Just to have a laugh or sing a song

L

ast weekend, CBS aired a twohour special marking the 50th anniversary of the debut of The Carol Burnett Show, hosted by Burnett herself, now 84 years young. If you can track it down through the on-demand services of your cable provider, do yourself a favour and check it out.

The anniversary special was cheesy and corny, just like the original show was, with fawning tributes from big stars about Burnett’s influence on them.

In a Canadian moment, both Jim Carrey and Martin Short sat with Burnett. Carrey opened with a heartfelt and emotional thank you that nearly reduced Burnett to tears before Short charged on the stage (wearing his Order of Canada pin on his suit jacket, it must be noted) and started goofing off to lighten things up once again.

That was the magic of Burnett’s variety show, which ran from 1967 to 1978.

In an era of political assassinations, rock stars dying young, tens of thousands of Americans dying in Vietnam, racial protests and rioting across America, a president resigning in disgrace, the Cold War, an Olympics where Israeli athletes were murdered, when gas prices shot through the roof and the whole world seemed to be going straight to hell, Burnett made everybody laugh.

Her show became America’s safe place, where the whole country (and viewers across Canada on the CBC), regardless of their politics or their race or their age or where they lived, could gather for some fun and music. Burnett’s show aired on the same network as All In The Family and M*A*S*H but that was the only thing her show had in common with those modern comedies.

Burnett and her fellow cast members were apolitical in a time, much like today, where everything is political and outrage and angst are constant.

Parents could watch the show with their children without hearing racial slurs from Archie Bunker and both men and women could chat at workplaces on Monday morning about their favourite sketches from the past week’s show.

Despite its roots in the traditional variety show, The Carol Burnett Show was progressive. The star was a woman but she shared the spotlight with her amazing supporting cast, a first among equals.

Burnett’s right-hand man was another woman, the outrageously talented Vicki Lawrence, who was just 18 years old when Burnett’s show took to the air. The men – Harvey Korman, Lyle Waggoner and Tim Conway – could deliver the laughs on their own but were often the setup men for Burnett and Lawrence’s brilliance.

Burnett also opened every show by walking out onto the stage alone, in front of a live audience, to thank them for coming out and to take questions.

Her closing song was, like the entire show, both traditionally Hollywood and firmly cheerful in light of the strife going on at the time across America.

“I’m so glad we had this time together, just to have a laugh or sing a song,” she would sing. “Seems we just get started and before you know it comes the time we have to say, ‘so long.’”

In typical Burnett fashion, the anniversary special made no mention of its social or political context.

The appearance of Stephen Colbert and the admiration of a group of today’s funniest female performers who acknowledged Burnett’s pioneering work as a female comic in an almost exclusively male world at the time is as close as it got.

On a side note, the anniversary special made a huge oversight in not inviting Melissa McCarthy, easily today’s heir to the Burnett throne with her fearless and shameless physical comedy.

What was present during the broadcast – but unintentionally so – was an underlying sadness about what’s been lost.

The politics are as partisan today as they were then, the social divides as fiercely tribal, but that one common place where everyone could stop for a moment for some music and laughter is gone, obliterated by YouTube and Netflix, crushed by music and comedy that is darker, meaner and cynically marketed to audience segments. Entertainment for everyone? How naive and old-fashioned. For all the modern talk about inclusivity, modern culture seems little much more than a collection of silos and echo chambers.

Both Burnett and her groundbreaking show cut a path during some of America’s darkest moments to show it didn’t have to be that way.

Their optimism, their faith in humanity and their trust in the unifying power of comedy and music are conspicuously absent at this time.

— Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout