Left to right: Lyle Waggoner, Vicki Lawrence,
Carol Burnett, Harvey Korman, Tim Conway
September 11, 1967: The Carol Burnett Show premieres on CBS. It was a variety show, airing during the peak era of TV variety shows. It outlasted most of them.
Carol Burnett was then 34 years old, and had been appearing on television as a standup comedienne for 12 years. She was joined by Harvey Korman, a well-known TV comedy guest star; Lyle Waggoner, an actor who, a year earlier, had been turned down for the title role in Batman, and served as both announcer and performer for The Carol Burnett Show; Tim Conway, formerly of The Steve Allen Show and the sitcom McHale's Navy; and Vicki Lawrence, a former singer with The Young Americans, who had become friends with Burnett after being told she looked like her.
Sketches parodied all kinds of things, and CBS costume designer Bob Mackie, whose fame would grow a few years later with The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, was up to any task. For the show's best-remembered moment, he and Burnett parodied the scene in Gone with the Wind where Scarlett O'Hara makes a ball gown out of curtains. In Burnett's sketch Went with the Wind, Burnett comes down the stairs with the curtain rod in her shoulders, saying, "I saw it in the window, and I just had to have it!"
The show ran for 11 seasons, taping in front of a live audience at Studio 33 at CBS Television City in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, California through 1978. It turned all the performers into legends, and won 25 Emmy Awards. Conway had his own CBS variety show, The Tim Conway Show, in the 1980-81 season, with Korman, among others.
In 1983, NBC adapted the show's "The Family" sketch as the sitcom Mama's Family. Lawrence, who wore a gray wig and a fat suit to play Thelma "Mama" Harper, didn't want to do it, and especially didn't want to do it without Burnett, who played Mama's daughter, Eunice; and Korman, who played Eunice's husband, Ed Higgins. Burnett and Korman agreed to appear as occasional guests, and convinced Lawrence it was her turn to shine. NBC canceled the show after 1 season, then aired reruns as Summer replacement fare, and they got good ratings -- not good enough for NBC to pick it back up, but good enough for the show to get a syndication deal, and run through 1990.
Korman died in 2008, Conway in 2019, Waggoner in 2020. As of September 11, 2022, Burnett, Lawrence and Mackie are still alive. (UPDATE: On April 26, 2023, Burnett's 90th birthday, NBC aired Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love. Lawrence and Mackie were both honored guests, along with Burnett.)
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September 11, 1967 was a Monday. Singer-actor Harry Connick Jr. was born. And the Tom Lehrer concert in Copenhagen, Denmark that PBS occasionally plays during pledge drives was on this day. I have a separate entry for that event.
And these 6 baseball games were played that day:
* The Minnesota Twins beat the Washington Senators, 13-5 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (It was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.)
* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-1 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Brooks Robinson went 2-for-4 with an RBI. Frank Robinson went 2-for-4 with a home run and 3 RBIs.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-3 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Pete Rose went 2-for-5 with an RBI. Johnny Bench, who made his major league debut 2 weeks earlier, went 0-for-3. Willie Stargell drove in all of the Pirates' runs, including 2 on a home run. Roberto Clemente went 0-for-4.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-1 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis.
* The Houston Astros beat the Chicago Cubs, 11-10 at the Astrodome in Houston. Ernie Banks went 1-for-4 with a walk and 2 RBIs.
* The San Francisco Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 4-0 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Ron Herbel allowed 8 hits, but kept the shutout, and outpitched Don Drysdale. Willie Mays went 3-for-4 with an RBI, and Willie McCovey hit a home run.
* And the following teams were not scheduled: The New York Yankees, the New York Mets, the Atlanta Braves, the Boston Red Sox, the California Angels, the Cleveland Indians, the Detroit Tigers and the Kansas City Athletics.
