SEASON 6 EPISODE 20 of the multiple Emmy Award-winning hour-long comedy variety series The Carol Burnett Show, which ran from 1967 to 1978, stands out in my memory for one sketch that feature Tim Conway playing his revered role as The Oldest Man. In it Harvey Korman plays a rich man stuck upstairs in his swanky home as the smoke billows around him...Conway finally makes his appearance slowly climbing the ladder outside, and begins to painstakingly break with his axe every pane in the wall-sized window before entering...and then from the inside knocks out the remaining panes. When he did this, I fell apart with laughter...and it continued as Korman gets overcome by the smoke and tells Conway he needs to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation: the veteran comedian, who has already put his colleague into a laughing fit state, ad-libs a couple of lines and sends the skit over the edge. My favorite Tim Conway role on this show has always been The Oldest Man...I remember an earlier episode when he plays a surgeon who stumbles into the operating room (Korman is the patient on the table, naturally), trips, and does excruciatingly slow somersaults across the floor. Although it had aired since the late 1960s, I became a stalwart Carol Burnett watcher after CBS switched it to its great Saturday night lineup in 1973, closing it all out at 10. This fire rescue episode, also featuring Valerie Harper with Conway, Korman and Burnett in a blind date skit and one with Burnett spoofing Charro, originally aired in February, 1973...
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