I decided not to tell the story here about the Howie Morris wedding. It's too long and too much of it is about me and not about Harvey Korman. That was the first time though that I (and several folks at our table) learned the sheer joy of making Harvey Korman laugh. To see him try to hold it back and finally explode was to understand why Tim Conway devoted so much of his life to making that happen. As I think I've mentioned here in a couple of obits, including Dick Martin's, I love people who can just laugh unreservedly and with the entire body and soul. When they're professional comedians — people who might feel it's their job to provoke laughter in others — it's especially wonderful. Harvey was the greatest audience.
So here's the story I will tell. I worked with Harvey on a couple of projects, including the Garfield cartoon show, which he did as a favor to me even though there was no conceivable reason for him to do me a favor. We had a set fee we paid guest voice actors…a generous one but it was below what Harvey Korman usually received. A few weeks later, I was in New York and so was Harvey. He appeared on Conan O'Brien's show one evening and then the next day, he took his family to a matinee of the Broadway show of Beauty and the Beast, which then starred Tom Bosley. Mr. Korman and Mr. Bosley had once been roommates, sharing a hovel not far from that theater, back in their starving actor days.
After visiting with Bosley, the Kormans went walking through Times Square and Harvey noticed and recognized me walking along. He introduced me to the family and while the wife and kids went off to buy something, we stood there — around Broadway and 43rd, I believe — just talking. Except Harvey wasn't talking just to me. He talked to everyone who walked past, heckling tourists and joking with passers-by…
…and a crowd started to form around us. Before long, there must have been sixty, seventy people clustered about, watching this tall, crazy person putting on a little show, doing in essence a stand-up comedy routine in the middle of Times Square.
I don't know if they all knew who he was. Odds are, some of them recognized him from Conan O'Brien the night before, some from The Carol Burnett Show or movies like Blazing Saddles. But I think to many, he was just this loud, funny person carrying on, doing street theater. It was kind of a mix of Don Rickles and Irwin Corey, rattling from topic to topic, pausing now and then to insult the audience. He had his arm around my shoulder and every so often, he'd point at me and tell them, "This man writes the Garfield cartoons. You all watch Garfield!"
So I'm standing there, laughing outrageously at Mr. Korman's spontaneous performance but also feeling rather odd, wondering what these onlookers were thinking this was all about. I also noticed that every few seconds, one of them would look up, like there was something important going on over our heads that we couldn't see.
All in all, it was one of those "I'd give anything to have had a tape recorder — or better still, a video camera — moments." I'm sure you can believe me on this: Harvey Korman was hilarious, making a whole comedy routine out of nothing at all, entertaining the hell out of seventy or so people who just happened to be walking down Broadway at that moment. If he'd put out a container to collect donations, he'd have made a couple of hundred bucks.
After maybe fifteen minutes, Mrs. Korman and the little Kormans returned, Harvey told everyone the show was over and we said our goodbyes. As we walked off in opposite directions, I looked back and up to see what the spectators had been staring at over our heads…and there, on the building above us and at least four stories high, was a giant billboard of Garfield the Cat touting the luxury of Embassy Suites. It was a coincidence, of course, but I'll bet the folks who gathered around to listen to Harvey didn't think that. They must have all figured that Harvey Korman had been hired to stand in the middle of Times Square, right under the giant picture of Garfield, and introduce everyone to the guy who wrote the Garfield cartoons.
Two months later, I ran into Harvey again in the "waiting for a table to open up" section of Nate 'n Al's delicatessen in Beverly Hills. I reminded him of the Times Square incident and told him about the huge billboard we'd been in front of, and of course he immediately started hectoring me for pay for all the wonderful promotional work he'd done that day for our show. Just then, Harvey's lunch date arrived…a fine comedy writer (he wrote for the Burnett show, in fact) named Gary Belkin. We told Gary the whole story and Gary looked at Harvey and said, "Hey, you always wanted to perform on Broadway."
Harvey fell over laughing — and I mean, just about fell over. It looked for a second there like he was having some sort of seizure.
Harvey's a guy who's going to be remembered. You'll remember him as Hedley Lamarr in Blazing Saddles. You'll remember him in the dentist's chair with Tim Conway on The Carol Burnett Show or in one their touring performances. You'll remember him in movies, on TV shows, everywhere. Me, I'll remember him staggering to keep off the floor at Nate 'n Al's. He was laughing just as hard as everyone else laughed at him.