Infinite MonkeysI spent Thursday night and well into Friday morning in a hospital labor-'n'-delivery room, vainly trying to help my wife breathe heroically through some brutal contractions (Lamaze is bullcrap, brothers and sisters). So I had some time to do something I never do: Watch network news. I watched CBS News live at 4:00 Friday morning. It's as shallow and stupid as I remembered. But I did learn that Harvey Korman died, which was a singular bummer. Actually, it was a triple bummer, since I saw basically the same story package three times. (Here's a package of photos of Korman's career at the CBS News website.)
Korman is being remembered as a second fiddle of the first order. But as anyone who watched the old Carol Burnett Show knows, Korman was great because he made the difficult look easy, often absurdly so. The partnership of Harvey Korman and Tim Conway was arguably as great as Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis or Lemmon and Matthau. No joke.
Joel posted a video of one of Korman's iconic scenes from Blazing Saddles. Mel Brooks offered an entirely fitting remembrance: "A world without Harvey Korman -- it's a more serious world... It was very dangerous for me to work with him because if our eyes met we'd crash to the floor in comic ecstasy. It was comedy heaven to make Harvey Korman laugh."
Posted by Ben at May 30, 2008 11:04 PM