While this isn't the first time I've pointed out a dose of
beefcake to be found on the long-running, iconic variety series
The Carol Burnett Show, this was a new one to me. (For those keeping track, it's season one, episode fourteen, from December of 1967.) I watched it on
Crackle, though it may be available elsewhere. The segment, cleverly called "Fiddler on the Forum" took its title from shows like "Fiddler on the Roof" and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," the later having been released as a feature film the prior year, though the sketch's plotline leaned more towards something like
Quo Vadis? (1951) or
Samson and Delilah (1949.)
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This "disclaimer" was hilarious! The scroll also noted stars such as "Ursula Undress," "Warren Body," "Raquel Wench" and "Sex Harrison."
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We find a flamboyant Harvey Korman as an indulgent emperor along the lines of Nero or Caligula.
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As was so often the case, costume designer Bob Mackie had a field day coming up with the elaborate, yet abbreviated, costumes for all the cast members of the sketch. These gals, of course, being part of the Ernie Flatt Dancers.
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Then Burnett makes her grand entrance as Empress Passionata. Um, speaking of abbreviated, check these "togas" on the servants carrying Burnett's litter!
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As much fun as Mackie had outfitting the girls, I'm sure he had at least as enjoyable a time arranging these get-ups!
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Things clearly aren't exactly blissful between the Empress and Emperor.
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Things start to look up for Burnett when slave/prisoner Sid Caesar shows up in chains.
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She prefers his (supposed!) brawn over the foppish Korman.
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I can just about tolerate Caesar and never thought he was handsome, but it must be said that his arms and overall physique don't look bad here.
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Korman flashes a ton of leg as he rises to protest this little snuggle-up between his wife and a captive. Tale notice, too, of the statue behind Korman. It's a neat set piece.
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Burnett tries to shield Caesar from her spouse's wrath. (But check out the guy with the painted on goatee between them. He's a dreamboat!)
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If he isn't your thing, perhaps his travel-sized buddy will do?
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Next thing you know, Caesar is compelled to take on one of the top gladiators, a towering brute.
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Needless to say, he has his reservations...!
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Seeing this dude brought back fond memories of when I played Miles Gloriosus in "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," though I didn't bare my chest... (Sorry, folks. Just had to stick my fat face into this post! Ha ha!)
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This is how sketch comedy needs to be done. Semi-nude statuary and semi-nude background players... HA!
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Again, this scenario brought back memories. What I covered up on top, I made up for with bare legs. Something a true gladiator would never have. Heigh ho...
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Unlikely as it seems, Caesar is able to fell the gargantuan brute.
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Then Korman, again flashing plenty of leg, gets in on the action.
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Somehow Caesar (whose name really fits this sketch!) manages to do away with him as well. (This shot affords a good look at Burnett's elaborate costume - if you can tear your eyes away from the guy on the far left!)
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The skit comes to an end with Caesar and the various remaining cast members assembled.
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They proceed to shake their groove things in a group dance.
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Here's a better look at goatee man. But wait, there's more...!
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Does his pal, the man on the right here, seem at all familiar? He's given his own little "bit" in the sketch.
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This is among the earliest work of Broadway actor Lee Roy Reams. A Masters graduate of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (CCM), he had worked on The Great White Way in "Sweet Charity" before appearing in 13 episodes of The Carol Burnett Show in 1967 and '68. He went on to play in "Oklahoma!," "Applause" (as seen here with Lauren Bacall), "Hello, Dolly!," "42nd Street" (a Tony nominee) and "La Cage aux Folles," among others.
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| Later, he played the LEAD in "Hello Dolly!" in drag and took on the role of cross-dressing Roger in "The Producers." So you never know what you're going to stumble upon while checking out vintage TV (or, for that matter, Poseidon's Underworld!) |
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| Till next time! |
9 comments:
This sketch is a hoot! Thanks for digging it up and posting it here!
I've always been a big fan of THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW and especially anything that gave Bob Mackie an excuse to do outrageous costumes. Even though I know he did everything custom for her on the show, I'd swear I've seen that costume Carol Burnett is wearing somewhere else. I suppose it could either have been based on a design for an old Hollywood epic, or possibly the costume got reused on another series.
I also enjoyed your views of the beefcake extras, but I'm shocked they didn't take the opportunity to get Lyle Waggoner stripped down and in there somewhere! I suppose Sid Caesar was the week's "Guest Star" and had to have that role, but why not have Lyle facing off against him, but in a more revealing costume? Or had they not started getting him into the sketches and out of his "announcer's" suit by that point in the series?
And I'm impressed that you spotted Lee Roy Reams as one of the "toga boys" in the background! Though I'd heard the name in some magazine (AFTER DARK, maybe?) I used to have, I didn't know much about him, and that info on his career was appreciated.
Also, I always love it whenever you share moments from your own work in stage productions! (And I like your legs!)
Thanks for yet another fun post Poseidon, and for all you do! This blog is one of the best things on the internet!
Love to all, and be safe and well, everyone!
We were regular viewers, but darned if I remember this episode - I’d surely remember all those yummies!
It’s pretty remarkable how extravagant some of these sketches were, especially with costumes. How did they manage to do this every week?
I recall reading that Caesar was indeed a very fit and strong guy, which could be a problem when he went off on one of his amphetamine induced tirades.
Oh, love those steely baby blues!
Hi Poseidon!
Fun post. Though I watched the show every week when it was on I don't recall this particular sketch. The show is running on one of my Roku channels so I'll have to see if it is included. It does seem right in Carol's zone to lampoon those sword & sandal flicks. Fortunately her writers and she (and Bob Mackie) understood the proper components to include to hold the audience's interest!! However like hsc I am shocked that they didn't include Lyle Waggoner in this, it seems a prime chance to showcase his hunky fitness. Maybe he was off doing another project and wasn't on the program that week.
I took wondered where Lyle was in all this mayhem. Hot stuff and I don't remember seeing any of this. Now that I think about it I was only seeing new episodes as they came out in the seventies and not Burnett reruns. What a missed opportunity. Btw you look great in Gladiator gear. Last night I saw Marilyn Maye in a concert and she was dazzling in Bob Mackie. The costumes here are amazing, such a talented man and an American treasure. Like the goatee guy
Fun, fun, fun! I loved so many of these sketches on the hour-long shows and, unfortunately, we don't get to see a lot of them due to royalties and rights. So most of the reruns don't feature the big movie-inspired sketches in their 30-minute block (more like 17 minutes with all of the commercials).
But, Bob Mackie's costumes were glamorous, campy and a lot of fun, especially those of the boys and girls of the chorus - the Ernie Flatt Dancers. They got to wear a lot of great costumes over the seasons...I recall one episode where the guys were construction workers (?!?) of the stereotypical jeans and flannel shirt variety. Of course, the pants fabric wasn't actual denim, but some stretchy material and Mackie or his team spray painted the pants to accentuate or give the appearance of muscles and also painted the crotches to suggest those guys were packing! They all had obscene looking bulges! Of course, I was not offended, blush, blush...it definitely got my teenage heart racing and I would love to see a clip of that number today...sigh.
On another note - I love the gladiator drag! You pull it off very well...hmmmmm. Maybe I should say you wear it very well...lol. Great calves and those baby blues...be still my heart!
Take good care!
hsc, this was still fairly early in the run of "TCBS" so I'm going to have to assume that our handsome Lyle was still not immersed in doing sketches (though I haven't investigated this to be certain of it.) I'm going to guess that you're right in wondering if at this point he was still mostly announcing and showing up in some of Carol's opening segments. To me, Carol's get-up recalled something I would have seen in one of the COUNTLESS Italian gladiator flicks that were everywhere in the '50s & '60s. Something you might see on Mylene Demongeot, Lisa Gastoni or some such! I, too, learned more about Lee Roy Reams with this post. He was born about 3 or 4 miles from where I grew up! I'm glad you like the pics (and my sticks!) Ha ha! I was a waiter for 14 years in my youth and the one (almost only!) good thing that ever did was develop my legs. "Funny Thing" was my second-to-last show and I pressed to get them some stage time in my final show two years later, "Mamma Mia!" They are now retired. LOL
Dan, I - as another poster commented after you - was mostly reared on the bastardized half-hour reruns of this show and they seemed to focus more on middle and later years. So when I see a first or second season ep in its entirety, it can be quite a revelation. (And to be truthful, some of the very early stuff isn't all that funny as the cast was still trying to discover their true wheelhouses and develop the famed chemistry.) When you look at the sets and costumes for a sketch like this, just one part of a whole show, it's easy to see how variety shows out-priced themselves as viable entertainment (along with the burnout that came from SO MANY being aired at the time.) So much manpower and materials...!! I must not be THAT much of an egomaniac because I had to skim through the post again to grasp that it was my own eyes you referred to at the end of your comment! Ha ha! Thank you... They always photograph like either a demon (if there is a flash) or like two black grapes unless I make sure there's plenty of light, as in that shot.
hsc, had Lyle been in this one, it would truly be a skit for the ages. Thankfully, he shucked his clothes a fair amount of times later on. ;-)
Gingerguy, we all seem to have wished Lyle was on hand! He was dreamy... I still recall a post I did during the lockdown in which he was the lead in a tacky horror movie and briefly showed a nice amount of skin in one bedroom scene. (I'll link it below for those who missed it.) Bob Mackie's output was off-the-chain! He had to be some sort of genius when it came to churning out eye-popping clothes in a rush. Thanks!
https://neptsdepths.blogspot.com/2020/04/youre-just-gonna-love-this.html
jobj69, I really need to see that segment with the dancers as construction workers...!!! I did a post once on some of the eps with abbreviated costumes (And, Lord, who could forget Lyle as a soldier on a "Ben-hur"-like slave ship, with whip in hand?!) That number sounds divine. (My instance like that was during "The Captain and Tenille Show" when she sang "Shop Around" surrounded by a passel of lycra-clad robotic men for sale...! I tingled. Ha ha ha!!!) Thanks much!
https://neptsdepths.blogspot.com/2021/02/burnett-beefcake.html
Chiming in a bit late here, but wanted to let you know that I loved the post. You sure make the most amazing connections! And I'm impressed that you played Miles "not to mention the rest!" Gloriosus, my favorite song from AFTHONTWTTF. And you did look great! And LeRoy Reams, what a name! As someone else suggested, I'll look for him in After Dark.
Huston
Never too late, Huston, especially when the words are kind! ;-) Thanks much, and I'm glad you enjoyed this post. Miles was a "bucket list" role that I had wanted to play for a long time, but circumstances only came about twice beforehand. The first time, I was already in another show (and my very good friend won the part that time) and the second time I had a rare case of laryngitis during the audition and the director didn't know me, so he didn't chance it. (After casting a complete dud, then hearing from others how he passed over me, he actually sent me a letter in the mail apologizing for "not knowing who I was!" I was agog at the sort of inverse, "Don't you KNOW who I AM?" scenario.) But I was finally lucky enough to get to do it, just as the last few grains of sand were circling the neck of the hourglass. Ha ha!
Poseidon: "To me, Carol's get-up recalled something I would have seen in one of the COUNTLESS Italian gladiator flicks that were everywhere in the '50s & '60s. Something you might see on Mylene Demongeot, Lisa Gastoni or some such!"
You're absolutely right-- and I *love* that you're able to name-drop Mylene Demongeot and Lisa Gastoni!
The "peplum" films definitely had a *lot* of OTT costuming and hair and makeup on their female cast-- usually the "bad girls" or featured dancers, while the "good girls" got some sort of spin on a tunic (but with a "bullet brassiere" underneath). Sometimes there was "so much look" it was like watching a really good *drag* queen rather than an "evil queen," like poor Sylvia Lopez as Queen Omphale in HERCULES UNCHAINED. (She died not long after this role at only 26, reportedly of leukemia-- but I suspect fatal levels of Aqua-Net inhalation.)
However, since Bob Mackie always did such a great job spoofing the looks of various classic Hollywood films like MILDRED PIERCE and GONE WITH THE WIND, that made me assume he was looking at something from homegrown attempts at recreating ancient Rome, rather than the fairly recent (in 1967) foreign versions.
There's also something about the way the costume is based on a solid construction sort of like a black one-piece bathing suit, with a "cut-out" section undoubtedly filled with solid "nude"-colored fabric or sheer "illusion" netting. That's the type of "censor-proof" design you got in Production Code-bound Hollywood films, as opposed to European films where actual flesh was more readily exposed.
But I still haven't come up with anything Bob Mackie could've based this on, so I'm now suspecting the actual costume or just the basic design got reused on another TV show. (There's definitely more "hand-me-downs" in TV shows than in a lower-income family with six daughters!)
And I'm embarrassed to admit that I was still so focused on what Carol was wearing that when you asked "Does his pal, the man on the right here, seem at all familiar?" I looked at the chest, rather than more closely at the face, and guessed "Robert De Niro!"
(That pattern of chest hair is relatively common, but I always think of it as a "De Niro patch" because that's where I first really noticed it. However, while De Niro had appeared in small roles in films by that point, he didn't leave NYC until after he'd appeared in larger roles for Brian de Palma over the next couple of years.)
Also, I haven't been able to track down where I might've seen Lee Roy Reams. Based on the way he looks here, he seems like a natural to have been one of the male performers photographed nude or scantily clad in AFTER DARK, which started publication the year after this episode.
I *used* to have a fairly large cache of random early issues of AD that I'd tracked down and later issues from when I subscribed in the last few years of its run, but I was forced to downsize a lot of my things and lost those. And internet searches have turned up nothing-- though admittedly, these days Google Image searching just isn't as productive as it used to be, because it seems to try to give you what you *really* want, rather than *what you actually typed in the search box*.
Given his career, I'm sure Lee Roy Reams would've rated at least a mention and small photo from time to time in AD, so I suspect I'm just conflating fuzzy memories of coverage of his work with a beefcake photo spread featuring another performer in the same issue!
Thanks yet again for all you do, Poseidon! Love to all, and be safe and well, everyone!
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