‘Top banana’ bows out in U.S.

Press, 7 April 1978, Page 11

‘Top banana’ bows out in U.S.

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MAX LAMBERT

NZPA Washington Television audiences bade farewell last week to Carol Burnett, one of the Whackiest, most talented women in the American entertainment industry. “The Carol Burnett Show” finished an astonishing 11-year run on the

CBS network with a twohour restrospective programme. The programme featured clips from some of her best shows and in addition to the regular “family” of Harvey Korman, Vick' Lawrence, Tim Conway and the Ernest Flatt Dancers, there were past sequences of Carol with Ray Charles, Perry Como. Bing Crosby, Rita Hayworth, Bob Hope, Rock Hudson, Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds and others. Next season, without Miss Burnett, will not. seem quite the same, for she had come to be almost an American tradition, and

institution in a medium notorious for failure and quick change. It is a special tribute to the talents of Miss Burnett as actress, singer and comedienne that despite changing tastes in the past decade her show was always near the top. Year after year, while other series came and went, the Carol Burnett Show, Gibraltar-like, was always there, high in the ratings. Only “Hawaii-Five-O” matched “The Carol Burnett Show” in longevity. It was only this season that one sensed Miss Burnett’s long reign might be nearing an end — when Korman departed, to be replaced by Dick Van Dyke, a move that did not work out. The show never reached the same heights, even when Van Dyke withdrew. “The Carol Burnett Show” hardly ever made it to the top 20 and Miss Burnett apparently realised it was time to call quits —- “It’s c)assier to leave before you’re asked to,” she noted on her farewell appearance.

Miss Burnett, 42 this month, made her Broadway debut in 1959 in “Once Upon a Mattress” and the same year became a regular performer on the Garry ’ 'core TV show. Th..t ac-ignment ended when the show folded in 1962, but Miss Burnett did several specials for CBS in the next couple of years. Plays and films followed in the mid-sixties before she landed her own show in the 1967 season. New York Times critic John O’Connor wrote that Miss Burnett “is a gracious:, charming, verytalented and very, very funny woman. She is a superb top banana. . . she has created a distinctive corned., niche for herself, which today, might be placed somewhere between the equally distinctive styles of Lucille Ball and Lily Tomlin.” the early ratings suggest Miss Burnett’s farewell show was a winner — the first counts had her ahead of everything else in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.