My pal Bob Elisberg (whose Huffington Post columns we often plug here) and I went this evening to see what was billed as Carol Burnett being interviewed by Tim Conway. A more apt description would be something about the two of them sitting around on stage talking, with Conway dominating the evening…and I may be wrong but I think he actually asked Ms. Burnett one or two questions. Not that the audience — a huge turnout that darn near filled the Saban Theater down on Wilshire — minded. Both were very funny…and even in the balcony where Bob and I were, you could tell that each of them really enjoyed laughing at the other.
One of the big secrets of being a huge comedy star on television is what I once heard an old-time joke writer, Harry Crane, describe as The Jack Benny Rule. You have to understand that when someone else gets a bigger laugh than you do on your show, it's not upstaging you. It's making your show better. Benny was famous for letting Dennis Day get the laugh, letting Don Wilson get the laugh, letting Rochester get the laugh, etc. He didn't feel threatened, just as Andy Griffith didn't regret when people said Don Knotts was the real star of The Andy Griffith Show or Mary Tyler Moore was willing to let Ed Asner or Cloris Leachman (or Ted or Gavin or Valerie…) walk off with whole scenes. No one had a bigger career than Benny, Griffith or Moore…or Burnett, who loved it when Conway and/or Harvey Korman soared. We saw some of that tonight.
The event was a function of Writers Bloc, an L.A.-based group that puts together terrific evenings with authors being interviewed, often by pretty impressive interviewers. A week or two ago, I was too swamped with work to go hear Jules Feiffer questioned by Carl Reiner. Must have been great. Here's a link to the Writers Bloc website where you can keep an eye out for upcoming programs of interest and sign up for mailings.
Anyway, Conway and Burnett screwed around on stage for a while and she was going to stay as long as she had to, they said, to sign her new book for everyone who purchased a copy. Based on the length of the line when we left, I figure she'll be done by sundown tomorrow.
Before they got to that, she and Conway took questions from the audience. I'd told Bob on the way over that the first question would be from someone asking her to do the Tarzan yell, and that all the questioners would be people talking about themselves and about how much they loved Carol (and Tim, too) and how on behalf of the entire audience, the person at the mike in the aisles just wanted to thank the two of them for all the love and all the laughs. I was right about all of this. But I was also right when I said that everyone would have a very good time.