Poseidon Quickies: A Swingin' Good Time!

As many of you are aware, the long-running variety series The Carol Burnett Show (1967-1978) originally ran for one hour and nearly always ended with a musical revue of some kind. Later, the shows were chopped down to a half-hour and sent into syndication (usually without the revue and also minus a sketch or two) as Carol Burnett & Friends. This is the way a lot of us experienced the show, especially if you were, like me, born in 1967 when you couldn't see the early years of it at all!  While it was certainly lots of fun to see so many classic sketches in perpetual reruns, we were actually being cheated of about 50% of each program as it originally aired! More recently, the full, one-hour broadcasts have begun to see the light of day again (often on PBS), allowing us to rediscover some of the delights (along with some of the horrors - often musically!) of those shows. Today, I'm going to briefly share a previously unseen delight!

Harvey Korman plays the host of a show parodying the longtime favorite This is Your Life.

He announces the subject of this latest installment and, though I cannot be certain, I think it's the very first appearance of this recurring character. Other, later sketches involving this person became far better known and, unlike this one, appear on YouTube.

The character is Stella Toddler, presented here as a legendary acting teacher, now in her dotage. (Though she bears no physical resemblance at all, it's possible that the name of the character stems from famed acting coach Stella Adler.)

Adler (as played by Burnett, of course) is mystified as to why she's even there and, as was often the case in later skits, just wants to go home.

First, she has to greet the famous guests who've come to pay tribute to their former teacher. There's Vicki Lawrence in a parody of Zsa Zsa Gabor.

She was called something else, which my pea brain can't recall (I fashioned these pics many month ago.) I think it was something like "GaGa Lamour." But the real treat comes with the next guest...

We find that Toddler also was once the coach of a young actor who went on to play Tarzan!

He whips across the stage, swinging from a vine, and sends Toddler scrambling for her life over the back end of the sofa!

The actor, of course, is portrayed by resident hunk Lyle Waggoner.

As he retrieves the stunned old lady from behind the sofa, we're treated to a fair amount of skin for the time.

Burnett's physicality in this sketch, along with her facial expressions, garnered what I felt was one of the longer sustained laughs from the audience. It seems unreal that this sketch is one that was left out of the repackaged programs!

"I just wanna go home..."

Waggoner is hardly finished demonstrating his gratitude to her, however.

Stella Toddler is heels over head when it comes to the guy (whether she wants to be or not!)

There would be several other installments with Stella Toddler, including a game show appearance, a building dedication and a run-in with Tim Conway's famous old man character.

But this one became an instant favorite for obvious reasons...! (We've brought other examples of unexpected skin on this show to you before.)

Keep on swingin', till next time!