and somewhat unhinged manner, allows us to see ourselves and our place in the small corner of the world we occupy, through whatever color glasses we choose.

Though Tim was born in Willoughby, Ohio and Harvey was born in Chicago, according to their bios, neither of them are surely from this cosmos. They were, I am certain, as Superman was, born on another planet then sent to Earth for a life-saving mission; saving us, the earthlings, from the drudge and trudge of everyday, stressed out, drab, day after miserable day, work-a-week life with lampoons, satires, parodies and skits allowing each of us to laugh with them and in doing so, laugh with one another and in turn, laugh at ourselves.

Tim and Harvey together are a powerhouse, whereas alone, they have been, for the most part, in varying degrees of limbo career-wise. They both had short-lived shows on television in their own names. Harvey Korman was great as Headley Lamarr in “Blazing Saddles,” and opposite Vicki Lawrence and Carol Burnett as Ed Higgins, in TV-doms “Mama’s Family.” Tim was, of course, Ensign Parker opposite Ernest Borgnine, in “McHale’s Navy,” and Amos Tucker, opposite Don Knotts in “The Apple Dumpling Gang.” They are probably best remembered for their recurring parts in the “Carol Burnett Show,” which ran from 1967 through 1978. They both have stage, TV and movie credits that take pages to list, but they have never been more effective as when they are performing together as a team. Being in the audience, one on one with Tim Conway and Harvey Korman is an experience you will remember, literally, forever. You couldn’t forget it, no matter how hard you might try.

Tim Conway, as a soldier in the Eighth Army Assignment Team, actually “misplaced,” or “sort-of lost” 7500 replacement troops. Sound familiar? When you look back at his role of Ensign Charles Parker on “McHale’s Navy,” you see the same bumbling, hard-pressed and trying his best to do the ordinary but just not quite getting it, Tim Conway.

Tim and Harvey take truth and make it hilarious. Tim went further with a set of instructional videos as a small, cut-off-at-the-knees, low-wattage Scandinavian named Dorf. Dorf instructed us on how to fish, how to race cars and probably the most vivid memory of Dorf is his video, “Dorf on Golf.” During their appearance at the Grand Palace, Dorf took us golfing and was just as farcical and sidesplitting as were any of the videos. What Tim does with a very bad wig and a one and a half foot nine iron is unbelievable!

The most laughter during their appearance, at least from my seat, was when they paired to do “The Dentist” routine. To refresh your memory, this is the skit where Tim, plays a dentist, with Harvey as a patient needing something done about his tooth, RIGHT NOW! Tim is just learning the trade and is reading the “Dentistry for Dummies” book as the procedure is taking place. Tim, by the nature of who and what he is, gets Novocain accidentally injected into his hand, thus disabling his hand and his arm. He then proceeds, in a bumbling, disarrayed order, to disable his leg and as the skit comes to a close, his head. Well, I am sure you can get the picture. It goes light-years beyond comedic hilarity, into warp-speed ridiculous.
Tim and Harvey both have dens in their respective homes littered with awards of all kinds for their work in television, stage, movies, charities and, of course, there’s Tim’s star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. They are both long-standing, and according to their routines, long-suffering family men. Both have been around for what seems forever and we certainly hope they will be around another forever and 14 days.

Tim Conway and Harvey Korman we enjoyed your visit to our city more than can be described in this article. We are looking forward to your return in September.

Editor’s note: Tim and Harvey will be paying a return visit to Branson and the Grand Palace later this year on September 30th and will have 5pm and 8pm shows. It would be a good idea to get your tickets well in advance.